# The Land Across *The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 10 Mar 2013* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Antonin Scriabin *10 Mar 2013, 00:34* http://upcoming4.me/news/book-news/gene-wolfe-the-land-across-cover-art-and-synopsis-reveal#.UThFLk3ZXxc.twitter Looks like we have a release date, synopsis, and cover art. So excited! Looks like something of a change for Wolfe, I am very intrigued. My two favorite writers have new novels coming out in the fall / winter. 2013 will be a good year! --- ### Gwern Branwen *10 Mar 2013, 03:33 · in reply to Antonin Scriabin* > On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 7:34 PM, Antonin Scriabin > wrote: > Looks like we have a release date, synopsis, and cover art. Synopsis: > A novel of the fantastic set in an imagined country in Europe > An American writer of travel guides in need of a new location chooses > to travel to a small and obscure Eastern European country. The moment > Grafton crosses the border he is in trouble, much more than he could > have imagined. His passport is taken by guards, and then he is > detained for not having it. He is released into the custody of a > family, but is again detained. It becomes evident that there are > supernatural agencies at work, but they are not in some ways as > threatening as the brute forces of bureaucracy and corruption in that > country. Is our hero in fact a spy for the CIA? Or is he an innocent > citizen caught in a Kafkaesque trap? Gene Wolfe keeps us guessing > until the very end, and after. I'm not sure why, but for some reason I thought that _The Land Across_ was going to involve time travel or dinosaurs! ``` gwern http://www.gwern.net ``` --- ### Gerry Quinn *10 Mar 2013, 13:52 · in reply to Gwern Branwen* From: Gwern Branwen > Synopsis: > A novel of the fantastic set in an imagined country in Europe > An American writer of travel guides in need of a new location chooses > to travel to a small and obscure Eastern European country. The moment > Grafton crosses the border he is in trouble, much more than he could > have imagined. His passport is taken by guards, and then he is > detained for not having it. He is released into the custody of a > family, but is again detained. It becomes evident that there are > supernatural agencies at work, but they are not in some ways as > threatening as the brute forces of bureaucracy and corruption in that > country. Is our hero in fact a spy for the CIA? Or is he an innocent > citizen caught in a Kafkaesque trap? Gene Wolfe keeps us guessing > until the very end, and after. > I'm not sure why, but for some reason I thought that _The Land Across_ > was going to involve time travel or dinosaurs! At least he can plausibly argue that cellphones, internet etc. are not available to the public in this setting. This is not a criticism of Wolfe — he has been criticised for ignoring such things in _Home Fires_ but in truth perfect communication is a plot-wrecker. I suspect few novelists/scriptwriters etc. like what cellphones do to their mise en scene. - Gerry Quinn ---