{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/usenet/32",
    "note": "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.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "usenet",
  "thread": {
    "id": 32,
    "subject": "What The Book Of The New Sun Means To Me (In 25 Words Or More)",
    "messages": 3,
    "voices": 3,
    "first": "1986-02-05T23:23:03+00:00",
    "last": "1986-02-17T05:13:03+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<53@druri.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "TuckerDH",
        "address": "dht at druri.uucp"
      },
      "date": "1986-02-05T23:23:03+00:00",
      "subject": "What The Book Of The New Sun Means To Me (In 25 Words Or More)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, I thought I'd stay out of it for awhile, but I can't resist\nany longer...\n\nGene Wolfe is demostrably one of the finest (if not the finest) writers\nof fiction in the world today. He has a mastery of his genre that few\nothers in many other fields ever even hope to acquire. Like Joyce, he\ncan turn his conventions, our conventions, on their heads, and achieve\na beautiful resonance that goes beyond mere head-turning. Every sentence\nhe writes in The Book Of The New Sun drips with meaning, throbs with\nresonance of ideas and images gone before, or to come. Like Eco, he\ncan make a novel of ideas and mood and atmosphere and history become\na novel of actions and deeds and words and movement with a stroke of\nthe pen or the turn of a page, without seeming disjointed, without (in\nmany cases) the reader even being aware. Like Lem, he can take a set,\nmundane situation and make the reader see how much the perception of\nreality affects reality itself, to illuminate the distinction between\nwhat it real and what is perceived, to illuminate that there is sometimes\na difference between them, that there sometimes is not.\n\nThe Book Of The New Sun is arguably science fiction's crowning achievement\nto date, in its scope, its innate understanding and subsequent casting-off\nof forms and accepted precepts. Certainly, it is difficult at times, and\nwhile science fiction readers have grown accustomed to their own special\nvocabulary and accepted the making-up of words to describe things for which\nthere are no words (\"Grok\", \"Slan\", etc.), Wolfe, in a very simple and \nsubtle manner, turns even this convention on its head with his use of\narchaic words, and Latin usage, words that have rung in other people's\nears and have come out of other people's mouths (like \"destrier\" - a medieval\nterm for a knight's horse). Science fiction readers don't generally like\nlong, mellifluous sentences of this nature; we want Hemingway-esque,\nHeinlein-esque sentence structure. Gritty, to-the-point, advancing the\nstory with every clause. We don't like Melville or Marquez, with their\ntwo-page sentences that are like mazes of apposition, predication, and\nsubject-verb agreements a mile long. Wolfe, in turn, writes sentences \nthat are paragraphs and paragraphs that are sentences, turning the long\ninto the short and the short into the long. He brings back to modern\nliterature the sheer joy of reading for reading's sake, something that\nthe \"good read\" and the \"great story\" generally don't offer. Each page\nreveals something new, some surprise, some totally different way of \nlooking at reality. \n\nIn the larger scale, beyond his minor triumphs of structure of clause,\nphrase, sentence and paragraph, Wolfe presents a world that evokes so\nmany different things to so many different people that this one quality\nalone makes the book deserving of great praise. To some, Urth is medieval.\nTo others, it is Egyptian, Byzantine, Roman, Foundation (Asimov), Future\nHistory (Heinlein). Urth reminds me of Jack Vance's deeply symbolic societies\nwhere form is more than function, of Smith's Instrumentality where what is\nbest for Man is to remain ignorant and keep knowledge, true knowledge, in\nthe hands and hearts of a select few, of Louis XIV's Versailles, of Eliza-\nbethan England, of Renaissance Italy, of Macbeth. And more, although the\nprimary accomplishment is that Urth is none of these things, that it is\na construct of Wolfe's, as real and vivid (see, Charlie?) as 20th Century\nAmerica. Urth is so strange, so wonderful, so alien, and yet the fundamental\nnature of human beings, the fundamental flaws of man, are still the same,\nand still worked out on a tapestry of incredible imagery and breathtaking\nscope.\n\nMost definitely, The Book Of The New Sun is difficult to read, in places.\nWe often tend to forget in this age of television and speed-reading courses\nthat there can sometimes be merit in slowing the reader down, in forcing\nthe act of reading to be noticed, in allowing a reader to take time to\nsavor the individual moments and concepts of a single page. We read at\na chapter's pace, and Wolfe forces us to read at a sentence's pace. This\nis uncomfortable, just as riding in a horse-and-buggy from Lancaster \nCounty to Philadelphia is uncomfortable - we can get there so much faster\nby car, or plane. But as many of us would admit, there is beauty and\nsomething extra in going by the landscape at ten miles an hour that we\ncould never hope to experience at sixty. The same is true for books.\nThe Book Of The New Sun is difficult to read because there is so much\nmore in it that people are used to - page for page, Wolfe attacks more,\ncajoles more, surprises more, and accomplishes more than any modern writer.\n\nWhat is The Book Of The New Sun about? I don't really know. I do know\nthat it fascinated me more than any novel I have read, that it left\nme with a feeling of dislocation in this world that I have never experienced\nfrom a book, that feeling of having lived another life with which I have\nnothing in common, of having been someplace that I could never imagine\nbeing. We can all imagine spaceships now, and sandworms, and the infinity\nof space - it's part of science fiction history. But Wolfe has given us\nthe infinity of the mind, the infinity of dreams layered over dreams, \ncovered with time and dust, resting on a precarious foundation of\nshifting perception. There is a puzzle, there is a puzzle of puzzles,\nthere is a morality play and a homonculus who is ruled by the giant he\nthinks he possesses (yet another twist among the thousands), there is \nan order of nuns who guard a jewel that is worthless and yet beyond\nprice, there are cannibals and revolutionaries and palace intrigues,\nthere is a good bit of film noir double-dealing and sleight-of-hand,\nreminiscent of \"Body Heat\" and \"Double Jeopardy\", there is loneliness\nand self-realization and swords and wizardry, demons of the desert\nand of the mind, time travel that is used for different purposes than\nanyone could ever imagine, backwardness and incredible sophistication\nof the intellect and the society, war and hatred and duels, myths from\nour present that are changed around to present the symbology of different\ntimes, often with the opposite moral than we would draw from them, there\nis death and rebirth, imperfection and strangeness, there is hope, there\nis confusion, there is decay and degradation. There are at least ten\ngreat novels in here, in different parts, and a multitude of great, truly\ngreat short stories cast off like litter by the side of the road. There \nis more in The Book Of The New Sun than any one person can understand,\nappreciate, or see in one reading, or in ten. Wolfe has managed to build\nso many layers on top of layers, like his necropolis, that it is an\nincredible literary archeological attempt to unearth them all. And like\ncutting though a pearl or an onion, no one layer is more important than\nthe other, though some may be more central.\n\nIn the immortal words of Marty DiBergi \"But hey - enough a my yakkin...\nLet's boogie!\"\n\nDavis Tucker"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<650@rti-sel.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "William Ingogly",
        "address": "wfi at rti-sel.uucp"
      },
      "date": "1986-02-07T23:21:34+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: What The Book Of The New Sun Means To Me (In 25 Words Or More)",
      "in_reply_to": "<53@druri.UUCP>",
      "reply_link": "header",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In article <53 at druri.UUCP> dht at druri.UUCP (TuckerDH) writes:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "What is The Book Of The New Sun about? I don't really know. I do know\nthat it fascinated me more than any novel I have read, that it left\nme with a feeling of dislocation in this world that I have never experienced\nfrom a book, that feeling of having lived another life with which I have\nnothing in common, of having been someplace that I could never imagine\nbeing. ..."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In Gene Wolfe's \"The Fifth Head Of Cerberus,\" there is a passage in\nwhich the son of the joyhouse owner (can't remember his name) recalls\nleaning out his bedroom window ringed with alien flowers to look out\nat the bay; as he does so, he observes a plume of water rising where a\nstarship has fallen into the ocean's water. Above the city hangs the\nplanet's companion, a world of watery meadows and legendary aborigines.\nI remember first reading this passage and reacting to it in the same\nway you describe your reaction to BotNS, Davis: recognition. A sense\nalmost of deja vu, something I get rarely from SF (uh, oh: watch those\nflames, buddih!). Wolfe makes these worlds live for us, and by doing \nso brings us to new understandings of our own world through his \nuniverse's similarities to and differences from our own. His characters \nand landscapes truly have the feel of REALITY. Thanks, Gene. And thank \nyou, Davis, for a beautiful description of your own appreciation of \nWolfe's work.\n\n                           -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<2846@sunybcs.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Daniel G. Winkowski",
        "address": "lazarus at sunybcs.uucp"
      },
      "date": "1986-02-17T05:13:03+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: What The Book Of The New Sun Means To Me (In 25 Words Or More)",
      "in_reply_to": "<53@druri.UUCP>",
      "reply_link": "header",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Wolfe succeeds where Delaney attempts to travel.\n[=]\nToday we live in the future,\nTomorrow we'll live for the moment,\nBut, pray we never live in the past."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}