Gene Wolfe"s "The Fifth Head of Cerberus"

decvax!yale-com!leichter · undated · from sf-lovers.1983.mbox

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From: decvax!yale-com!leichter @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe"s "The Fifth Head of Cerberus"
Date: 3 Nov 83 8:04:20-PST (Thu)
Message-ID: <sflovers-v8-113-5 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V8 #113
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-08

"The Fifth Head of Cerberus" consists of three stories, each of
which could more or less stand alone - the second, with the same title
as the book, was originally published as a novella.  (I read it in one
of Terry Carr's collections; I don't know where else it might have
appeared.)  The stories take place on one of two twin colony worlds;
their common thread is a single character, a visiting Earth scientist,
who is an incidental character in the first story - come to think of
it, I guess THAT's the previously published one, the narrator of the
second (which is actually a retelling of a myth told by the
conjectural (? - but the reason for the "?" is deep in the story)
native residents of one of the planets, and the central character in
the third.

     The book develops slowly.  If you really want to get the absolute
most out of the first story, read it a little bit at a time over a
matter of a couple of days.

     Overall, it's a marvelous book.  It's beautifully written, much
of it being in Wolfe's typical "take some hackneyed style and do
something totally unexpected with it".  Thus, the first story is very
much in the Gothic tradition - terrible family secret, etc.

     By all means, give it a read.

                                    -- Jerry

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