_There are Doors_ Gene Wolfe

Joe Slater · 28 Nov 2000, 01:57 · from sf-lovers.2000.mbox

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From: Joe Slater <joe at yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au>
Subject: Re: _There are Doors_ Gene Wolfe
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 01:57:03 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v25-104-9 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V25 #104
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-25

I think it's best to view the _New Sun_ series as a single extended novel,
with _The Urth of the New Sun_ as its sequel.

The _Long Sun_ books are more like a normal series, and I think that they
are so contiguous with the _Short Sun_ books that they should be seen as
one extended series.

I really love the _New Sun_ books. They're beautiful, although a lot of
work. It's only on the second or third reading that some things start to
make sense. I'll give you an example of what I mean by beauty:

Severian, a callow youth, rescues a stranger whom he discovers to be
Vodalus, the famous outlaw. Vodalus gives him a coin as his token.  Looking
back on this, in one of the later books, Severian muses that he was
Vodalus' man from that moment. Just as a soldier is enlisted by taking a
coin (e.g., the "Queen's Shilling") so Severian had been enlisted without
knowing it. After all, he points out, things work of themselves or not at
all, and it is the rankest superstition to think that you need belief to
make things work.

Now, isn't that wonderful? Wolfe adds layers of depth and complexity to a
simple event; not by making it mean something *later* but by stressing the
meaning that was already there. In doing so he puts forward an argument
which most of us would accept, but in an entirely new context. Do these
social laws have effect even if we don't know of them? We could argue this
either way, but who would have thought of describing the question as
superstitious?

JDS

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