Gene Wolfe: Book of the New Sun

Michaelntz · 31 Jan 1986, 02:03 · from sf-lovers.1986.mbox

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From: csd2!krantz at caip.rutgers.edu (Michaelntz)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe: Book of the New Sun
Date: 31 Jan 86 02:03:00 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v11-29-5 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V11 #29
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-11

We are asked:

> If someone could explain in his own words what it is that Wolfe is
> trying to do with this work, it might help.
> hplabs!analog!kim

What Wolfe is trying to do is raise science fiction to a higher
degree of literary value than has EVER EXISTED, beyond question.  I
have read a hell of a lot of SF and a hell of a lot more `serious'
fiction than that (I'm an MA in literature/writing), and all I can
tell you, though the Book Of The New Sun is too long and complex for
your question to be answerable outside of an extended thesis (shit,
I won't pretend I really understand the damn books - they defy
that), is that if you are not blown away by now, at the end of the
The_Claw_Of_The_Conciliator, if you are not shaking your head at
Wolfe's awesome scope, his dazzling imagination, his miraculously
skilled prose - well, man, go back to clowns like Heinlein and
Asimov.

Gene Wolfe is, quite simply, the best novelist ever to write in the
science fiction genre.  His prose, his ideas - all of it.  The best.
Hands down.

Michael Krantz

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