Gene Wolfe: Book of the New Sun

Tim Maroney · 05 Feb 1986, 07:59 · from sf-lovers.1986.mbox

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From: hoptoad!tim at caip.rutgers.edu (Tim Maroney)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe: Book of the New Sun
Date: 5 Feb 86 07:59:42 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v11-30-4 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V11 #30
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-11

The Book of the New Sun is in some ways a difficult work.  If you
don't like it, then by all means read something you will like better.
However, since the question was why others like it...

First, ignore the person who said the world is unique.  Wrong.  Jack
Vance used it frequently, though Wolfe's variation incorporates some
Cordwainer Smith as well (you know, when he says "Atomic Age" and it
*really* sounds like "Bronze Age").  Nonetheless, it is fascinating
to modern people to explore a perspective from which we are not only
relegated to a historical junkpile, but completely forgotten and
proven to have no significance whatsoever in the overall history of
the world.

The prose is stunningly crafted.  That in itself is not enough to
make a book enjoyable -- see William Gibson, who people will get
sick of long before 1988.  Nonetheless, at this level it is the best
science fiction ever: it almost attains the stature of an epic poem.

Related to thhe quality of the prose is the quality of the imagery,
which is peculiarly evocative.  All the grains and colors of a Wolfe
scene leap out with all the attribnutes of a vivid three-dimensional
perception remembered from childhood.  This is done without long,
tedious description or focusing on surface features.

The plots are what really make the series.  For some reason I have
yet to figure out, the characters and events really get into my
brain and reconfigure it into an Escher lithograph.  Their raw
potency defies description or summary.  If these are not moving you,
I don't know what to tell you.  Do they seem arbitrary?  Pointless?
Then you and I have different worlds, or at least different ways of
reading.

I hope this helps.  Try to read the Book as if it were an epic poem
in blank verse, and you may come to appreciate it more.

Tim Maroney

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