The Distant Suns of Gene Wolfe

Joel Sieh · 01 Jun 2007, 20:08 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: joel.sieh at gmail.com (Joel Sieh)
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 16:08:21 -0400
Subject: (urth) The Distant Suns of Gene Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <254607.78431.qm at web32411.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <bec.10501ad1.3391aac5 at aol.com>
	<254607.78431.qm at web32411.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <f5d95ac0706011308x40e46f3dsb1bdb9c869b0260e at mail.gmail.com>

I'm glad I came back to read this thread after checking out that article.
It left me cold, and I was hoping I wasn't the only one.

New Sun is what got me into GW, and I discovered so much more when I started
reading this list years ago (just resubscribed and started reading it
again).  The Soldier books didn't hold me quite as well as all the Sun
books, but I really enjoyed Soldier of Sidon.

I've talked up Wolfe to a number of people, and I've come across some people
who just didn't get tBotNS....  I was originally confused by them, but I
guess it just comes down to how hard you want to think about what you're
reading.  For a while I thought that Gene Wolfe was a writer for writers.
I'm an aspiring sci-fi author, so this fit nicely with my world view.
However, when I tried to write like Wolfe in my creative writing classes in
college, I found that my fellow classmates and teachers missed all of the
clues in my stories that might imply an underlying idea or theme.  I
determined that I was being too subtle, or just writing poorly in general.
However, it's also possible that I was wrong about Gene Wolfe being a writer
for writers.  He's more than that.  He's a writer for puzzle solvers.  :)

--Joel
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