Gene Wolfe: Book of the New Sun

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

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From: tim at hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe: Book of the New Sun
Date: Wed, 5-Feb-86 02:59:42 EST
Message-ID: <488 at hoptoad.uucp>
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
References: <194 at analog.UUCP> <1309 at wucec2.UUCP>

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 ike 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, ity 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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