The recent discussions on Gene Wolfe and BotNS:SF-Lovers

Talking with Gene at the ARCHON SFCon in St. Louis last weekend, he said he has the FIFTH Volume of the BotNS TRILOGY #$%&* about ready to come out - as he said - it's like breaking the sound barrier - once you get past the boundary, it gets easier. Anyway, the new volume is "probably the last" and will be called The Urth of the New Sun; Sevarian will have been on throne ten years, it skips his reign as Autarch, and the book concerns his attempt to penetrate the barrier between the universes and get a new sun for Urth, using a ship called a SunJammer with a mass of ten thousand tonnes and one hundred and fifty thousand spars and sails. With his flair for the descriptive phrase, it ought to be another extraordinary book. By the way, he pointed out in response to a question that he works very hard at researching and checking the derivations of the words he uses in BotNS. It sometimes takes him two weeks to find just the right work to to evoke the nuances he wants to express. He seemed a little abashed when he admitted that there are actually (GASP) two mistakes he knows of in the first four volumes: Once a proofreader missed a typo and they got Artello instead of Martello and once he (Gene) made an obscure mistake which he doubts anyone will ever notice. Damn, I wish the rest of the authors and publishers were that good - most of them don't seem to care! See you all at WORLDCON! I`m registered at the Marriot Friday through Sunday nights, so leave a message and let`s get together. Bill DeVaughan