UOTNS

Re the necessity of URTH as a coda to TBOTNS: I personally see THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN as Wolfe's best single book, both for its rich eclecticism of focus and its superb flights of poetic language. To me, it completes and transcends THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN; in fact, I've at times thought of it as the best SF novel ever written. This may seem extravagant praise, but what other work of SF has come so close to the intensity of writers like Joyce? Maybe I'm using the wrong criteria... =====

I agree here. I have never understood the hostility toward this book. It seems radiant to me, a truly beautiful, immortal book and entirely necessary to the series. Tzad is wonderful, Juturna is wonderful, the connection with Apheta may be strange and even distasteful to some, but there is magic in it. The descriptions of the leaps among the sails of the starship are unrivaled, except by perhaps some of Cordwainer Smith. The legend is that it was written at the express order of Dave Hartwell, who said that the series was too truncated and confusing without a wrap-up. If that is true (and I have my doubts), hooray for Hartwell. -alga

I asked David Hartwell about this a few months ago, and meant to report here. Here's his version: David, John Douglas (then Hartwell's assistant editor at Timescape) and Wolfe were dining together to discuss Citadel of the Autarch, which Wolfe had just delivered to them. Both David and John agreed that the book was a triumph, but that they felt that it really should show, on camera, the ceremony in which Severian became Autarch. Wolfe, in Hartwell's terms, immediately started adding up words like a calculator, and then declared that he'd be delighted to show it, but that it would take an additional 50,000-100,000 words to do justice. All agreed that adding this much material to Citadel would be problematic, and on the spot they agreed that it should be an additional novel. So Urth was written at David (and John's) suggestion.