t is not impossible to begin here. If you have read Gene Wolfe
before, but didn't manage to get through The Book of the Long Sun, or
even if you have never had the experience of reading Gene Wolfe at all,
it is not impossible to begin here, with On Blue's Waters, the first
volume of The Book of the Short Sun, which may turn out (we await the
outcome half in fear, because the great Book of the New Sun is no easy
read) to be his masterpiece. Soon we will know, or at the very least
begin to argue the case. Volumes two and three of the trilogy are already
written, and Tor will be releasing them in 2000.
In the meantime, for old readers of Wolfe and those who still
have a universe-in-hiding to explore, it might be an idea to sort out
some of these Books. They are, to begin with, each of them, regardless of
the number of volumes they were broken into for easy publication, a
single novel.
The four-volume Book of the New Sun, set inconceivably deep down
the aisles of the future upon a world called Urth (it is our own Earth
transfigured by time), professes to be the "confession" of Severian, the
torturer's apprentice who becomes Autarch of his Brazil-like country, and
who eventually redeems his folk by bringing about the coming of a New
Sun--a white hole which scalds and drowns and cleanses the sacred Urth.
But Severian himself has much to hide, and the text of his "confession"
has become a honeypot for puzzle-solving readers. Severian's
memoriousness--he cannot forget a thing--has been deeply analyzed, as
have his family (which he never identifies) and the actions he undertakes
to gain the throne (which he lies about, for he is a liar). In the end,
though, so overwhelming is Wolfe's capacity to transform the tacky
quiddities of genre into meditated vision, it is perfectly clear that
Severian is far more than the secret son of a hidden Dad: for he is
Apollo, and he is Christ.
A good priest in a bad religion
He does not--or so it seems--appear in The Book of the Long Sun,
whose four volumes also take the form of a text written by one of the
characters it depicts. The Long Sun is a vast tube of light which
occupies the centre of the Whorl, a vast generation starship that has
arrived at its destination--the solar system which contains the planets
Blue and Green--and whose "gods" now wish to force the dozens of human
societies within it to disembark. The main tool of the gods (the family
of an Urth Autarch--from an era 700 years before Severian--who have ruled
the Whorl for centuries, and who manifest themselves through computer
monitors) is Patera Silk, a good priest in a bad religion. Given on the
first page a godly overload of information about his fate and the fate of
his Whorl, he spends the 1,000 or so pages of Long Sun attempting to
understand his destiny; attempting to tell the truth.
His story is told by Horn, one of his pupils; it is a tale full
of methodical conversations and reality tests, because Silk is terribly
earnest about truth; it is also a tale irradiated by the presence of a
god named the Outsider, who may have some relationship to Severian
himself, given the reasonable assumption that both vast novels take place
at approximately the same time. When Long Sun closes, in a series of
slingshots that hurtle its cast to the winds, nothing is yet known of
any ultimate truth. Silk (like Moses) has pointed his people to the
Promised Land, and they have departed for Green or Blue.
Twenty years pass.
The future of humanity
Horn now lives with his wife and children on Blue, where humans
have spattered their settlements. The city fathers of his own small
culture, confessing a profound malaise about the future of humanity on
Blue, ask Horn to return to the Whorl, which is still in orbit, and to
persuade Patera Silk, if he still lives, to come down and make his people
live. Horn (who is writing his own story this time) accepts, and the
first volume of the Short Sun is filled with his journey, mostly across
water, to a town which claims to possess an intact lander capable of
returning to the Whorl.
Horn tells his story (writing it down whenever he has a chance)
two years after the first phase of his odyssey has ended, apparently in
failure, because (or so it seems) Silk has not come down to Blue. Horn
(the later Horn means us to feel) is a middle-aged, honest, forthright,
canny, solid man; and his motives for trekking across his world on a
wild goose chase are upstanding and clear cut (or so he seems to claim, two
years later, writing his story down); and the voyage that occupies most
of On Blue's Waters seems almost aimless at times.
But this is a Gene Wolfe novel, a book written by an author who
has never in his life told a straightforward tale, and author who has
never in his life published an inadvertent word. Very soon it begins to
be apparent that things--as always in Wolfe--are not entirely what they
seem.
Radical transformation
The author of the text (for instance) may claim to possess Horn's
memories, and in some sense to be Horn; but some radical transformation
has taken place (a transformation we can expect to face and contemplate
over the remaining volumes, which will be called In Green's Jungles and
Return to the Whorl). The Horn who writes is also, in some sense, Patera
Silk; and he may, like Severian (who has ingested the personalities of
all previous Autarchs), be legion.
His narrative of simple Horn's journeyings, of simple Horn's
encounter with a siren whom he rapes, and with an inhumi (member of a
shapechanging vampire species, native to Green, an unknown number of whom
pass as human) whom he adopts, is a narrative that requires as much
decipherment as Severian's own self-concealing confession. The
Horn/Silk/inhumi/god? who writes, while at the same time ruling another
human settlement, has much to tell us, but what he will not say. Not yet.
He has experienced much. He will experience more before the novel ends
(because the last volume seems destined to take place after the text of
On Blue's Waters has been fully inscribed). He is deeply sad. He may
indeed be a god. We know--from at least one scene in this first
volume--that he has at the very least tasted God.
It is not impossible to start here, at the beginning of On Blue's
Waters. Understand that there will be scenes and implications that must
be revisited after the whole novel has been read. But start here. It is a
trip worth taking. The planet Blue is gorgeous, the siren is haunting,
the inhumi clever, and Horn grows in the mind's eye until he fills his
book, like air a sail.
On Blue's Waters resounds with Horn.
John Clute is a writer, editor, critic and scholar of science fiction. He is the author of Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia and co-editor of both The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, all Hugo Award winners. His criticism and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and other places too numerous to list; much of this material has
been collected in Strokes: Reviews and Essays 1966-1986 and Look at
the Evidence: Reviews and Essays.
