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...or is the devil not a devil and the forest not a forest...
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May 2, 2019 19:38
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I'm like 10 chapters into Urth and, aside from the first few chapters, it just isn't grabbing me like Book of the New Sun did. It's a bit jarring at just how much expository dialogue there is and how comparatively matter-of-fact it is.
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May 3, 2019 03:30
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I really liked Urth but there definitely is a point where the back portion of the book turns into the minor adventures of Severan and friends while we wait for the White Fountain to show up.
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May 3, 2019 03:50
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sebmojo posted:Here is the winner of the Gene Wolfe Memorial Thunderdome. If you're interested in the others I liked Djesers and Crabrocks. That was really good. Could probably sell with some simple name changes.
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May 5, 2019 04:21
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Shamelessly stolen from another thread, but this is an interesting article about a genetic disorder that is essentially the same condition the revolutionary gives Thecla. It's pretty drat spooky.Phy posted:Oh gently caress dude. Richard Preston's An Error In The Code, about Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, a chromosomal disorder that gives you crippling gout and also compels you to eat your own face.
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May 16, 2019 17:34
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BananaNutkins posted:That was really good. Could probably sell with some simple name changes. Yeah, that was actually outstanding. I would love to see it fleshed out into a longer story, though it definitely works as it is now.
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May 16, 2019 18:32
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less laughter posted:...or is the devil not a devil and the forest not a forest... the devil is a devil and the forest is a... detail.
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May 17, 2019 01:30
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I re-read "Hour of Trust" and woof that is a harrowing short story, kind of prophetic in a way too given that it was published in '73 and they talk about how the American armed forces are real bad at fighting drawn-out guerrilla tactics and suicide bombers nearly 30 years before Afghanistan, as well as predicting the giant ballooning of wealth disparity. It's probably my anti-capitalist politics talking but I think it's my favourite short story of his. e: come to think of it, it was written in the malaise wasn't it? Probably had something to do with it.
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May 17, 2019 05:23
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Folio Society did New Sun https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/the-book-of-the-new-sun.html Illustrations and covers are interesting, kinda emphasize what a weird book it is so I like. Yours for the low price of $595. I ordered it after much vacillating.
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May 22, 2019 22:02
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Those are awesome but too rich for my blood
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May 22, 2019 22:43
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Ordered a set, those are beautiful and will help fill the hole in my soul caused by not having the Centipede editions.
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May 22, 2019 23:09
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That is incredibly tempting
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May 23, 2019 02:46
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Just as a heads up, these are likely going to go fairly quickly. It's a very nice set that is like a third the cost of the Easton Press editions and a tenth the cost of the Centipede Press editions. I know $600 sets of books aren't for everyone, but if they are your jam, I'd recommend acting soon.
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May 23, 2019 04:30
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That Sword of the Lictor cover is dope as hell, but I don't care for some of the other interpretations (like the undine). Some of the Centipede Press art that's found its way on the internet is more my speed.
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May 23, 2019 06:03
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I feel like paying hundreds of dollars for a Gene Wolfe book is kind of not in the spirit of Gene Wolfe.
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May 25, 2019 14:48
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CountFosco posted:I feel like paying hundreds of dollars for a Gene Wolfe book is kind of not in the spirit of Gene Wolfe. he was involved in the project, approved all the artwork, signed 750 plates for it, and was certainly aware that they wouldn't be cheap so I gotta disagree
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May 25, 2019 15:49
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my bony fealty posted:he was involved in the project, approved all the artwork, signed 750 plates for it, and was certainly aware that they wouldn't be cheap so I gotta disagree More to the point, these are relatively inexpensive compared to some other editions of his work.
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May 25, 2019 16:29
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Can't wait for the high-res PDFs.
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May 25, 2019 20:06
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papa horny michael posted:Can't wait for the high-res PDFs. I really wish someone would do this for the Centipede Press editions.
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May 25, 2019 21:18
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my bony fealty posted:he was involved in the project, approved all the artwork, signed 750 plates for it, and was certainly aware that they wouldn't be cheap so I gotta disagree Hey, we all make mistakes. Who wouldn't be flattered by such a project and be tempted to participate? I stand by my statement.
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May 25, 2019 21:33
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CountFosco posted:Hey, we all make mistakes. Who wouldn't be flattered by such a project and be tempted to participate? I stand by my statement. It wasn't a one-off thing with him, so you're pretty clearly wrong. Wolfe was fine with expensive special editions of his books.
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May 25, 2019 23:07
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Yeah and I think Ultan's library in New Sun and the rare bookseller in Peace suggest that Wolfe appreciated the idea of physical books as art unto themselves, which often comes with limited availability and a high price tag. You can love libraries and lovely second-hand paperbacks and still value fancy books too. Woulda been interesting to know what he thought about ebooks, if anything.
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May 25, 2019 23:40
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my bony fealty posted:Yeah and I think Ultan's library in New Sun and the rare bookseller in Peace suggest that Wolfe appreciated the idea of physical books as art unto themselves, which often comes with limited availability and a high price tag. Well Ultan’s library does have a cube that contains within it more books than the rest of the library combined, so he was down with digital copies as valid forms of “books”.
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May 25, 2019 23:47
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my bony fealty posted:Yeah and I think Ultan's library in New Sun and the rare bookseller in Peace suggest that Wolfe appreciated the idea of physical books as art unto themselves, which often comes with limited availability and a high price tag. Read A Borrowed Man to find out.
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May 27, 2019 17:13
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My Folio set arrived today and it is very impressive.
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May 28, 2019 04:48
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Any opinions on Latro in the Mist? It's been sitting on my shelf for years, even though I liked Book of the New Sun a lot.
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May 28, 2019 05:38
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less laughter posted:Read A Borrowed Man to find out. Will do. Probably gonna save that one as the last of his novels I'll read (until the sequel is published?) I've only read Soldier in the Mist but quite enjoyed it even though I was confused a lot. It's a good story and Latro is a wonderful character. Seemingly takes a substantial knowledge of Greek mythology and Herodotus to really "get" what's going on, but that didn't stop someone with a "read Histories once" familiarity like myself from liking it. The prose is very...casual? and in that way it's a good marker of the transition Wolfe's style took after New Sun.
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May 28, 2019 05:44
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It's casual because Latro is a soldier rather than a ruler who had a very intensive if somewhat bizarre education. Wolfe switched up his prose style a lot even before BotNS although if you read Fifth Head, New Sun, Story and Long only you might think he had a narrow range
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May 28, 2019 06:29
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Yeah, Latro's a soldier who's writing down what he observes in short, direct sentences. And because his head injury deprives him of context (his memory is scrambled and he can only recall the past 24 hours), it's up to the reader to supply their own context, through careful reading of the text and their own knowledge of the era.
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May 28, 2019 08:16
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Chamberk posted:Any opinions on Latro in the Mist? It's been sitting on my shelf for years, even though I liked Book of the New Sun a lot. It's very good, although as has already been mentioned a lot of it may be a bit obscure if you're not up on your Herodotus and Greek mythology. Aside from these aspects of the book, the characters and how they relate to the books' themes are interesting. For example, the protagonist, Latro, is a kind of exemplar of traditional masculine and soldierly virtue (hence the title of the second book, Soldier of Arete - arete being a Greek word for excellence) - although he is flawed in some other ways - and Wolfe contrasts him with some other characters who show some aspects of masculinity but are flawed or repehensible - the Spartans in particular here don't get depicted very favourably.
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May 28, 2019 10:12
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Just finished Long Sun - what was up with Quetzal? Him being some kind of literal shapeshifting vampire from the space planet that they were traveling to came completely out of left field to me. Did I miss hints other than him appearing and disappearing in front of everyone's noses constantly? How did he, like, get to the Whorl and all that?
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Jun 1, 2019 01:43
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the answer to that is "read Short Sun"
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Jun 1, 2019 02:16
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Just finished Long Sun - what was up with Quetzal? Him being some kind of literal shapeshifting vampire from the space planet that they were traveling to came completely out of left field to me. Did I miss hints other than him appearing and disappearing in front of everyone's noses constantly? How did he, like, get to the Whorl and all that? he can "fly" through space. he traveled from one of the planets in the system where the whorl is located.
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Jun 1, 2019 02:48
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Did I miss hints other than him appearing and disappearing in front of everyone's noses constantly? However the first chapter of Calde of the Long Sun features Quetzal in full vampire mode, insisting on consuming only "beef tea", applying cosmetics, managing how others see him through elaborate means like an intentionally malfunctioning lock, looking at his fangs in the mirror, and just to cap everything off: "For some while he remained before the window, motionless, cosmetics streaming from his face in rivulets of pink and buff, while he contemplated the tamarind he had caused to be planted there twenty years previously. It was taller already than many buildings called lofty; its glossy, rain-washed leaves brushed the windowframe and now even, by the width of a child's hand, sidled into his bedchamber like so many timid sibyls, confident of welcome yet habitually shy. Their parent tree, nourished by his own efforts, was of more than sufficient size now, and a fount of joy to him: a sheltering presence, a memorial of home, the highroad to freedom. Quetzal crossed the room and barred the door, then threw off his sodden robe. Even in this downpour the tree was safer, though he could fly." The one thing you mentioned that I don't think there's any way to know is that he's an alien from the destination planets but if I remember correctly on my first read I had a hazy but pretty good understanding of the rest by the time I got to the end of Nightside. By Wolfe standards I'd call that unusually clear. I think the real point of it all is to establish Quetzal as this ambiguous monster and then as a closing twist it turns out the promised land Silk has worked so hard to get people to is no paradise but full of the devils he feared. But of course all this is meant to set up Short Sun, not be fully satisfying in and of itself.
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Jun 1, 2019 04:37
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Lex Talionis posted:There are some simple hints: Teasel is bitten, Patera Pike speaks of devils that attack children, "Silk for Calde" appears high on buildings where humans cannot easily reach. I think Oreb also refers to him as "Bad thing!" though the characters don't realize who he means. A memorial of home probably is the closest thing we get as a hint that he's an alien but it takes the hindsight of having read the book. Also, that section you quoted ends with him floating across the room so it was pretty obvious to me from the beginning that he wasn't human. This is definitely "hidden in plane sight". Everyone expects Wolfe to have these textured, Byzantine riddles in his novels so when he states something as openly as this alien drinks blood and has no skeleton people assume it's a more complicated metaphor. My friends to whom I've lent the book all miss it and are completely shocked by the twist. Which is a testament to how good Quetzal was at disguising himself
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Jun 1, 2019 04:46
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Atlas Hugged posted:A memorial of home probably is the closest thing we get as a hint that he's an alien but it takes the hindsight of having read the book. (But yes, that passage makes more sense in hindsight. I thought the beef tea was just a way to get rid of his assistant, so he could mess with his cosmetics and climb into the tree like when uh... was it Loris? requests a cup of tea because he can't drink it but likes the smell.)
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Jun 1, 2019 11:48
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rip gene any good write ups of fifth head of cerberus out there?
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Jun 2, 2019 05:51
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Spite posted:rip gene https://ultan.org.uk/variance-reduction-techniques/ Marc Aramini essay. I think he gets a tiny bit too caught up in the narrative puzzles and loses the thematic parts as he explains them, but he has some really good pick-ups and an explanation for the Shadow Children and the Marsch character change I hadn't even thought of and which seems to make the best sense of a larger proportion of the text than the alternatives.
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Jun 2, 2019 09:03
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Neurosis posted:https://ultan.org.uk/variance-reduction-techniques/ In a defense on Reddit (there is a Fifth Head Podcast on Fifth Head that has Aramini on as a guest - Gene Wolfe Literary Podcase) he adds a few things that I think are pretty compelling as well when someone says they like the podcast reading over Aramini's: "Very quickly, though I plan to let these episodes speak for themselves by and large, there are two basic principals I come to a Wolfe story with, and one is a variation of Chekov's gun - it is that, somehow, whether allegorically, symbolically, or literally, everything is true. Thus the death of the boy Victor, the statement that the abos mate with trees, or the claim Marsch makes that he cannot write because of the cat bite or that he knows that the cat is with the boy almost telepathically must all be true somehow - even if it is not how it first appears.He does know the cat is there because of the shadow child telepathic projection, and he also can't write because of the bite. The second principal is that Wolfe provides closure symbolically - the shadow children riding on the shoulders of Marshmen and controlling them means something, as does the page break 00--00, or having the epigraph of the third novella be narrated by a cat, (ultimately, in my reading, most of the third novella is narrated by the thing which controlled the cat) or having one shadow child have the name Wolf just like the narrator of the first part was ultimately named Wolfe. How do I know when I have arrived at a holistically accurate reading? When it makes sense of the otherwise inexplicable, like the epigraph narrated by a cat, or the final "dream"about five pages from the end, which I reproduce here, since I did not recognize its very literal significance when I recorded the episode: "For a moment I thought I saw my cat flying like a shadow in the dark, and I wondered if she were really dead though I broke her neck. The day before I found the burial cave for him, she brought me a little animal and laid it at my feet. I told her that she was a good cat and could eat it herself, but she only said, "My master, the Marquis of Carabas, sends you greetings." And disappeared again. The little animal had a pointed snout and round ears, but its teeth were the even, biting teeth of a human being, and it smiled in its agony." Here, the cat flies like a SHADOW (I equate in my reading Eastwind and the mite that floats on the wind with the Shadow Children, who float up in the bubbles from the Marsh) and it introduces Marsch to its master as well as the personification of the shadow children seen in A Story, diminutive humanoids with biting, biting teeth. The cat bite links them, and, in this dream, the cat literally introduces Marsch to a Shadow child, which has human teeth because, after Marsch's infection via bite, it literally becomes human. (though whether de-evolution has occurred from some previous wave of humanity to microscopic life might also be up for debate) The 00--00 breaks are also explicable as they occur when the cat is with the boy to create the shadow child mental gestalt with Victor and Marsch, allowing both of their memories to survive and the death of Victor to occur as written, especially with that tree branch reaching out. The page breaks are a literal illustration of that communion between individuals. The embedded stories provide symbolic closure that is quite literal once the lines are drawn, but the basic premise, that everything must be used to contribute to a holistic reading and that the parts ultimately cohere to the smallest detail even if they are symbolic, remains the primary method I use in determining whether my initial ideas for the reading are valid. The resonance of the bite in A Story influences the plot significance of the cat bite in V.R.T. "
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Jun 3, 2019 23:42
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A Borrowed Man really takes a turn about halfway through doesn’t it? Didn’t see that coming. Is there any word about the supposed sequel?
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Jun 6, 2019 07:00
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