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The Toy Theater, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories, and The Hero as Werwolf are my favorite of his shorts. Fifth Head of Cerberus is the best short story collection turned into a novel.
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Jul 22, 2022 04:48
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My favourite is Tracking Song. It's the most akin to Book of the New Sun out of the ones I've read, in that it's an entertaining picaresque on the surface with other things going on beneath. A lot of his stories have too much of the above-mentioned "throwing knives" for my taste.
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Jul 23, 2022 09:27
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Sailor Viy posted:My favourite is Tracking Song. It's the most akin to Book of the New Sun out of the ones I've read, in that it's an entertaining picaresque on the surface with other things going on beneath. A lot of his stories have too much of the above-mentioned "throwing knives" for my taste. Oh yeah Tracking Song is one of his best, it's more novella-length though. A good example of how it's never explicitly stated what's going on in the background of the story (something that has profound consequences for the narrator and everyone he meets) but it's also not hard to figure out even on a first read. The whole underground part trips me out though, first time I read it that felt out of place and like a different story altogether.
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Jul 23, 2022 19:53
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Atlas Hugged posted:His being an unreliable narrator is mostly him just trying to justify his monstrous behavior to himself. This is an important point. Severian will never outright lie . He'll just write " well, she didn't say no, so Dorcas must really wanted this dick" . If you look at the circumstances and context you can see what actually happened, but Severian isn't lying. It's just how he sees things.
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Jul 26, 2022 18:13
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Your Gay Uncle posted:This is an important point. Severian will never outright lie . He'll just write " well, she didn't say no, so Dorcas must really wanted this dick" . If you look at the circumstances and context you can see what actually happened, but Severian isn't lying. It's just how he sees things. It’s also selling the complexity of severians character short by ignoring that his motive in writing isn’t a confessional or diary, it’s a memoir from t he autarch which means it’s an implicitly political text and religious as well. Severian is both socially apt and inept so he does try to gloss over things to make himself look good and sometimes confesses to weird poo poo, but there are enough angles he writes from that his intent can vary throughout the text. Sometimes he’s using the book to legitimize his rule of the commonwealth, sometimes he’s just pontificating a philosophy that’s pretty much “bitches be shoppin” but he’s a psychologically compelling character because his reasons for writing can get muddled by his experiences and also being one person made of two people
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Aug 4, 2022 16:27
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By the end of his journey in BOTNS isn't it hundreds of people in his mind, thanks to the succession of autarch brain eating?
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Aug 5, 2022 15:44
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Is there a big effort post on the Wizard Knight somewhere I can read? Did Marc Aramini ever write anything on it?
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Aug 9, 2022 22:46
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Big Bizness posted:By the end of his journey in BOTNS isn't it hundreds of people in his mind, thanks to the succession of autarch brain eating? From what he says in Urth, I think he mainly has access to Thecla and the previous Autarch. The others are buried progressively deeper in his subconscious. When he goes back in time and meets that kid who'll one day be Autarch, Severian isn't even 100% sure if the kid is stored in his brain or not.
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Aug 10, 2022 00:25
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andrew smash posted:Is there a big effort post on the Wizard Knight somewhere I can read? Did Marc Aramini ever write anything on it? Yes, lots. He also appears to be doing s series of videos about it on YouTube. Google around a bit.
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Aug 10, 2022 07:28
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I am still slowly creeping through BOTNS. I am in graduate school, so my pace is slow, but I’m on vacation now and hoping to make good progress into part four. I just wanted to say, in sword of the lictor holy poo poo that one chapter where Severian is dangled by the guy with two heads from the eyes of the mountain and ends up killing the dude by punching the dead head in the face? Fuuuuck that was awesome. Probably my favorite scene in the book so far. So many little nuanced details pointing to what was going to happen, all culminating in a super satisfying moment. Only sad because that character was pretty fun and he came and went in a blink. Not really sure how he fits into things in the grand scheme either, but drat… Wolf can write himself a SCENE! That whole section was just a lot of fun. Seems significant that Severian is subtly starting to realize his power, and the significance of the claw in his possession… Sorry if this doesn’t make a ton of sense, phone posting, but I just had to share those couple of chapters were just…. 
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Aug 25, 2022 00:23
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The whole "Severian in the mountains" section is extremely rad. It has one of my favorite sections in BOTNS where Severian muses on the cosmic horror of constellations being these crudely drawn monsters made of flaming suns. It's great.
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Aug 25, 2022 00:38
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hobbez posted:
Almost as if it never happened... 🧐 Nah that poo poo totally happened
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Aug 25, 2022 04:48
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Without spoiling too much, you haven't seen the last of him.
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Aug 25, 2022 13:02
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I gave a copy of Peace to my partner's dad for his birthday. He's a literary fiction guy whose favourite authors are Marquez and Knausgaard, so I'm curious to see if he enjoys it. I feel like maybe despite being technically not SF, Peace still somehow has an SF vibe or hits the same buttons (e.g. trying to puzzle out what's going on).
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Sep 5, 2022 01:21
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Im glad I never got the Long Sun spoiled for me Silk finding a fresco of 2 headed Paz blew my mind
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Sep 8, 2022 19:50
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Long and Short sun have gotta have some of the biggest Wham moments of all of literature. That final lines of OBW had me grinning like an idiot at what a mad lad Wolfe was.
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Sep 8, 2022 20:47
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Wolfe fam, check out Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem. A genre-bending noir with a very Wolfe-like approach to sci-fi exposition, but mostly played for laughs and it works brilliantly.
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Sep 14, 2022 01:36
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Carly Gay Dead Son posted:Wolfe fam, check out Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem. A genre-bending noir with a very Wolfe-like approach to sci-fi exposition, but mostly played for laughs and it works brilliantly. I did so, thanks for the recommendation. I disagree that this is Wolfean. I had a good enough time, but this book is all surface in my opinion and doesn't really go anywhere. I think I'd have enjoyed it more without being hyped up beforehand, but I might not have made a point of checking it out so I guess it all cancels out.
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Sep 25, 2022 14:18
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Osmosisch posted:I did so, thanks for the recommendation. Yeah I actually had only read a third or so of the book when I made this rec, and now realize how inaccurate it was. Glad you enjoyed though!
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Sep 26, 2022 02:58
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On a kind of similar note, I think the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers may be anti-Wolfe in a very appealing way. The stories are straightforward. Even when the stakes are high, the resolutions come quickly and cleanly. Characters love explaining the worldbuilding elements to each other in simple terms. Wolfe is great when you are looking for a challenge, for something that is going to take a few reads and then be worth discussing afterwards. It's nice to also be able to find stuff that has quality prose but doesn't eat up a big chunk of your life as well.
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Sep 26, 2022 03:00
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Finished Interlibrary Loan. The first half is alright, then it gradually gets more and more incomprehensible. Toward the end you can tell Old Man Wolfe knew he didn't have much time left and just wanted to get the thing finished. The last page, though, is incredible. What a loving way to go out.
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Jan 30, 2023 22:19
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New Wolfe collection releasing at the end of October https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250846204/thewolfeatthedoor Hey that's enough time for me to catch up on all his novels and stories I still haven't read.
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Feb 2, 2023 13:21
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my bony fealty posted:New Wolfe collection releasing at the end of October I'm in the mood to read more Wolfe but so many of his books are hard to get and thus $$$. I have the first have of long sun laying around, which I got for like a buck at a charity book sale, but then the second half, every time I've looked, has been ridiculously bot priced, and none of my preferred new book stores can even order it. Maybe I'll suck it up and buy the rest and read that this summer.
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Feb 2, 2023 16:49
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Epiphany is $20 on Amazon but I only found it by searching Google: https://www.amazon.com/Epiphany-Long-Sun-Calde-Exodus/dp/0312860722 But, yeah, searching by Amazon only brought up a listing of $72.
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Feb 3, 2023 00:11
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Read Gene Wolfe in the order God intended — whatever battered paperbacks with gonzo cover art you find at your local second hand bookshop.
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Feb 3, 2023 01:27
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One day I'm gonna find a battered copy of Operation Ares in a used bin and the journey will be complete
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Feb 3, 2023 01:31
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cptn_dr posted:Read Gene Wolfe in the order God intended — whatever battered paperbacks with gonzo cover art you find at your local second hand bookshop. I have cleaned them out hardcore
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Feb 3, 2023 06:08
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hobbez posted:So I'm almost at the end of book 2 of BOTS. I'm not really sure how to feel about it. I actually enjoyed the dream-like flow, also attributed it to Severian not being 100% right in the head with all the hallucinations and all.
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Feb 3, 2023 16:57
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Wolfe kind of asks a lot of the reader because there's so much left off the page. Severian's feelings about Jonas and the hurt of the loss becomes more explicit as you read on and he talks about his loneliness (pretty much all of Sword and Citadel). Also, one other thing that happens.
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Feb 4, 2023 02:44
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Goodreads reviewer posted:Gene Wolfe's reputation is overblown. I loved The Fifth Head of Cerberus and enjoyed the collection of short stories in The Death of Doctor Island. But his longer fantasy fiction always put me off, in the same sense that being invited to play Dungeons & Dragons with a pack of socially awkward teenagers might put one off. I threw Pirate Freedom across the room halfway through, when Wolfe abandoned the effort of storytelling and simply had his time-traveling priest/pirate sit on his rear end and explain - over the course of 20 or more pages - a complicated turn of events that was at the center of the story. Wolfe is a charlatan; I'll read no more of him.
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Feb 13, 2023 18:08
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Okay
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Feb 13, 2023 21:05
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Feb 14, 2023 05:09
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Past, idk, soldier of arete I don't find Wolfe particularly readable
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Feb 14, 2023 06:15
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I recently read The Land Across, and it really missed the spot for me. The narrator combines the worst traits of all his other ones, being irritatingly smart and dumb at alternating times, refusing to explain anything, and more willing to punch and gently caress than is good for anyone. This is also one of the most incoherent of his books that I've read, and the sparks of genuinely interesting stuff like the ghost of the Impaler(?) take a back seat to a weirdly regressive main plot about Satanists being fought by the secret police of a dictator, capped off by an afterword about how a good dictator is better than a bad democracy. I enjoyed my time with the book regardless, but probably the worst Wolfe I've read.
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Feb 14, 2023 19:09
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I've been slowly re-reading BotNS and I like it even more in this second reading. I think it is up there with Lord of the Rings as a seminal work of fantasy/sci-fi.
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Feb 18, 2023 05:04
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I liked Land Across. The atmosphere made up for the weak narrative. I thought the last half of The Sorcerer's House was pretty bad, until I realized it's just a bunch of poo poo the protagonist made up so he could lure his brother into the house and murder him I haven't read the third Latro book because I'm afraid it's going to be bad and retroactively color my opinion of the first two, which I really enjoyed. My favorite is Silhouette. Hard sell since it's crammed in the very back of Endangered Species, but I think it's a good intro because it's a lot shorter than the ones people typically recommend.
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Feb 20, 2023 05:03
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mellonbread posted:I haven't read the third Latro book because I'm afraid it's going to be bad and retroactively color my opinion of the first two, which I really enjoyed. If you like later Wolfe books you will probably be fine, I don't and wasn't.
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Feb 20, 2023 10:24
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mellonbread posted:I liked Land Across. The atmosphere made up for the weak narrative. Yeah, to be clear, I liked the act of reading it just fine, but once I finished I wasn't left with the usual Wolfe vibes of 'Gosh, I bet that of fits together nicely once I re-read it and maybe discuss and/or read some articles' but more 'Well that was a mess. Fun though'.
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Feb 20, 2023 13:54
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This looks pretty cool https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strangersfanzine/book-of-fuligin-honoring-the-legacy-of-gene-wolfe
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Feb 23, 2023 19:40
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cptn_dr posted:This looks pretty cool
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Feb 23, 2023 20:40
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