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Yeah, it's sweet as hell. Make sure you pick up Soldier of Arete and Soldier of Sidon too. A lot of people think Latro might be a particular god, but I don't buy it.
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Jun 13, 2013 09:30
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Play posted:Is there anyone who has read Soldier of the Mist in this thread? I am almost done with it and, having thoroughly enjoyed it, I would be interested in hearing what anyone else felt about it and if there are any overarching theories about the book that I might find interesting. For me, I made it through one and a half books of the Severian stuff but couldn't go any further, it was just too much. By contract, although Soldier of the Mist is quite whimsical and employs Wolfe's very unique narrative style, it was much easier to take in due the relative simplicity of the setting. I absolutely loved the way names of places and people and gods are used in this book, made it a really fun puzzle but also helped to draw you into the setting. I found it perplexing, though I could be confusing it with the second book. More confusing, I think, than New Sun. Still wonderful bits like Latro proving that the sun orbits Earth, or something similar; his character is both sympathetic to moderns and believably ancient.
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Jun 13, 2013 09:51
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John McCain posted:Yeah, it's sweet as hell. Make sure you pick up Soldier of Arete and Soldier of Sidon too. A lot of people think Latro might be a particular god, but I don't buy it. Soldier of Sidon is late Wolfe, which I dislike. But Arete is great.
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Jun 13, 2013 10:43
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The really confusing bit is at the end of Soldier of Arete.
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Jun 13, 2013 22:50
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sebmojo posted:Soldier of Sidon is late Wolfe, which I dislike. But Arete is great. I don't think late Wolfe is that bad. The books of the last decade aren't as good as anything in the Solar Cycle, but they stack up favourably to things like There Are Doors and Free Live Free. I really liked the Wizard Knight, even though a lot of people don't.
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Jun 15, 2013 19:46
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02-6611-0142-1 posted:The really confusing bit is at the end of Soldier of Arete. Any part in particular?
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Jun 16, 2013 10:16
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Neurosis posted:I don't think late Wolfe is that bad. The books of the last decade aren't as good as anything in the Solar Cycle, but they stack up favourably to things like There Are Doors and Free Live Free. I really liked the Wizard Knight, even though a lot of people don't. Yeah, I know it's probably a minority opinion. But I find that past a certain date Wolfe books became largely devoted to people telling each other the plot and I find that super dull. I only find the splendid baroque ambiguity that I like in the earlier ones.
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Jun 16, 2013 22:39
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House Louse posted:I found it perplexing, though I could be confusing it with the second book. More confusing, I think, than New Sun. Still wonderful bits like Latro proving that the sun orbits Earth, or something similar; his character is both sympathetic to moderns and believably ancient. Soldier of the Mist is the first one, I'm looking around for Soldier of Arete right now. Soldier of the Mist, while definitely Wolfe, is more palatable to me than his other stuff because at least its grounded a bit in its ancient world setting. When Wolfe gets extremely fanciful and random I begin to lose interest quickly. When its grounded in stuff that feels like it could be real, it makes it a lot better. Here's hoping Soldier of Arete is just as good.
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Jun 17, 2013 07:10
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Play posted:Soldier of the Mist is the first one, I'm looking around for Soldier of Arete right now. Soldier of the Mist, while definitely Wolfe, is more palatable to me than his other stuff because at least its grounded a bit in its ancient world setting. When Wolfe gets extremely fanciful and random I begin to lose interest quickly. When its grounded in stuff that feels like it could be real, it makes it a lot better. Here's hoping Soldier of Arete is just as good. Yeah, they read like two volumes of the same book. Soldier of Sidon, the third, was written much later.
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Jun 17, 2013 07:24
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The Insect Court posted:Any part in particular? The slave revolt. I still have only the vaguest idea what happened after a bunch of research. There's a discussion of it on page 4 of this thread. It doesn't help that it's based on something that might have really happened if you read between the lines but there isn't a lot of solid evidence for.
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Jun 21, 2013 15:48
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Reivax posted:Weren't there numerous hints that someone planted a black hole in the Sun, starting its slow death? Like alot of stuff in BOTNS it is heavily suggested, but never explicitly stated that The Old Sun is afflicted by a black hole. How it got there is not known but it is referred to, IIRC, as a worm that is eating the Sun's heart. Also, there is speculation that the White Fountain that severian uses to bring about the New Sun is actually a 'white hole', a theoretical object in astrophysics that is the opposite of a black hole that emits stuff rather than swallowing it. I don't know if there's ever been found observational evidence of white holes, I think mostly they are theorized because of the symmetrical nature of most of physics.
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Jun 23, 2013 03:43
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Draxamus posted:Huh, Book of the New Sun fan music At least that is better then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqY0dCmAyNM
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Jul 9, 2013 16:01
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Fenrra posted:At least that is better then This is amazing
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Jul 9, 2013 19:54
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Fenrra posted:At least that is better then Oh my sweet Christ.
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Jul 10, 2013 00:07
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Filking is the most embarrassing part of scifi fandom hands down. Angsty teen-written vampire shipping sex fanfics are less awful.
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Jul 10, 2013 00:38
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I really wish I hadn't clicked that. Anyone here a fan of Seven American Nights? It's quite short yet he manages to cram amazing detail into every part of the story. It kind of reminded me of A Canticle For Leibowitz with its vision of a torn America filled with horribly crippled mutants and other beasts. It's right up there with Book Of The New Sun and The Fifth Head Of Cerberus for me. The Ol Spicy Keychain fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 00:47
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Geek U.S.A. posted:I really wish I hadn't clicked that. Nope. But I have added it to my list now!
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Jul 10, 2013 11:27
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Seven American Nights owns. I like the protagonist a lot and it's one of Wolfe's more interesting near-future settings. I am not sure what credence to give the theories that the US government murdered the narrator and rewrote parts of his journal. I'll have to reread it!
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Jul 10, 2013 15:11
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So Lightspeed has a reprinting of "Suzanne Delage" as its lead fantasy story this month: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/suzanne-delage/ I for one have never understood this story (since reading it in, I think, Storeys From the Old Hotel?) and would love to hear someone else's crack at explaining it.
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Sep 5, 2013 13:17
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Popular Human posted:So Lightspeed has a reprinting of "Suzanne Delage" as its lead fantasy story this month: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/suzanne-delage/ This seems even more opaque than most of GW's work. I read it twice and I can't even figure out what was so outrageous that the protagonist simply forgot it. It can't be Suzanne, since he clearly remembers her. Is it whatever caused the photo to be cut out of the sophomore year yearbook?
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Sep 6, 2013 18:27
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There's an interesting essay on Wolfe by Kim Stanley Robinson here. There's a minor spoiler for Fifth Head and a major one for Peace.Popular Human posted:So Lightspeed has a reprinting of "Suzanne Delage" as its lead fantasy story this month: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/suzanne-delage/ I think I once typed out a long theory about this story to the thread and then lost it... anyway: if the idea that everyone has had an extraordinary experience that they've forced themselves to forget is true, the obvious suspect is that the narrator danced with Suzanne Delage when they were at school: quote:She would have attended many of the same dances I did, and it is even possible that I danced with her — but I do not really believe that, and if, indeed, it happened, the years have so effectively sponged the event from my mind that no slightest trace remains. What this doesn't explain is why there are no identifiable photos of her left in the yearbooks, and why someone took them out. The second thing I noticed is that the narrator seems to be gay by the beginning of the story: quote:I have twice been married, but both marriages were brief, and both ended in friendly separations; the truth is that my wives (both of them) bored me—and I am very much afraid I bored them as well. And he does sound as if he's had a boring life. But when he sees Miss Delage, "the very image of her mother at that age", he's sounds disturbingly aroused. So he's only, apparently, attracted to women like the Delages. Like his mother, in fact: quote:Together they scoured the countryside for more, and made trips (trips so exhausting that I was, as a boy, always surprised to see how very willing, in a few weeks, my mother was to go again) to view the riches of neighboring counties—and even, once or twice, by rail, of neighboring states. Maybe it's sexual in his mother's case and maybe not, but it's a very close relationship - one that only the widow comes between. As far as answers go, I was leaning towards an idea that all the Delages are the same person hiding her age, and perhaps a vampire; but the way they behave seems to be so normal that it'd be tricky to keep up. I mention a vampire because of theis erotic connotations, and the way Mrs Delage and Suzanne could be "feeding" off the narrator's and his mother's lives. A family of vampires? (E: Nope.) There were a few things I noticed, though. Firstly, the women in the past, who made the antique fabrics, are all defined by their relationship to men, but the women in the present are important in their own right or by relations with women. Notice that neither the narrator's father nor a Mr Delage turns up. Secondly, the narrator's a pisspoor judge of what's extraordinary and also notes that he thought everyone at school was in a clique; he's not very observant. Third, the end of the story occurs before the rest of it - so if the narrator's forgotten something extraordinary because it has no relationship to the rest of his life, it's because hes met Delage Jr. again. Lastly, when he does describe her, he mentions that: quote:her hair was of a lustrous black, and her complexion as pure as milk; which reminds me of Snow White. So is Mrs Delage the evil stepmother? The widow? Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Sep 8, 2013 |
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Sep 8, 2013 16:56
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quote:Before and after that moment, indeed throughout his career, Wolfe’s fiction was rife with robots and androids, as well as doubled or split characters of various sorts: people whose brains are divided, people who are turning into other people, people who are not the people they think they are, people who are identical biologically but not mentally to someone else, people who remember exceptionally well, people who remember very poorly; people who mistake other people for robots, or robots for other people, and fall in love across the divide; and so on. The emphasis in these stories on variations of “almost human” or “human but different” is marked. That's a splendid essay, thanks.
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Sep 8, 2013 23:01
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New Gene Wolfe novel coming soon "The Land Across" available November 26, 2013. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765335956/sfsi0c-20 Sounds interesting, I'm reminded of The City & The City by Melville in a tangential way.
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Nov 7, 2013 01:49
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I hope it's better than his last few efforts. The last thing he wrote I really liked was The Wizard Knight. It feels like in the three recent books he stopped trying to write interesting narratives and just created some puzzle boxes. More could have been done with An Evil Guest and The Sorcerer's House.
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Nov 7, 2013 07:21
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I found Sorcerer's House to be absolutely brilliant. Especially how the climax happened off screen and that last chapter. I was totally floored.
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Nov 7, 2013 17:14
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Neurosis posted:I hope it's better than his last few efforts. The last thing he wrote I really liked was The Wizard Knight. It feels like in the three recent books he stopped trying to write interesting narratives and just created some puzzle boxes. More could have been done with An Evil Guest and The Sorcerer's House. I liked The Sorcerer's House, but An Evil Guest and especially Home Fires were pretty terrible. The synopsis for this one looks more interesting than anything he's written recently, but it also sounds like it might also be more full of his politics than usual. We'll have to see - I mean, I'm never NOT going to read a new Gene Wolfe novel.
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Nov 7, 2013 17:15
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If he finally goes off the rails and starts writing crazy political poo poo at 82 he'll have withstood the call of the elderly sci-fi writer longer than most. The only overtly political thing I have noticed so far was in An Evil Guest where he mentioned postpartum abortions. I didn't read Home Fires too closely though because I found it boring so I could have missed something there. Operation Ares might've had some crude political poo poo too but thankfully about 3 people have read that book.
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Nov 8, 2013 08:33
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Neurosis posted:If he finally goes off the rails and starts writing crazy political poo poo at 82 he'll have withstood the call of the elderly sci-fi writer longer than most. The only overtly political thing I have noticed so far was in An Evil Guest where he mentioned postpartum abortions. I didn't read Home Fires too closely though because I found it boring so I could have missed something there. Operation Ares might've had some crude political poo poo too but thankfully about 3 people have read that book. Home Fires had some stuff about his views on the amount of litigation that goes on in the US, the state of marriage in the US (I don't believe it touched on gay marriage, however), and a small bit about the spread of sharia law. None of it was really that crazy, but it did come up.
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Nov 8, 2013 15:24
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Well if William Gaddis can write a doorstop about the amount of legislation in the US, Wolfe can make some snide remarks about it too. There's a satire on reality TV in one of his recent collections too; something about a man being hunted and he gets the big reward if he survives long enough, I think. And there's an excerpt from the book on Tor.com. It's, well, it's a Gene Wolfe novel all right. Trees, conspiracies, bureaucracy, hidden treasure, surrealism, self-conscious narration... it's a bit like There Are Doors.
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Nov 8, 2013 16:32
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There Are Doors was tedious as gently caress. Don't say that. Please.
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Nov 8, 2013 18:53
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Well perhaps Free Live Free would be as accurate? It has a better setup than "find your girlfriend" anyway, though it's only the first two chapters.
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Nov 8, 2013 19:31
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Neurosis posted:postpartum abortions. Most books I've read come out pretty strongly against this.
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Nov 9, 2013 19:12
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squashie posted:New Gene Wolfe novel coming soon "The Land Across" available November 26, 2013. Neurosis posted:If he finally goes off the rails and starts writing crazy political poo poo at 82 he'll have withstood the call of the elderly sci-fi writer longer than most. The only overtly political thing I have noticed so far was in An Evil Guest where he mentioned postpartum abortions. I didn't read Home Fires too closely though because I found it boring so I could have missed something there. Operation Ares might've had some crude political poo poo too but thankfully about 3 people have read that book. I got my copy from Amazon and read it last night. It's a neat book. It starts out as a sort of modern political thriller but, consistent with Wolfe's other work, it's more religious-themed than political. He's basically using (or at least appears to me to be using) politics as a metaphor for religion. I liked it overall more than I've liked a lot of his other stuff, perhaps because it might be the most accessible thing of his that I've read. It has the Gene Wolfe hallmarks -- unreliable narrators and characters who may be lying, odd references the reader is supposed to deduce on his own, etc. -- but ultimately it seems to be only about as hard to "figure out" as, say, John Gardner's Grendel, i.e., an intelligent college student with a grounding in literature could figure out the main themes on his own (as compared to, say, the Torturer books, which you basically have to spend a year reading obscure online theories in order to have any clue what's going on for most of the series). Not to say that there won't be obscure theories about this one but overall it seems relatively straightforward for a Wolfe novel. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Dec 5, 2013 |
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Dec 5, 2013 17:48
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Just got an e-mail that my copy's on hold at the library, so I'm going to run out and pick it up on my lunch break. I'm hearing it's a lot better than his last few books, so I'm reasonably excited to tear into it.
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Dec 6, 2013 15:14
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Wolfe's wife just died: http://floggingbabel.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/a-farewell-to-rosemary.html Too bad. Surprising he'd been so prolific in recent years if Rosemary's medical problems had been that onerous and time consuming to deal with.
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Dec 17, 2013 02:22
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I've just finished Sword of the Lictor, and I also read The Knight. I had felt a bit like I was slogging through book one and two of Book of the New Sun, and I just stopped reading it after book two. I then kept wondering what I wanted to read next, but something drew me into trying The Knight. I got halfway through it and stopped again. Later I was at a public library and saw a Gene Wolfe novel on the recommended shelf. I read through it for a while and felt drawn in. I finished the Knight and Sword of the Lictor, and while I was reading these Gene Wolfe just suddenly clicked for me. I'm planning on re-reading the whole Book of New Sun series sometime fairly soon, and I want to read a lot more of his books. Maybe this is addressed in book four, but does anyone know why Baldanders was travelling around and doing plays? It didn't seem that odd until the reveal at the end of Sword of the Lictor that he is the man in the castle and was much more than he seemed.
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Jan 6, 2014 18:58
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Fwiw I find later Wolfe, such as the Knight, almost unreadable. I know a lot of people like the short/long earth books but it feels like everyone just stands around explaining the plot to each other. As to Baldanders... I feel like it's explained somewhere what he was doing but can't remember it for the life of me.
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Jan 6, 2014 21:01
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I really liked the Wizard Knight and am glad to see it clicked for you. For me I remember being baffled and confused a lot of the time when I began reading his work and I couldn't understand character motivations very well and it all seemed obtuse. Only the beautiful prose and bizarre imagery kept me going until I began to understand what was going on a bit better. I will warn you recent Wolfe is only for hardcore fans. It has a lot of the puzzlebox complexities of the earlier works without the interesting settings or the same level of prose. His more popular works are still pretty great, though.
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Jan 7, 2014 03:15
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Anyone read The Land Across? I started it last night. I'm only 9% in so I can't give any substantive commentary, but it's fairly engaging so far and the prose is quite good and very believable (other than a few anachronisms).
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Feb 10, 2014 14:53
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Yes. I just finished the land across and the sorcerer's house. (Sorcerer's house, I put down after buying it a couple of years ago, and have actually finished it now. I loved it!) The land across is pretty good, but I'm not sure exactly how much of it I understand (what a surprise). The sorcerer's house seems like a better book but they're definitely both better than an evil guest which I disliked. The land across seems to be written by a dumb young (I'm guessing early 20's, but at first seems to be 30ish) guy. I'm not exactly sure how much to believe about the story he tells, and it's not been out long enough for the fandom to go crazy with weird theories. I haven't re-read it yet, not sure when I will. There are some weird theories about how he writes his book, but it reads like a slightly-dumb guy writing a book rather than anything else, e.g. one theory says that he's not english speaking and it's been run through google translate or something which I think is a dumb idea.
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Feb 16, 2014 00:35
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