
Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87 - acdanger
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/16/gene-wolfe-science-fiction-author-dies-aged-87
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ludsan
I cannot recommend enough Latro in the Mist, a combination of two of his
novels about a Roman soldier in Greek times given the curse of losing his
memory every day.

To me this was his most 'approachable' novel by virtue of the fact that I
could cross-reference the names with historical resources like Thucydides -- I
also highly recommend the Landmark series for their detailed annotations.

Fifth Head of Cereberus is, of course, the best way to start with him, and I
re-read it every few years. If you have never read Wolfe before, I would start
with Fifth Head. It will give you an early sense for whether Wolfe is your cup
of tea.

~~~
craigyk
This was the first book I read of his, and it blew me away. Gene Wolfe has
been my favorite author ever since. His writing was at just the right level of
sophistication where it was still accessible to me (I couldn't finish Ulysses)
while being thoroughly enjoyable. His attention to detail and casually tying
off loose-ends is pretty stunning when examined carefully. And he is one of
the few authors whose books make me feel like I'm having a lucid dream.

------
Mediterraneo10
Wolfe wrote some incredible masterpieces. _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_ ,
_Peace_ , and some of his 1970s short stories deserve a place in 20th-century
serious literature in general. _The Book of the New Sun_ stunned me as a
teenage reader, and I fondly reread the book every few years (that said,
Severian’s habit of shagging everyone he meets doesn’t hold up well in this
day and age, and I have seen female readers call _The Book of the New Sun_ a
risible male fantasy).

However, there is no doubt that Wolfe’s powers declined over time, and homages
to him inevitably focus on the works from decades ago. Besides their intricate
plots, those early works had incredible prose, just as rich as Proust,
Nabokov, or Faulkner. Once the 1980s came in, suddenly Wolfe’s prose became
plainer, more workaday. Then, his novels increasingly started to milk the
“unreliable narrator” gimmick but without much else to them. Furthermore, it
is not even clear that readers are appropriately given all clues to figure out
the real action and themes. I have spoken to multiple Wolfe superfans who
worry that _A Land Across_ , for example, ultimately turned out to be turgid
and impenetrable, and that Wolfe’s publisher accepted it just on blind faith
that readers got earlier Wolfe novels, so surely there was something to this
one too.

(I know the principle of _de mortus nil nisi bonum_ and I don’t want to be too
harsh about the man, but this is probably the only opportunity for a long time
that the Hacker News community will get to discuss his work.)

~~~
username223
I read some of The Book of the New Sun many years ago, and was mostly just
disgusted by the story of an executioner becoming a tyrant. Is it worth taking
another look?

~~~
SmirkingRevenge
I don't think that summary is accurate. The Book of the New Sun is deep,
heady, high literature, not an indulgent fantasy adventure. It reads like a
bit like a mythological holy book, authored by the supposed prophet - and you
kind of have to read it like one, to get anything out of it - as if you're
doing a deep textual exegesis. Its not A Game of Thrones.

It was definitely an _interesting_ story, though it could be a chore to get
through at some points, and I'm still kind of trying to figure out if I
actually like it or not, or how much I actually really understood. It
definitely won't appeal to many or even most people, I'd say. Its a heavy,
somber experience, very little humor.

I will say, upon starting a re-read, it felt like nearly every
word/sentence/paragraph in its initial chapters were impressively thick with
double meanings, foreshadowings, and themes that only really become clear
after finishing the story.

PS - the audiobooks are really well done - the narrator is just perfect.

~~~
username223
That's fair. Like I said, it was a long time ago, and I didn't finish the
series. I just remember it often being a chore to read, with a loathsome main
character. Maybe it made a larger point that I missed at the time, but I was a
kid reading David Eddings.

PS - I'll check out the audiobooks. I hope they're as good as Rob Inglis'
reading of The Lord of the Rings. It may not count as "deep, heady, high
literature," but he does an incredible job.

~~~
svachalek
It is a bit of a chore to read if you want to get anything out of it; like
most good literature it makes demands of you and you only get out what you put
in. The main character is loathsome, in a bizarrely innocent kind of way --
he's a torturer, he was raised a torturer, it's a good honest living that
makes people say, "oh we need one of those, I didn't know they still existed",
like a dishwasher repairman. You're not supposed to like him, and it's crucial
to understanding the story that you don't believe everything he says.

It's not for everyone but if you enjoy figuring out all the lies and
misdirections and mistakes the narrator makes, it's quite an experience.

------
javajosh
This is a great loss. When I was quite young I made the mistake of joining the
Science Fiction Bookclub, unaware that it's intent and purpose was to mislead
kids into over-buying books they didn't want. At the time, one of the books
they sent me was Gene Wolfe's "Urth of the New Sun", and it bewildered me and
fascinated me so much that I reread it in college, and realized it was part of
a much longer tale. I went on to read virtually everything he ever wrote.
Unlike so much science fiction (and fantasy, on occasion), Wolfe's uses
tremendous texture and nuance; reading his work feels incredibly dream-like to
me, even though there's nothing overtly trippy. As I get older, and recognize
so much of what I once enjoyed as the same juvenile power fantasy told over
with slightly different mechanics, Wolfe is (was) one of those rare genre
authors who was doing something very different.

For anyone who wants to try a Wolfe book, the most accessible one is "The
Wizard Knight", IMHO. It's still quite good, and has that gauzy, dreamy style
and unreliable narrator Wolfe is known for, but is rather more straight-
forward than, say, the Torturer series (which is actually part of the series
in which Urth of the New Sun played a role). Ironically (to me) this is also
the closest he got to "juvenile power fantasy" but ends up deconstructing the
bildungsroman in a really beautiful, even loving way. Highly, highly
recommended.

Also, I remember reading somewhere that he was a working engineer while he
wrote some of his first novels; I presume he was writing full-time later. I
think that's cool, too.

~~~
RoyTyrell
> Also, I remember reading somewhere that he was a working engineer while he
> wrote some of his first novels;

You are correct - he was an industrial engineer. I'm not sure if he was
working on a team, or just by himself, but he helped to design the machinery
that creates Pringles (potato chip). He was also the editor for a trade
magazine on industrial engineering.

~~~
colinb
Do you happen to have any references for that? I in no way doubt you, but I
hope to use this fact to dazzle a child when I get home; and maybe persuade
her to read some top class sci-fi.

~~~
philk10
See #1 - [http://mentalfloss.com/article/67583/12-crispy-facts-
about-p...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/67583/12-crispy-facts-about-
pringles)

~~~
javajosh
And a link in _that_ uses the phrase _surreal bildungsroman_ , which makes me
feel like I've been validated by the New Yorker. :)

[https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sci-fis-
difficul...](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sci-fis-difficult-
genius)

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piokoch
"Peace" is a true masterpiece. When you reach the end, you start thinking what
was this book about. Suddenly you will figure it out and you want to read it
again, armed with this knowledge. And you might need a few iterations before
you will be finally satisfied.

~~~
hmahncke
Obligatory Neil Gaiman quote: "Peace really was a gentle Midwestern memoir the
first time I read it. It only became a horror novel on the second or the third
reading."

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xbryanx
The Fifth Head of Cerberus is such a delight. Made me finally understand the
concept of an unreliable narrator. It made me a better reader and expanded my
attitudes around colonization. It is a great example of how science fiction
can teach us about our modern lives.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> expanded my attitudes around colonization.

It is a remarkable thing that Wolfe, whose views were conservative and who
occasionally voiced suspicion of modern academia with its focus on race and
gender, wrote decades ago a work that really does mesh with modern post-
colonial studies. I keenly recommended _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_ to a
friend of mine who is a scholar in that field, but sadly the robot on the
cover of the Orb Books edition made him assume it was just goofy sci-fi.

------
arkades
His work, which I came across in my early teenage years, was mind expanding. I
am grateful for and to him.

Wolfe was also one of the authors that really made genre fiction academically
respectable, without hiding in shame about what and who he was (cough Atwood
cough). Entire future generations of writers - and students - owe him a thank
you.

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distantaidenn
I can't count the number of times I've re-read The Book of New Sun. Absolute
masterpiece.

Wolfe's books are truly mind altering and forever change the way you think
about science fiction and life in general.

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mcphage
A tremendous loss, his science fiction and fantasy novels are some of the best
out there. Others have mentioned other books of his, but my favorite is still
Book of the Long Sun. Patera Silk is a great character, and The Whorl is a
marvelous setting.

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your-nanny
On Blue's Waters is a masterpiece. The narrative structure is temporally very
complex, but coherent, and alternates between wistful contemplation of the
past by the protagonist (often times about things that have not yet happened
yet), and and an account of that protagonist's search for Silk. On the whole
it is a dream like experience.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
I found the first-person narration of _On Blue’s Waters_ emotionally
devastating. Wolfe endowed that narrator with so much pain, bitterness,
regret, and loss. I got _On Blue’s Waters_ as soon as it came out and was
eager for the following volumes, but I must admit that the rest of that
trilogy really disappointed me, namely: 1) Wolfe’s putting characters’
dialogue in annoying thick dialect of various sorts, 2) mapping the distant
planet’s various cultures to silly ethnic stereotypes of our planet’s
Italians, Indians, and Dutch, and 3) gratuitously bringing the action back to
_The Book of the New Sun_ which didn’t add much to the plot and felt like a
cheap commercial tie-in.

~~~
your-nanny
I agree that the other two were disappointments.

Also when reading on blues waters, I hadn't yet read the previous series. but
the references were made all the more mysterious because of it.

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cnasc
I’m about halfway through rereading The Book of the New Sun, so I’m very sad
to hear this

~~~
himlion
I'm rereading it along with the alzabo soup podcast. I can highly recommend it
if you want to enjoy it thoroughly.

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mhd
Terminus Est.

------
sbmassey
He was the first author I read where I couldn't get away with my typical habit
at-the-time of skimming the boring bits, rather than paying close attention to
the text, and which was interesting enough to warrant reading more carefully.
A great writer. I'll have to pick up what I missed of his work.

------
groovy2shoes

        a woe below woe!
        the sun into darkness was thrown,
        over all a dim shadow had flown,
        and my heart sorrowed deep and alone
        at the foot of that empty throne.
        
        --
        nec novitas solis
        nec figura solis
        gravitatem tuam lucemque effinget.
        volumen necesse non est:
        memoria tua tenemus.
        pius dominus tibi requiem donet.
        die post idus aprilis.

------
borrowedman
Sad to see another of my favorite authors pass away. Those who aren't into
fantasy may enjoy his last novel, _A Borrowed Man_.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Borrowed_Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Borrowed_Man)

RIP

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kej
It gets lost in his other excellent books, but I really liked _Pirate
Freedom_. A guy from the near future finds himself sent back in time to the
golden age of piracy, and Wolfe does a masterful job of tying the plot threads
together at the end.

~~~
jessaustin
I also loved that, and love that it's something I can recommend without
hesitation to readers who aren't ready for his more genre-heavy stuff.

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LgWoodenBadger
I cannot recommend his collections of short stories and novellas enough. I
love his novels, but I love his short stories even more.

Some of them are so well done they still haunt me years after reading.

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sgillen
The book of the new sun is probably my favorite series bar none. Wolfe will be
remembered as one of the greats I think. Very sad to see him go.

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stillbourne
If you want to read a series about a time traveling torturer that becomes king
of the planet earth and replaces the dying sun while raising the dead, eating
the dead, avoiding death, all while working as a carnifex. Then read the Book
of the New Sun and The Urth of the New Sun.

~~~
sgillen
Spoilers!

~~~
stillbourne
Pretty sure that was a vague enough description.

~~~
sgillen
>> that becomes king of the planet earth and replaces the dying sun

