| A comic-book series of "The Shadow of the Torturer" has just
started to come out. I picked up the first issue, and it's
beautifully done. Wolfe has script supervision. One of the nice
asides in the novel, though, is ruined when you see it drawn:
"...After I had walked at least a league among these enigmatic
paintings one day, I came upon an old man perched on a high
ladder. I wanted to ask my way, but he seemed so absorbed in his
work that I hesitated to disturb him.
The picture he was cleaning showed an armored figure standing in
a desolate landscape. It had no weapon, but held a staff bearing
a strange, stiff banner. The visor of this figure's helmet was
entirely of gold, without eye slits or ventilation; in its
polished surface the deathly desert could be seen in reflection,
and nothing more."
Overall, though, the comic captures the eerie and archaic flavor
of Severian's dying Earth. I'm glad - I consider "The Book of
the New Sun" to be the best fantasy of the Eighties, and I
wouldn't want it spoiled for new readers.
/jlr
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| Article: 549
From: ansible@cix.compulink.co.uk (David Langford)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: Gene Wolfe review: Nightside the Long Sun, Lake of the Long Sun
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 1994 01:18:53 GMT
Organization: not specified
%A Gene Wolfe
%T Nightside the Long Sun
%I New English Library
%C London
%D 1993
%G 0-450-59405-X
%P 333pp
%S The Book of the Long Sun (alias Starcrosser's Planetfall)
%V Book 1
%O hardback UKP 15.99
%A Gene Wolfe
%T Lake of the Long Sun
%I Tor
%C New York
%D Jan 1994
%G 0-312-85494-3
%P 352pp
%S The Book of the Long Sun (alias Starcrosser's Planetfall)
%V Book 2
%O hardback $22.95
reviewed by Dave Langford
[A version of this review appeared in the British SF Association's
magazine VECTOR.]
One problem with reviewing Gene Wolfe is that often there's so little to
say that isn't trespassing -- peeling away at least some of his veils of
sneakiness and indirection. Another is that with only the first two books
of a new series to hand, critics can confidently expect a gleefully
grinning Wolfe to pull the rug from under any too-rash understanding of
what's going on....
As far as I can see, it is not actually stated anywhere in _Nightside_'s
text that the setting, the `whorl', is a vast generation starship
modelled like a cylindrical space colony (or like Clarke's Rama), with
its artificial `long sun' running down the central axis. Part of this
emerges in the blurb -- which after all has to tell us _something_ -- and
the picture will soon be evident to any sf reader used to picking up on
clues like the skylands visible overhead when the sun is shaded, or the
scavenged building material called shiprock. And does `whorl' hint at
cloud patterns shaped by Coriolis force down the long axial vista? Pay
attention! (I made that tiny speculation before reading _Lake_, which
explicitly gives another though not incompatible origin for the name.)
This new sequence _The Book of the Long Sun_ is set `in the world of _The
Book of the New Sun_' ... but remotely and not near the period we know.
The whorl's launch is ancient history in the _Book_, its presumably
slower-than-light technology long superseded by the mirrors and ships of
the Hierodules. As though in passing, _Lake_ drops the name of the
autarch who once ruled many worlds and ordered the launch of this
`starcrosser': we have met him in _The Sword of the Lictor_ and _The Urth
of the New Sun_, after which his mere name adds a whiff of gigantic
vanity and hubris to the star-voyage. That allusion apart, it is not
necessary to have read the four or five books of the _Book_.
Now, three centuries on, the whorl's launch is forgotten history in this
new series too ... a venerable sf tradition since Heinlein's _Universe_
(though here longer and variously reliable memories are owned by certain
AIs and robots -- called `chemical' beings or `chems', for all that they
appear to be metallic and nuclear-powered). Equipment is dying with age.
Dwindling stocks of old-technology slug-guns, `floater' hovercars and
videophones coexist with swords, pack animals, labour-intensive farming.
The gods -- whose nature is best indicated by the fact of their heaven
being called Mainframe -- appear only very rarely at the windows of the
electronic altars. The whorl is already old.
Perhaps necessarily, the setting doesn't at first seem as deep and
wondrous as Urth in the _Book_. But this is Wolfe, and things are subtler
than the easy sf summation above. When the new books' hero Patera Silk,
teacher and priest, is touched by a god, it is not one of the nine chief
gods of Mainframe who gives him enlightenment and purpose, but the
shadowy (though known and accepted) Outsider. There is mystery here, and
probably Mystery ... we are given to understand that the Outsider is the
only god whose dominion and creation extend outside the whorl; and that
once, incarnated, he may have driven merchants from a temple. Is it
significant that for a little while before violence intervenes in the
final chapter of _Lake_, Silk finds himself heading for acclaim in his
home city and about to enter it on a donkey?
Silk is a new and likeable variant of the Wolfe hero, seen from outside
in third-person rather than first-person narrative (cf. Severian, Latro)
for a change. He's truly devout and even celibate despite some severe
temptations so far ... yet ready to turn his hand to burglary _ad majorem
deorum gloriam_ when his church and school are sold off to pay taxes.
Silk's bravura attempt to steal them back forms the centrepiece of
_Nightside_. The whorl's nightside refers to its criminal underworld as
well as the darkness under the long sun's revolving shade, and there's
some nice thieves' cant to go with this: as expected from this author,
the more esoteric terms like `dimber' (meaning approximately `nifty') can
be traced to authentic English historical slang. In the cant, to burgle a
residence is -- precisely but euphemistically -- to `solve' it.
So we shortly find the young, bright, resourceful and entirely
inexperienced Silk solving a crime-lord's mansion which is surrounded by
high, spiked walls and guarded by a monstrous, tracked killer robot
(`talus'), oversized lynxes and birds, novel weapons, etc. People have
banged on so much about Wolfe's elusiveness, his games of indirection,
that it's worth noting how frequent, well-crafted and straightforward are
the passages of high adventure or suspense.
Our hero is also capable of solving problems in the detective sense, like
Father Brown. (Little ratiocinative treats keep recurring in this
author's work: remember the lochage in _The Shadow of the Torturer_ who
deduces Severian to be no impostor but a genuine torturer, without
hearing him speak or looking up from his desk?) Later in _Nightside_ Silk
unravels a murder in a brothel, uses knowledge painfully gleaned from his
earlier adventures to tackle a case of almost literal demonic possession,
conducts a ritual cleansing and exorcism, and is rewarded by a numinous
encounter with one of the lesser Mainframe goddesses.
All these strange activities appear to be having a catalytic effect on
Silk's home city of Viron, one of very many city-states in the whorl,
whose democratic Charter has long been suspended along with the office of
president or `calde' [acute accent on the e]. Instead, a bunch of
evidently corrupt councillors (the Ayuntamiento) has held on to power for
a period which seems not merely illegal but impossible. There are
whispers in the streets, and by the end of _Nightside_ the words _Silk
for Calde_ are appearing scrawled on walls....
_Lake of the Long Sun_ illuminates much of what has gone before, with the
new light casting longer and darker shadows. Further theophanies occur.
This time Silk's journey to the underworld is literal: searching for the
secret meeting-place of the Ayuntamiento, he finds himself ensnared and
lost in endless tunnels within the skin of the whorl, down where it's
colder and closer to space. Here we find the chem soldiers who were
placed to defend each city against the others, most `asleep', those on
guard worrying that after three centuries the defence plans may no longer
suffice: more wheels within wheels.
The underworld also contain humans in biological stasis. Devotees of the
_Book_ will wonder if it's important that Silk, already lame like
Severian, helps call a `dead' woman from the deeps of time as Severian
did.... Other mysteries and wonders abound, including a window through
which Silk at last sees stars and one brief dazzling glimpse of what must
surely be, for him and all the whorl's passengers, the New Sun. There are
confrontations with members of the Ayuntamiento. We have seemingly come
to the brink of revolution and war, with portions of Viron's above-ground
human army -- prodded in some cases by the electronic goddess who most
favours Silk -- hailing him as leader. The next book is to be called
_Calde of the Long Sun_.
I haven't even mentioned the still unexplained case of apparent
vampirism, the secular rationale for possession by gods, the
too-obvious-to-see system of naming which is demurely revealed in a
glossary at the beginning of _Lake_, the talking night-chough, the thief,
whore and other-city spy who variously befriend Silk, the highly-charged
dreams and prophecies, the flying men who glide watchfully far above the
action (and the subplot about hawking for one with an eagle), the
submarine in Lake Limna, the careful delineation of the three females who
run the church school with Silk (one human, one chem, one half-and-half),
the ultra-black joke when one of those `corrupt' councillors proves to be
_literally_ so, the inevitable discovery that the tokens used as coins in
the whorl are not coins, and much more. These books read so very smoothly
that one feels a distinct jolt on looking back to realize how thoroughly
crammed they are with colourful invention and incident.
Wolfe's prose remains fine and precise. There's a temptation to remark
that it contains fewer of the deep notes, the magical resonances and
ironies that throb through the original _Book_ ... but many of those
moments of the _Book_ went unrecognized or half-understood until the
entire work was available for rereading as a whole. _The Book of the Long
Sun_ remains maddeningly incomplete.
So far: vintage Wolfe, indeed. His hand has not lost its cunning. Be sure
to buy the whole series.
[Ends]
David Langford
ansible@cix.compulink.co.uk
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