r/genewolfe

^ BOTNS - Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe. Possible spoilers ahead.

Hello, first time reader halfway through Shadow of the Torturer. I was drawn to this series through a recommendation on the sub singing its praise.

Initial thoughts so far are: it’s been a deceptively straightforward story and beautifully written. It presents to us a world as seen through the subjective lens of the narrator, and there definitely is depth to it, though I can’t lay my finger on it yet. I enjoy how Wolfe conveys to the reader nuggets of the world’s rich lore through brief descriptions, passing mentions, and never gives away too much. There are gaps, it’s not a 1:1 retelling, not everything is said and I very much enjoy that.

So far it very much feels like it’s setting up a lot of things, which brings me to my point:

Going in I knew that this series takes on pretty epic proportions (as Severian himself alludes to), the narrator is deemed unreliable, there’s many ways one can interpret it and, most importantly, it awards rereads. Things happen down the line that change everything - I am curious what other readers found that point to be?

This is not intended as a “should I keep reading” post, I simply browsed a bit about what people said, and a lot of it has been vague. I’m not asking for straight up spoilers, but I’m curious what book introduces (or begins to introduce) us to more information which allows reinterpretation of the previous events. Is the discussion around it connected to direct revelations within the series, or is a lot of it generated by readers in hindsight?

I just finished reading tbons and loved it but have so many questions.
On the flier malrubius gives severain a challenge. If he succeeds the sun will be reborn and if he fails his manhood will be removed. Later in the chapter ‘the keys to the universe’ severain tells us about how mankind made perfect beings who went to yesod. Yesod, being the level above our reality in the Kabbalah, is symbolic of the penis, jizzing energy into our plane of existence- malkuth.
If Wolfe saying that if severain fails we will be cut off from higher planes of existence metaphorically?

I haven’t read new urth yet so please don’t ruin it if it’s explained there. I just feel like Wolfe has explained everything in the four books alone.

I just don’t get it.

Particularly this passage -

'At one point, only slightly less than halfway down, the line of the fault had coincided with the tiled wall of some great building, so that the windy path I trod slashed across it. What the design was those tiles traced, I never knew; as I descended the cliff I was too near to see it, and when I reached the base at last it was too high for me to discern, lost in the shifting mists of the falling river. Yet as I walked, I saw it as an insect may be said to see the face in a portrait over whose surface it creeps. The tiles were of many shapes, though they fit together so closely, and at first I thought them representations of birds, lizards, fish and suchlike creatures, all interlocked in the grip of life. Now I feel that this was not so, that they were instead the shapes of a geometry I failed to comprehend, diagrams so complex that the living forms seemed to appear in them as the forms of actual animals appear from the intricate geometries of complex molecules. However that might be, these forms seemed to have little connection with the picture or design. Lines of color crossed them, and though they must have been fired into the substance of the tiles in eons past, they were so willful and bright that they might have been laid on only a moment before by some titanic artist's brush. The shades most used were beryl and white, but though I stopped several times and strove to understand what might be depicted there (whether it was writing, or a face, or perhaps a mere decorative design of lines and angles, or a pattern of intertwined verdure) I could not; and perhaps it was each of those, or none, depending on the position from which it was seen and the predisposition the viewer brought to it. Once this enigmatic wall was passed, the way down grew easier. It was never necessary again for me to climb down a sheer drop, and though there were several more flights of steps, they were not so steep or so narrow as before. I reached the bottom before I expected it, and looked up at the path down which I had traveled with as much wonder as if I had never set foot on it— indeed, I could see several points at which it appeared to have been broken by the spalling away of sections of the cliff, so that it seemed impassable.'

Is this something adjacent to the moon portrait in the picture-cleaner? Can I figure it out or do I need further context? This is where I've read up to but I'm very interested, it's such a curious page.

In my other post today, impressions on finishing a reread of The Urth of the New Sun, I bemoaned the disappearance of Eata from the story. He doesn’t get to be in the Pantheon even though, out of all the survivors on his boat, Eata kicks the most ass. I was genuinely puzzled by his fate, and a little miffed at Severian for not wondering about it himself. To be fair, Sev has gone through some things and has a lot to absorb. But thanks to u/meshuggainmissoula, I think I get it now. He said, “I assume Eata died of old age in the village.”

And of course Eata did. He’s the only one of the four Severian left behind who survived. Why did I assume that the three, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, palace fops outlived the guy who knows how to sail the boat, is used to living in rough country and has worked with his hands for a living? God love ‘em, the poor saps would’ve fallen overboard or stepped into a crevasse or eaten some bad fish pdq—probably before even meeting the settlers. Eata’s very absence from the mythology is the key to what really happened. Severian assumed his priest knew so much about him because Odilo had been listening the night Severian told Eata the whole story. In fact, the villagers got Severian’s story from Eata himself. And he spun out the rest of the mythos to cement his place with the newcomers, in a parallel with Severian’s speeches in the Stone Town. But Eata didn’t have to deal with a language barrier, and being a practical man, knew not to paint himself into the divine picture. That’s how you end up strangled and mummified in your own house. (We’re given no evidence Eata was ever much of a reader, but maybe Master Ultan had a copy of The Golden Bough on a shelf somewhere and Eata came across it on an errand!) Eata carefully edited himself out of even being remembered as a prophet—he’d been in enough scrapes to know how to disappear from places or stories.

This explains another thing that puzzled me too: why are three of the bowers together, but the Sleeper’s is way off in the opposite direction from town? And the Sleeper is the greatest of the gods. Do we really think Odilo or Thais would tell it that way? Of course not. But Eata would. To Eata, Severian was forever the cool upper-classmate. The other three would be lumped together, though top of mind when he had to spin out some kind of explanation to the newcomers. Even though he and the other three were from different social worlds, he probably missed them once they were gone. They were his last link with the world he knew. And really, Odilo’s raft was kind of clever kitbashing, and the other two seem to have helped. He must have been lonely. So given the choice between the truth and the legend, he printed the legend.

(Someone else suggested that maybe “Severian” in Urth is really Eata and just thinks or pretends he’s Severian, kind of like in that later series other people seem to like. I don’t think this can be true for a combination of Watsonian and Doylist reasons. A manuscript gets produced. A damned long one! That’s a lot of work. We know Severian is a scribbler. Eata gives no sign of being a reader or a writer. Then too, I can’t see how the story of the New Sun is made any better, richer or more meaningful by that kind of fake-out. Especially one that’s not signposted and goes unnoticed for decades. At least in that later trilogy, the identity confusion is made explicit at the end.)

(No, Eata didn’t murder the other three. He is my unproblematic fave and how dare you. And for real, his criminal record shows smuggling but not homicide, and as a practical sort he’d know that four people have a better chance of survival than one person.)

I just finished it this morning, after reading the whole Severian saga straight through from Shadow over the last couple of weeks. In no particular order:

I am pro the “coda.” Yes, it mostly works out the details of what Doctor Talos’s play prefigures, but that’s important imo. We need to have our faces rubbed in the atrocity attending Urth’s “salvation,” and in Severian’s feelings of wonder and despair.

At the very end, are we to take the three bowers on the far hill as empty since Severian doesn’t mention any bodies, living, dead or ethereal, or should we take that as Wolfe’s deliberate ambiguity? I tend to think the former, for structural and diegetic reasons. While Severian chooses to end his narrative with the site of the bowers, we know he continued on to write up his story, which means he surely had determined for sure whether they were empty. His own bower had been empty until he reappeared from the Corridors of Time. And we know Severian is an Aquastor, but it’s hard to see Odilo, Pega and Thais having made enough of an impression to get “Aquastored” themselves.

Of course, maybe Severian isn’t there either. Except we have his second manuscript, so.

I’d have fought with the Sailors. I don’t think I gave it much thought prior to this reread, and the fact that this reread coincides with a techbro plutocracy that would celebrate a future in which almost everyone dies except for themselves may influence my loyalties. As the cliché says, “Those people had families.”

Theologically, “saving the world” meaning saving the real estate is interesting. Wolfe’s statement that he envisioned the New Sun saga taking place in a universe-cycle prior to our own provides important context. But I don’t understand all the implications yet. From what we can tell, Commonwealth soteriology contemplates only the collective salvation of the New Sun. Ideas of personal salvation don’t seem to come up? I don’t know what that means either.

Maybe one thing the New Sun books are is an allegory of the cost and cataclysm of personal salvation as figured in the calamity and renewal of Urth/Ushas. Urth has to die to itself etc. Maybe?

Poor Eata! Something happens that keeps him out of the Ushas pantheon. He dies getting the others to shore and they never bring him up again, or worse, he lives but makes no particular impression. The latter seems hard to credit: Eata is cool as shit!

The other three were each pretty self-absorbed in life. You could kind of see them not bringing Eata up. But they do talk up Severian. And one of the Sleeper’s domains—fish and fishing—could very easily have been ascribed to Eata. It’s suspicious I tell you.

Speaking of self-absorbed, the awakened Severian doesn’t wonder after Eata’s absence from the pantheon, but he’s been through a lot, so I can give him a pass here.

Speaking of Severian, he really is much less of a dick in Urth, and becomes even less of one in the course of the book. Personal growth, we love to see it.

https://preview.redd.it/8zry8fsuj9bh1.jpg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8342141a3093fe31b987ab52b919c90f83038ac5

Excited to read. My first time

First read of BOTNS and just got past this part but I feel I don't fully understand it (just like the other mythological stories or play in the first two). I find the mythology still difficult to grasp but the story intrigued me. But I felt I didn't quite fully understand it due to how it was described. Was hoping someone might be able to give me context.

I seemed to get the part that humans gave up their humanity to reach the stars and the machines they built had started to resent them and wanted to get revenge. And I'm assuming when she mentions the cities that are the "skeletons of dragons" or "like the banks of cloud before storms" it refers to cities reverting from advanced machine/tech cities to the gothic/medieval fantasy ones of current day.

I also know its possible this story is all BS but was hoping someone can maybe fill in the fuzzy parts for me with the machines and their revenge. I had gemini give me a synopsis and i have no idea how it was able to get all that from the text i read, so i believe it's wrong.

Please no spoilers if possible. I've just got to the part where he escapes Thrax

Hello, I am planning to read BOTNS but I have heard that it’s notoriously difficult to understand. My goal is to understand the series both as a fantasy story and as a philosophical text. How can I do this? Are there any guides or analysis papers online? I would ideally like to avoid rereads due to time.

After reading and loving New Sun 2-3 times through I am reading Long Sun and honestly I disliked most of it. There were enjoyable things for sure- Concepts like the enzyme trade, the chems, the gods, the spool sun of the Whorl. The scene with Crane and Silk where Lemur is showing off his superhuman body and discovering that his original body had died was probably my favorite part of the whole series. 

There are also beautiful details that have nothing to do with fantasy at all:  Silk saying he didn’t cry at his mother’s death until he heard the song of the wind-up dancer toy she bought him as a child because to the toy, no time had passed. 

But overall, it was too many excruciating conversations that never address the most interesting things I want to hear about. There are some things that get referenced later that I feel like I must have blacked out from boredom and missed. 

So please help me out! But also, no Short Sun spoilers! Do I need to read the Short Sun before I start asking these questions? If these get developed further in Short Sun, just tell me to keep reading.

1. Remora is speaking of lost embryos, there is some “chosen one” superhuman child. Gulo thinks it’s Chenille but this is Mucor, right? Because she has strange powers?

2. Exodus, page 248: Why does Wolfe/Horn suddenly use first person here?

“No.” Silk paused, listening to the sounds of hurrying feet in the foyer. “We haven’t time. I accept. We surrender. We can discuss terms when we have more leisure. That was why I hoped you’d remain, Councillor. It would have facilitated—”

At that moment I burst into the room. “They’re coming, Caldé, like you said. A couple of hundred, some on horses.”

“Thank you, Horn.” Silk smiled sadly. “They’ll knock, I believe—at least I hope they will. If they do, delay them as long as you can, please.”

Is that a mistake, like Wolfe was combining two different drafts and the editor missed it? This is bizarre because I had accidentally read a spoiler that Long Sun had a narrator but didn’t know it was Horn. At the end of the book it’s obvious but at this point it just seems like an accident. OR, is it “Horn’s accident” intentionally written by Wolfe? The problem I have if that were the case, is that this doesn’t feel like a book written by Horn, it feels like a Wolfe book. More on that later.

3. The mystery of the Outsider - What ever came of this? I was expecting it to be Severian or Father Inire or even Yahweh or some other big reveal but it felt like we just forgot about the Outsider by the end.

4. Why is Typhon in this book as Pas? It felt like there was no point to that. “We have to find all the pieces of Pas” - What happened with this? Did they ever put him together?

5. Silk is suddenly saying he’s suicidal but I don’t think there’s any sign that he is? He’s was previously having boring conversations and thinking how the military must hang flags off the airship and then Horn thinks there’s something wrong. So if Horn is writing the book and thinks Silk is suicidal, why is he writing Silk’s inner monologue just thinking about flags? It kind of feels more like Wolfe is forgetting that Horn is the in-book narrator, or he added that as an afterthought. This goes back to my point 2, like Wolfe maybe wrote multiple versions of the story and got mixed up while combining them together.

6. Wedding and Second Enlightenment. At some point Silk says “the Outsider confided on my wedding night. You see, Horn, I was enlightened again then. Nothing I learned at the schola had prepared me for the possibility of multiple enlightenments, but clearly they can and do take place.”

When did any of this happen? I don’t even think his wedding night was included. They talk about getting married and then they’re asleep and already married. I don’t think there’s any mention of enlightenment.

7. Exodus- I kept reading this chapter over and over but I’m not getting it. They’re in the airship and then there is a glass with a ‘sensual face’- Who is this? It doesn't seem like the same computer face that's usually in the glass. “You can BE Pas” What? Who says this and why would Silk become Pas? Then they are all suddenly floating and there is a voice that seems like it belongs to Tartaros? And then they are seeing the Whorl from outside like they are in space? But are they still in the airship and this is just a hallucination or something in the glass? 

8. How did Auk get in a lander? Wasn’t he in the airship with everyone else?

9. They also keep referencing that they were talking to dead people but when did this happen? Was it left out?

So, “the alzabo WHO ate its mom” or “the alzabo THAT ate its mom?” The answer turns on the personhood, or lack thereof, of the alzabo, right?

So it's not really debatable that the realms lower than Able are clearly supposed to represent hell and demons, right? Through the entire story he's dealing with the temptation of his two sexy Aelf minions, are they supposed to represent temptation or something and getting in the way of his true purpose which was Disiri?

>"Hardly. But Wonders of Urth and Sky was a standard work, three or four hundred years ago. It relates most of the familiar legends of ancient times. To me the most interesting is that of the Historians, which tells of a time in which every legend could be traced to half-forgotten fact. You see the paradox, I assume. Did that legend itself exist at that time? And if not, how came it into existence?"

This is not a paradox at all. There could simply have been a time where this legend

"Legend of the Historians", where every legend could be traced to a half forgotten fact

was a fact

and now that it's been a long time, this itself has became a legend

there is no paradox here, wolfe put words into the text without thinking

Apologies if this was addressed in the book, and I don't remember it.

The Autarch makes a pretty persuasive case for himself and his actions in Citadel, and I can see why Severian loved him as he ate the Autarch's brain. Yet, why did the Autarch allow the Antechamber to exist in perpetuity? Did all of his personalities forget it was there? Seems like a pretty crummy thing to let happen to people if you know it exists.

Extracting material from Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun: A Chapter Guide (2019), putting it into dictionary form, the following:

 

Theologoumenon (II, chap. 10, 85). In what amounts to an unremarked “Temptation,” Severian offers the Claw of the Conciliator to Vodalus. Vodalus proves to be afraid of the Claw, saying, “If I were to possess it, they [the rabble] would think me a desecrator and an enemy of the Theologoumenon. Our masters would think me turned traitor” (85). In this, Vodalus seems to be using the term as a synonym for the Conciliator himself.

 

Bible: A “theologoumenon” is a theological statement or concept that lacks absolute doctrinal authority. The Catholic idea of Limbo is an example, once a widespread concept now generally abandoned. So one reading has Vodalus saying that the belief in the Conciliator is a popular yet baseless religion.

(Yet applying the term to an individual or a relic seems to be unusual.)

 

The term shows up two more times in Severian's narrative.

 

(III, chap. 28) “The columns of the carapace would then be the armies of the Theologoumenon, terrible and gleaming...” This line provides some triangulation, in that Severian uses the term, so it is not limited to Vodalus and his particular bundle of positions.

 

(IV, chap. 14) “I came forward and knelt before it. I needed no scholar to tell me the Theologoumenon was no nearer now. Yet he seemed nearer...” This line further reinforces that the term is about the person of the Conciliator himself, rather than being about casting doubt upon the relic, or something else like that.

 

I should amend the “one reading” line above into “So one reading has Vodalus saying that the belief in the Conciliator is a popular religion not directly supported by scripture,” since, as I understand it, “theologoumenon” is about pious belief or individual opinion that cannot be substantiated. My using the word “baseless” makes it seem as though theologoumenon is only applied to discarded or discredited ideas. I only used the case of “Limbo” above to avoid sensitivities to more active theologoumenons such as the virginity of Mary, or the necessity that the messiah had to be born in Bethlehem.

 

This being Wolfe, it is possible that he is using the term in its original Greek meaning as “that which is said about God,” but this seems even more difficult when applied to a person.

These books are amazing. I think what Wolfe really does well is showing how knowledge and history morph as future generations start to comprehend them less and less. For instance, I was completely blown away when reading “The Tale of the Boy Called Frog” chapter and realized it was a retelling of the Jungle Book.
I also loved the moment in Sword of the Lictor when Severian is stargazing in the mountains and describes how he feels like he could fall into the void of space. In the same chapter he also talks about how the forests of the moon were planted in the earliest days of man. This detail and the reveal that tectonic activity and volcanism have stopped do a good job at showing just how far into the future this story takes place. All that being said I’m very curious as to what moments or chapters really stood out to you guys.

I’ve been reading through the Solar Cycle and enjoying it a lot, but whenever there’s even a small amount of action I feel like I completely lose track of what’s going on. I’m in the early parts of Calde of the Long Sun now and for the life of me I could not tell you what happened on the back of that Talus. When did they get off, when did it die? All of a sudden Chenille doesn’t know Auk? I feel like I can understand a lot of what’s happening in these books but as soon as someone moves faster than a slow jog I get confused. Am I nuts? I have always had trouble with action sequences in books, but this is another level.

I enjoyed the solar cycle as kind of fun puzzleboxes, but I love latro so much more.

He's a much more likeable character than Severian, there are a lot more moving depictions of friendship (Seven Lions is the fuckin man), love, and loss throughout. There are still the Wolfe staple mysteries and unreliable narrator fun and things to think deeply on and catch on rereads, but it's not a 50 layers deep meta game that requires 80 reads and hours of research online to begin to unpack.

The memory piece is much more integral to the plot than Severian's perfect memory (which is usually 'hahaha he's lying here', or 'this omission reveals something about his feelings or what he wants to portray').