Book of the New Sun

>that watch
ayyy

it's said that some of the cover art his books got stuck with was nothing less than direct sabatoge

It's pretty cool but also kind of a circle jerk.

The Dark Souls of its time, in a lot of ways.

all the timescape covers and the japanese ones are good at least
fuck you

somebody post the best passage Wolfe has to offer. I'm partially interested in the book of the new sun but I cannot shake the feeling that it's genre trash

stop watching these queer cartoons or you'll end up like this fag:

youtube.com/watch?v=8T2Na5wpksA

How to read Gene Wolfe:

>1) Trust the text implicitly. The answers are in there.

>2) Do not trust the text farther than you can throw it, if that far. It's tricksy and desperate stuff, and it may go off in your hand at any time.

>3) Reread. It's better the second time. It will be even better the third time. And anyway, the books will subtly reshape themselves while you are away from them.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.

>4) There are wolves in there, prowling behind the words. Sometimes they come out in the pages. Sometimes they wait until you close the book. The musky wolf-smell can sometimes be masked by the aromatic scent of rosemary. Understand, these are not today-wolves, slinking grayly in packs through deserted places. These are the dire-wolves of old, huge and solitary wolves that could stand their ground against grizzlies.

>5) Reading Gene Wolfe is dangerous work. It's a knife-throwing act, and like all good knife-throwing acts, you may lose fingers, toes, earlobes or eyes in the process. Gene doesn't mind. Gene is throwing the knives.

>6) Make yourself comfortable. Pour a pot of tea. Hang up a DO NOT DISTURB Sign. Start at Page One.

>7) There are two kinds of clever writer. The ones that point out how clever they are, and the ones who see no need to point out how clever they are. Gene Wolfe is of the second kind, and the intelligence is less important than the tale. He is not smart to make you feel stupid. He is smart to make you smart as well.

>8) He was there. He saw it happen. He knows whose reflection they saw in the mirror that night.

>9) Be willing to learn.

t. Neil Gaiman

I have never seen a more pretentious shill

>Story about the "Chosen One" with a sword exploring his role in the cyclical nature of the universe
>Socially awkward fanbase explores and catalogues the cryptic lore around the main story (pic related)
>Difficult but 'rewarding' learning curve for those willing to take the challenge

I'm sorry, were you just triggered?

>tricksy and desperate stuff
>slinking grayly

Gaiman is such a hack

more like gay man

>im an insufferable faggot and fence sitter, plz spoonfeed me

just skip his fiction and read his essays.

>“There are encounters that change nothing. Urth turns her aged face to the sun and he beams upon her snows; they scintillate and coruscate until each little point of ice hanging from the swelling sides of the towers seems the Claw of the Conciliator, the most precious of gems. Then everyone except the wisest believes that the snow must melt and give way to a protracted summer beyond summer. Nothing of the sort occurs. The paradise endures for a watch or two, then shadows blue as watered milk lengthen on the snow, which shifts and dances under the spur of an east wind. Night comes, and all is at it was. My finding Triskele was like that. I felt that it could have and should have changed everything, but it was only the episode of a few months, and when it was over and he was gone, it was only another winter passed and the Feast of Holy Katharine come again, and nothing had changed. I wish I could tell you how pitiful he looked when I touched him, and how cheerful.

What essays?

>people consider this man's work comparable to shakespeare
lowercase picaro here, not to overstay my welcome, but you genre wolfe fans are plebs of the lowest order. i am so unimpressed at every turn, every reference, every attempt to sanctify and elevate this author, it has become a depressing experience. some of you in your defense of this man are more eloquent than he ever is. good luck to you fools, you low hanging fruit.

Wolfe’s “Solar Cycle” — collectively, the Books of the New, Long, and Short Suns, comprising a dozen books total plus some scattered short stories and novellas here and there — are the greatest epic that genre fiction has produced in the last fifty years at least, and perhaps ever.

This is true literature, accessible at many, many, many levels; I cannot say enough good things about it. It is definitely a masterpiece that rewards rereading, especially close readings.

I know that Martin has publically stated that he wanted to write a long tale that rewarded rereading, and as we all know, he has for the most part succeeded in that. But what Wolfe has done goes so immeasurably far beyond what even Martin as to stun even the jaded with its scope and grandeur. Martin respects Wolfe tremendously, and has said as much. Wolfe also has many essays where he praises Martin’s lesser-known earlier works, which are really quite fine if you can put your hands on them.

Severian’s first-person account in New Sun is, despite his eidetic memory, not to be wholly trusted. He does not so much lie to you as he gets things wrong through misunderstanding them. However, there are also things he quite pointedly does not tell you, things you discover only later, and these of course make you question why he did not tell you those things.

Long Sun is an interesting tale that started off with the premise of showing what it would be like to be a good man in a bad religion. The language here is much easier than in New Sun, and although he continues to avoid inventing new words by drawing upon old ones, the read is much more straightforward in terms of sentence complexity.

You’re right about Short Sun being a mindfuck. Wolfe intentionally obscures who, what, where, how, and why. But the pay-off is a treasure beyond compare. In the final book alone, there are two points in the narrative that I still cannot read without tears of true joy welling up unbidden in my eyes, my hair standing on end and scalp all a-tingle. I have never once had that with Martin, nor do I expect to.

Like many of my most respected authors, I hold Gene Wolfe to be the finest writer than genre fiction has yet to produce, bar none. Read enough of him, and more likely than not, so will you.

Incus was either a tranny or a cross dresser. Hyacinth might also be a tranny, or Silk is shooting blanks.

my favorite Gene Wolfe excerpt:

small gems: rubies, corals, garnets, and pink topaz. Seven pillars on either side bore up the shadowy vault of the roof; the roof-tree and the beams were of gold, curiously carved, the roof itself of mother-of-pearl. A side aisle ran behind each row of pillars, and seven paintings on the western side faced seven spacious windows on the east. At the end of the hall upon a dais stood three high seats, the arms of each composed of two hippogriffs wrought in gold, with wings spread, and the legs of the seats the legs of the hippogriffs; but the body of each high seat was a single jewel of monstrous size: the left-hand seat a black opal, asparkle with steel-blue fire, the next a fire-opal, as it were a burning coal, the third seat an alexandrite, purple like wine by night but deep sea-green by day. Ten more pillars stood in semicircle behind the high seats, bearing up above them and the dais a canopy of gold. The benches that ran from end to end of the lofty chamber were of cedar, inlaid with coral and ivory, and so were the tables that stood before the benches. The floor of the chamber was tessellated, of marble and green tourmaline, and on every square of tourmaline was carven the image of a fish: as the dolphin, the conger, the cat-fish, the salmon, the tunny, the squid, and other wonders of the deep. Hangings of tapestry were behind the high seats, worked with flowers, snake's-head, snapdragon, dragon-mouth, and their kind; and on the dado below the windows were sculptures of birds and beasts and creeping things.

But a great wonder of this chamber, and a marvel to behold, was how the capital of every one of the four-and-twenty pillars was hewn from a single precious stone, carved by the hand of some sculptor of long ago into the living form of a monster: here was a harpy with screaming mouth, so wondrously cut in ochre-tinted jade it was a marvel to hear no scream from her: here in wine-yellow topaz a flying fire-drake: there a cockatrice made of a single ruby: there a star sapphire the colour of moonlight, cut for a cyclops, so that the rays of the star trembled from his single eye: salamanders, mermaids,

I liked his explanation of faster than light travel

faggot

The difference between Souls lorefaggotry and Solar-cycle lorefaggotry is that there's actually a coherent meaning behind absolutely everything in The Book of the New Sun. Dark Souls is a Japanese guy who read Tales of the Dying Earth telling a hundred other Japanese guys to design scenery based on pictures in his head. The weird stuff in Souls is like the weird stuff in Dying Earth, you can try to piece it together but I don't think that that's the point at all, the point is to create a mysterious atmosphere of decay and past glory. Souls lorefaggots are a bunch of autists connecting dots for no reason, Wolfe lorefaggots actually get somewhere.

Depends who the lorefaggot is. Some bad Wolfe theories out there. There's a reason for "borski tier" is actually a precise description.

i wonder how long i will have to watch and wait. don't disappoint me.

Gene Wolfe is problematic tbqh.

>>people consider this man's work comparable to the greek tragedians
>lowercase picaro here, not to overstay my welcome, but you penny dreadful shakespeare fans are plebs of the lowest order. i am so unimpressed at every turn, every reference, every attempt to sanctify and elevate this author, it has become a depressing experience. some of you in your defense of this man are more eloquent than he ever is. good luck to you fools, you low hanging fruit.

Is this from one of the Latro books?

what

That's not Wolfe, that's E. R. Eddison.

can someone tell me what the fuck i'm reading?
>severian goes to a city (the same city as the citadel, only newer and more wealthy?)
>has a gauntlet thrown at him in the form of a seed and is supposed to fight (with flowers? i'm not too worried about this detail since even he doesn't understand it yet)
>meets a wild and crazy waifu
>manic pixie dream girl races into a church
where did the other riders go? did they win the bet?
>the claw of the conciliator disappears because severian must be star-jesus
>they go to a botanical garden made of mirrors
is this literally magical or am i missing some ancient technology here?
>severian is muttering about some weird physics tale from a FOAF while his waifu's titty is hanging out
at this point, i've come home from a long day at work and my brain is fried. i have no idea what father inoue or whatever is talking about
>meet some naked-ass people talking about moses
>then those guys start rambling on about african water sprites, of which they suspect severian and agia of being(?)

i like to think i can follow this text pretty well, but even i am wondering what the point of this is.

Might not seem likely now but literally everything makes sense by the end if you read closely enough. Some answers will come much sooner than others.

Most obvious one though, the Citadel is inside the city, Severian has been inside one enormous city for the entire story. That part isn't meant to be confusing.

i'm at the point where i want to keep reading for the plot's sake, but it's been a long day and i've become a sloppy reader. the best two options would be to either table it until tomorrow (but i'm impatient) or re-read it (but the not-knowing is killing me).

normally, the stuff that goes over my head doesn't bother me because i know i'll understand it if i trust the process. right now, i'm feeling stupid because i missed something. could you at least tell me what thecla's story about her friend meant?

i got the setup with the hall of two mirrors, but i couldn't envision the "imp," nor could i focus on what father so-and-so was saying about the fish.

>i'm at the point where i want to keep reading for the plot's sake
hahaha faggot

let it go over your head and keep reading. Your understanding is supposed to be intentionally spotty. That's why there are made up words that literally cannot understand used in the books.

Anyone who claim they understood everything perfectly on their first read is lying.

Neil Gaiman is literally my least favorite author and is literally a cuck.

I was reading the last book in the series like a month ago but lost it and now I don't know how the series ends.

fuck

Father Inire's mirrors will come up again. It isn't meant to make sense right now. Information is given to you in bits and pieces. By the end of your first read through you won't have it all put together, maybe half or so. If you read to the end and then start again a bit later you'll probably have a much more pleasant time. When you have a foundation of general knowledge provided by a first reading you can devote your attention to spotting more subtle details and filling in gaps that you missed your first time around.

Citadel of the Autarch is easily the best of the four in my opinion. Since the events of it aren't tied directly to the plot of the first three so much as the themes presented across them you don't need to re-read the first three or anything to pick it up again. I'd recommend getting on it soon, it's great stuff. Book of the New Sun probably has the most satisfying ending to any 'epic' piece of genre-fiction ever written.

Citadel of the Autarch > Claw of the Concilliator > Sword of the Lictor >= Shadow of the Torturer

actually, there aren't made-up words; the closest he gets is reviving words with greco-roman roots like frankenstein. knowing both languages helps; i imagine being catholic would help even more.

i know that it will demand another readthrough, i just can't foresee the time for that in the near future. my frustration was being completely unable to picture what father inire was telling the little girl.

>words with greco-roman roots like frankenstein.

:(

The concepts Inire talks about there are fleshed out here and there throughout the story. If you really want to have some kind of understanding by the end of your first read through pay close attention to anything that sounds space related. I won't say who but Inire isn't the only character who understands these concepts.

I really adore Jonas and the friendship he has with Severian.

>reviving ... like frankenstein
i said i was bushed, geez

all i know so far is that vodalus and thecla's sister were using laser guns in the first chapter. i guess the torturer's tower is an old nuclear facility or rocket factory.

which reminds me: what the fuck was the revolutionary thing that killed thecla? is there an analog to our tech, or no? this book is really fun so far, i can't imagine what it's like to read it all.

his name is Miles

>>reviving ... like frankenstein
>i said i was bushed, geez
even though i knew what you meant it was a very reddit usage. vague uses like that imply lack of reading.

As the fanartist said when his deviantart page was discovered.

vague uses like that imply working in a library for 10 hours straight and staring at words until they lose meaning.

also, if i meant what you implied, it would have been written
>words with greco-roman roots, like frankenstein
or
>words with greco-roman roots like "frankenstein"

but by all means, pick on the overexcited amateur who has dwelt in this dank pit of the web longer than castorp or drogo stayed on their respective mountains.

Wolfe is pretty good but fuck Gaiman, I've never seen trash get heaped with praise like him outside of YA authors

>revolutionary
>inflicts a desire in a person's mind to kill themself
no pretty sure there is no analog to our tech

I'm sure I'm ultimately wrong, but I think the Torturer's tower is either a landed spaceship or a spaceship that's never taken off.

Bogpill someone who's never read any Gaiman on why he sucks? I've heard a little bit about Sandman and American gods and they kind of sound like really sincere but amateurish imitations of something Wolfe might do. In one of his notes in 'The Best of Gene Wolfe' Wolfe praises a short story Gaiman wrote but I can't help but think that that may have been an exceptionally good example of his work or Wolfe just being polite since Gaiman is clearly such a huge fan of his.

Is his writing awkward or amateurish? Are his ideas hacky and stupid? I'm inclined to strongly question the abilities of a man who hit it big writing for comic books but I won't dismiss him outright without looking at his work or reading a comprehensive critique.

>Jonas had wrapped the mace in a rag and stood now shifting it from one hand to the other. "That's three questions, and the only one I can answer for certain is the second. I'll guess at the other two, but I'm going to hold you to your promise; this is the last time we're going to speak of these things."
>"The last question first. The old autarchs, who were not autarchs or called so, did use human soldiers. But the warriors they had created by humanizing animals, and perhaps, in secret by bestializing men, were more loyal. They had to be, since the populace- who hated their rulers- hated these inhuman servitors more still. Thus the servitors could be made to endure things that human soldiers would not. That may have been why they were used in the Wall. or there may be some other explanation entirely" Jonas paused and walked to the window, looking not into the streets but up at the clouds. "I don't know whether your man-apes are the same kind of hybrid. The one I saw looked quite human to me except for his pelt, so I would be inclined to agree with you that they are human beings who have undergone some change in their essential nature as result of their life in the mines and their contact with the relics of the city buried there. Urth is very old now. It's very old, and no doubt there have been many treasures hidden in bygone times. Gold and silver do not alter, but their guardians can suffer metamorphoses stranger than those that turn grapes to wine and sand to pearls." I said, "But we outside endure the dark each night, and the treasures carried up from the mines are brought to us. Why haven't we changed too?"

>Jonas did not answer, and I remembered my promise to ask him nothing more. Still, when he turned to face me there was something in his eyes that told me I was being a fool, that we had changed. He turned away again and stared out and up once more.

I like Jonas because he was always so alien and he helps along the alien world building so expertly, with his metal hand and mystery.

>"All right," I conceded, "you don't have to answer that. But what about the other question you pledged yourself to answer? How can human soldiers resist the monsters from the seas?"
>"You were correct when you said Erebus and Abaia are as great as mountains, and I admit that I was surprised you knew it. Most people lack the imagination to conceive of anything so large, and think them no bigger than houses or ships. Their actual size is so great that while they remain on this world they can never leave the water- their own weight would crush them. You mustn't think of them bettering at the Wall with their fists, or tossing boulders about. But by their thoughts they enlist servants, and they fling them against all rules that rival their own."

I've read Gaiman and I posted the Gaiman quote here because I knew it would cause the approximate Veeky Forums equivalent of a shitstorm. Gaiman is just a poor writer, his books are cases where their concept is far beyond the author's ability to service, and their concept isn't so high and mighty either.

Gaiman's writing is VERY awkward and amateurish. In a sense he's the exact opposite of how many Book of the New Sun readers feel about Wolfe. American Gods in particular left me with a particular sense of disaster- like an elementary school kid trying to rush a school project just before the deadline.

Out of curiosity I just looked up some Gaiman stuff. The description that seemed most apt was that he was the epitome of why writing for another medium and then shifting to literature doesn't work.

>vague uses like that imply working in a library for 10 hours straight and staring at words until they lose meaning.
so you go to the library to learn to be dumb? really innovative, you useless faggot.

hi aramini san senpai sensei

I don't know, but it genuinely fascinates me, and though I don't understand a lot of what goes on in Wolfe this is one of the things that truly still perplexes and enervates me.

Or, no, I think I understand what's going on, I just like it, and am deeply moved by it. What on earth it must be like to look in the mirror and see someone who simultaneously is you and isn't. What it must mean to feel you know yourself, but then again to have some other person's knowledge of you as deep and intimate in you as your own self-knowledge, perhaps deeper. To have your selfness, and then someone else's selfness, and they're not even your same gender.

It's quite the trick, and as a writer I'm in awe of Wolfe for seeming to pull it off so effectively.

I never got this sort of feel of the partitioned personality from the book. I liked Ergo Proxy's version more.

Can you direct me to where it's delivered most effectively? It would be an incredible improvement on my understanding of the book.

I felt it most potently in the bits where Severian is confronting Vodalus and Thecla pokes through. Her outrage at Vodalus for betraying her screaming out through Sevarus and becoming his own outrage--it's very impressive.

*Severian

Don't know how I fucked that up.

ROWLING BABBY GET THEE GONE

Not that user, I thought that Sevarus was just a combination of Severian and Vodalus. Only plebs have Harry Potter sitting anywhere near the front of their minds.

Amano has always made sexy work
but this particular pairing of Book of the New Sun + Amano is super effective.

I just woke up with a head cold and the only thing on my mind was this thread an idea

Nolan directs and adapts Book of the New Sun to an HBO-titties quality production with an Amano aesthetic. 1. I think Nolan would bite on this hard, he's obsessed with light/shadow and the Fulligan cloak/daytime stars, the uses of darkness and other visual tricks(Autarch in the painting for example), and all the usage of mirrors and so on would be absolutely irresistible to him. 2. adaptation, the parts where Severian gets reflective and wanders into his memories in the story could be shown in the proper haze of a reflection, while the fact that the book is really Autarch Severian writing it in the House Absolute could be visually shown and used as a narrative voice when necessary. 3. with the proper aesthetic angle, the show will be too flashy for the plebs who've never heard of the book to look away, and then the surface level plot is more than enough to keep them sinking into its madness (meeting Vodalus, Triskele, Thecla's tragedy, Dr. Talos, etc.) so that by the time the plot reaches Severian's mountain journey everyone will be singing pitched praises just like I was at that point in my first read.

I don't think an unreliable 1st person narrator translates well to film.

watch Jacob's ladder

Nolan can't write worth a damn and his direction is only technically fussy, never inspired and his technical aptitude never really rises beyond very competent. He's no master of putting impossible images on screen, he's just got maybe an above average ability to take a picture from his head and put it on screen. He'll get details like lighting right but at the same time he's a man who wrote, storyboarded and filmed '"You're a big guy", "for you"' and saw nothing wrong. He's a glorified studio stooge who should never have received a 100th of the admiration he has. His best movie was The Memento and that was carried by its novel premise (of course Wolfe fans weren't too mindblown, however). All it needed to succeed was competent execution.

If you were to give Nolan Book of the New Sun to get anything good out of it the writing would likely need to be kept entirely out of his hands, but even then his creative sense (or lack of it) would be at the heart of the project and I see that as something to be worked around rather than a strength. When has he ever shown real flair behind a camera and really impressed with filmmaking ability? His Batman movies were boring and rode on hype, his thrillers rode on novelty and Interstellar was well-received purely because audiences by that point had been trained to do so. Interstellar was such a mess of a movie in fact that I'm convinced Nolan will probably never make anything worth seeing again. Christopher Nolan is the king of pseudo-intellectual artists in the movie industry. The mainstream critics hype him up as a visionary behind thoughtful epics but he's never made a truly intelligent piece of work over his whole career and his writing and technical abilities seem to be degrading over time if anything. A Nolan-headed Book of the New Sun would be an absolute disaster.

Anything can translate well to film if the person in charge knows what they're doing and isn't held back by cowards and idiots. John Boorman could probably direct a Book of the New Sun worth seeing, as could Mamoru Oshii. Oshii's 'The Red Spectacles' is probably my favourite example of an unreliable narrative that I've ever seen in a movie. It's all done in a way that's funny, clever and makes perfect sense.

>When has he ever shown real flair behind a camera and really impressed with filmmaking ability?

The Prestige, Inception. Could also work with his brother Jonathan Nolan, who was involved with Memento and The Prestige.

>John Boorman

ah, Zardoz. Now I see you're just trolling me.

Zardoz is considered a great movie by many people, and Boorman doesn't really have any black spots against him throughout his entire career. Deliverance looked nice if nothing else and even The Exorcist 2 has its defenders. And despite the hype Inception was a very boring piece of work. Does anybody still care about it? It made no impression on me at all and I forgot most of it within a couple of days. His career peaked with Memento and that isn't saying too much. It's a solid thriller but nothing beyond that.

>but this particular pairing of Book of the New Sun + Amano is super effective.

That's because Amano's core art is based off the images and imagination invoked by reading The Book of the New Sun.

image is correctly titled

>Amano was deeply influenced by The Book of the New Sun. In the mid-80s, before his work on Vampire Hunter D, Amano did the cover art for the official Japanese editions of all four books in the series. His art is fearful and decaying, just like “The Dying Genre” itself

whoops meant to

>Zardoz is considered a great movie by many people,
to be appreciated ironically

Aramini hasn't been (but will be had not been) in this thread. Wolfe's biggest lapse in judgment is praising Gaiman's writing, even going so far as saying he wouldn't mind Gaiman working with his continuities ... egads.

To me the most simple explanation for that is that Wolfe is simply too nice. Think, have you ever heard Wolfe criticize anybody?

if by "nice" you mean "autistic" or "socially impaired" then sure, he's very nice

Autistic or socially impaired in a nice way. It seems like more typical autist/socially impaired behaviour to just shit on everything all the time. Wolfe seems exceptionally considerate of the feelings of the people around him. He does kind of have that look to him in every photo taken of him after 40. It's bizarre how he went from looking exactly like Christopher Moltesanti to looking exactly like the Pringles Guy.

>The musky wolf-smell can sometimes be masked by the aromatic scent of rosemary.

better make it an anime, give it to urobotcher

was he shirtless the entire series? i think he wore a brown mantle at some points, but even then, no shirt.