|
Gaius Marius posted:Rereading the tetralogy then Urth then long/short then consulting the analysis and discourse is the best way to understand the whole of the work for yourself without being led down any strange paths. I appreciate this. To be honest, before Citadel of the Autarch, I hadn’t really planned to proceed further in the solar cycle. But I’ve become increasingly interested in learning more about this universe and story. It may have “clicked”. I have had enough questions answered that I’m feeling rewarded, but enough linger that I want to go further. Previously, I’d thought even Wolfe fans felt anything past BOTNS in the solar cycle was inferior to BOTNS. I always hear these books are super rewarding in the rereading. I had thought this only applied to a rereading of BOTNS, that rereading BOTNS alone was sufficient, but it seems like proceeding to read the whole solar cycle will unlock rewards that would pay dividends upon rereading BOTNS. I guess, to sum up, I feel invested enough in BOTNS to want to enjoy the rereading experience with a new lens. Previously, I thought this would just entail two reads of BOTNS in sequence. Concluding citadel, however, I think it’s probably worthwhile to proceed through the whole series, and upon completion of that consider lapping back through BOTNS
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2024 23:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 04:25 |
|
|
Urth rips and is a worthy follower to BOTNS, Wolfe gets to have a lot of fun in it. The first read is certainly very disorienting. Long and Short Sun are both as good as New Sun in their way and very worthy of rereads. The whole cycle is such a unique way of telling a story that has no parallel I can think of in fiction.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2024 02:51
|
|
|
Urth has the obvious problem of explicitly explaining events and mysteries of the main series to a slight detriment. But you already read the first four books and another isn’t a huge hill to climb. It still has a ton of fun and interesting moments for being a work that isn’t very necessary to exist. It’s fun to watch Severian the overconfident doofus figure out how to be a godlike being. The Long Sun series reads and is paced like a really good HBO tv show. I think the ending stumbles but the cast and setting are just fun to follow along with.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2024 03:49
|
|
|
I still chuckle that New Sun and Long Sun are these really intricate explorations of the human experience and consciousness and then Short Sun whips something together with vampires. I love Short Sun.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 01:56
|
|
|
hobbez posted:I appreciate this. Tossed off or seemingly innocuous lines in Long force complete reexaminations of major characters in BOTNS. Thematic reoccurrence forces engament with ideas that many readers felt were solved or complete in BOTNS. Even on a basic level Long Sun is a work determined to invert structures on New Sun. Silk is so completely different from Severian just to start. A man who is desperate to remain chaste, determined to seek peaceful solutions, a leader instead of a loner. And most importantly while Sev tends to see the most surface level details of the people around him, and only after much reflection comes to understand them deeper. Silk desperately wants to see the best in all people, but can see every fault, slips and sin everyone carries with them, including in himself. Severian is a man compelled beyond all good reason and sense to fufil a destiny he doesn't really grasp. Silk is a man given a mission directly from God who struggles constantly with the every temptation on his path, constantly sees others failing or being misled, and is constantly crumbling under the weight of what he believes he must do. His fervor and drive towards his goal is matched only by his desperation for death and relief from duty.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 04:16
|
|
|
Atlas Hugged posted:I still chuckle that New Sun and Long Sun are these really intricate explorations of the human experience and consciousness and then Short Sun whips something together with vampires. I love Short Sun. And like every good Vampire story the problem is really the phantoms and sins lying inside the human psyche being unleashed physically while everyone tries to ignore the truth of the situation The children of smokers are much more inclined to start smoking after all.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 04:18
|
|
|
I think the whole point of the Solar Cycle is a meditation on the nature and relationship of good and evil on the highest, most divine level, as seen from the lowest, most human level. Wolfe correctly diagnoses that evil exists and that the only way to reconcile this that makes sense with the idea of a benevolent God is that all evil is ultimately twisted to serve good purposes. He then explores extremes of this, like New Sun's necessary good act being Severian's execution of the entire Urth to renew it and bring about the Green Man who need not live by predation, or the more obvious Long Sun example of the Plan of Pas serving the Outsider's needs and thus being allowed to succeed, more or less, or Short Sun's inhumi and the way their predatory tendencies are the result of the same tendencies in the humans they prey upon. I think his goal in speculative fiction is to push the envelope and ask himself if these things really can be justified, and if they still allow one to say that God is "good." Where Long/Short Sun I think is at its most interesting is that he then turns it around reflexively to ask what it means, if the world is full of evil being turned slowly toward some eventual promised (but not presently foreseeable) good, to be a "good man." Silk is a man who is in some sense too good, too sensitive, too helpful, too self-sacrificing, yet he goes down paths that would in most other characters be seen as morally compromising and the reader isn't entirely sure if he actually has been compromised by them, or if he is somehow so good that he is capable of weaponizing evil toward good ends in just the same manner as the Outsider. Hoof sums it up in his brief narrative section when thinking about his father: If you're that good, the rules are different, as if one gains the ability to permit and utilize evil means at a certain level of ethical development. But I'm not sure that Wolfe himself believed that; I think we'd be right to question whether that is actually true, and if it isn't, what then of God (and I think this may explain Short Sun's development of the Outsider into a more uncomfortable presence, in spite of the narrator's appeals to him)? I don't know what his answer would have been, but it is a troubling meditation when viewed through a theological lens.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 00:57
|
|
|
I knew from the start how important Borges was to Wolfe, but I didn't know that his final story concerns the process of absorbing the memories of and thereby becoming another person.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2024 11:01
|
|
|
Wrapped Pandora by Holly Hollander. It doesn't have a fantastical setting like New Sun, or rich atmosphere like There Are Doors, but I still liked it. The character voice is very different from Wolfe's other first person narrators like Severian and Abel and Latro. It's a little similar to the guy from Land Across, but demonstrates that the author has a good range.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2024 22:09
|
|
|
I liked The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories, a nice way to start his "best of" collection. Great expression of the role fiction and fantasy play in a child's life.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 14:07
|
|
|
FPyat posted:I liked The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories, a nice way to start his "best of" collection. Great expression of the role fiction and fantasy play in a child's life. It's really good. Wolfe of that era was fully his peak, capping off with New Sun. I like his later work a lot too but he was on something magical then. The collection The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories is unbelievably good, so many amazing stories in it. The title story, The Death of Doctor Island, Alien Stones, Tracking Song, Seven American Nights, and The Toy Theater are all 10/10, some of the greatest stories ever written, and they're all in one collection.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 14:18
|
|
|
it's a shame the doctor of death island is kind of a weak story in comparison because the doctor/death/island triptych is otherwise perfect
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 21:23
|
|
|
The problem with the tripartite doctor stories is that I can never remember which is which.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 21:41
|
|
|
I previously read BOTNS and then went into Long Sun and I don't think I missed too much. I reread BOTNS last year and liked it more and now finishing Urth which is also good but not as good as BOTNS. There is a lot of closure with certain strands but there's less of Severian's gems of wisdom and the first half is more cliffhangery like a dan brown book. The second half (so far) has been more enjoyable.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2024 02:04
|
|
|
SEX HAVER 40000 posted:it's a shame the doctor of death island is kind of a weak story in comparison because the doctor/death/island triptych is otherwise perfect there are four of them, Death of the Island Doctor just isn't in The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2024 14:49
|
|
|
"Hour of Trust"'s vision of a second American civil war is especially chilling today, as its vision of high definition war broadcasts has come true.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2024 07:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 04:25 |
|
|
Working on Castleview now. It feels like a mix of Devil in a Forest (teenage protagonists face a supernatural threat in an isolated community where the authorities are powerless) and Land Across (vampires and general vibe). It's not my favorite so far but I'm interested to see how all the pieces fit together.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2024 00:14
|
|