Lex Talionis posted:

I just want to express the view that In Green's Jungles is just amazing and for me justifies a lot of the sloggy parts of later Long Sun and OBW. Unfortunately I didn't like the last book nearly as much but not in a way that invalidates what came before.

The_Rob posted:

I decided to start reading Book of the new sun after having Shadow and Claw on my bookshelf for a while now and I’m kicking myself for not having read this sooner. I’m not sure what it is but it’s dragged me in insanely fast. I keep reading how difficult it is but everything moves at a very fast understandable pace. The more obscure words I feel like I can pick up context clues and figure them out. I’m super excited to really dig into it more though.

Ogmius815 posted:

But Apu-Panchau is dead and has been for a long time. In this chapter the characters interact with him by somehow warping space time (which the seer tells us is eternal). But if time is eternal (i.e. unchanging and permanent) surely the past can’t actually CHANGE.

Levitate posted:

To be honest I"m not good with all of the crazy details of BotNS but I don't think this point is correct. Think about Severian "nearly drowning" near the beginning, or "miraculously" surviving the avern duel. I think there's more to it later so I'm trying not to spoil things (and I might even be remembering them wrong anyways).

This also has implications regarding Apu-Panchau though I'm not sure if that becomes clear until Urth of the New Sun

Old Swerdlow posted:

A lot of the fan-service part really hampered my enjoyment of the series and kind of retroactively made previous parts of the series worse through unnecessary explanations.

mellonbread posted:

This is the one thing you've said that I completely agree with. Going back in time and meeting Severian was dumb as hell and added nothing to the story.

Old Swerdlow posted:

You got the jist of it! I don’t have all the details in my head anymore and there isn’t much to expand upon other than to just suggest keep on reading!

I also just finished Short Sun earlier this week and I am glad to put that behind me. A lot of the fan-service part really hampered my enjoyment of the series and kind of retroactively made previous parts of the series worse through unnecessary explanations. I think the previous two series also tackle a lot of similar themes much better and present them in a more exciting and engaging structure. Horn is just an absolutely nothing of a character and there was no fun interplay like with Severian/Thecla or Marble/Rose. Horn’s side seems to only provide constant repetition of who his family is, his task and that he wrote a book about Silk. Silk’s denial of his situation just gets so tiresome over the course of three books; I think it worked best at the section with the war at Blanko.

I’m pretty negative on the Short Sun series as a whole but I’m still digesting it so I don’t have many fully formed thoughts yet.

Hammer Bro. posted:

Do keep posting

That was one of the first Wolfe books that really clicked with me, and I find it wildly sentimental.

Gaius Marius posted:

It is if The Whorl is Yesod.

quote:

I have yet to be convinced of the whole urth equals blue lune equals green yesod equals whorl deal. And to be honest even if it's true it doesn't change how I feel about it. That revelation could have been delivered any number of ways besides bringing back the protagonist from New Sun for a cameo.

Old Swerdlow posted:

I found in my reading that is was fairly obvious Green is Urth; and I don’t mean it in a condescending way. The first point is that Gene is obviously going to subvert green = lune, Urth was flooded so = blue.; he loves to be a trickster and the Solar Cycle books have him constantly subvert our expectations. I viewed Blue as hell and Green as heaven (even if it suck there too!; but that’s just because the inhumu are a reflection of mankind) The more evidence based part is that Horn/Silk constantly compares the inhumu city to the red whorl city. Lastly, the Neighbors literally get Horn to recreate Sevarian’s New Sun arrival by having him trudge into the sewers and hack away at a giant mass of bodies to release a flood to clean everything up.

Sorry if this comes off as snarky or condescending, no ill will or anything of that intended!

mellonbread posted:

You're absolutely correct that there are obvious thematic parallels, but I don't consider that proof that they're literally the same location.

Appoda posted:

It's why the Gene Wolfe:Dark Souls comparison is so apt.

Can you just read the books/play the games as a gloomy weirdo with a sword? yep

Is there substantial worldbuilding/storytelling in the understated details? probably

Is it some perfectly tuned clockwork piece of machinery where every question has an answer? probably not

Is there a hardcore subset of the fan base who are dedicated to canonizing as much of their fanfiction and speculation as possible? definitely


Speaking of, I just finished Nightside and Lake of the Long Sun. Quite different from BOTNS -- not so much of the prose and worldbuilding, feels much more like a "normal" pair of novels, though the latter is certainly getting more into the meat and potatoes. The plot of Nightside was surprisingly straightforward; Silk's gotta save the community center, and we're going to be with him for every fried green tomato-eating moment of it. It's almost disarming when we get to the "...and then Silk rolled a bunch of random events" portion of his adventure in Lake that kind of starts for Sevarian as soon as he's out of torture school.

The scifi-fantasy stuff so far isn't as interesting to me as it was in BOTNS; seems like Gene spends a long time describing how a gun shoots spinny needles, or a hover car hovers. Not quite as succinct and memorable as stuff like the avern or the wall of nessus. The bestiary is lacking compared to New Sun too, but that's a tough one to beat. The talking bird is fun at least. And I like Silk, who in spite of having what I'd consider an unrealistic level of devotion (and is sometimes treated as such), is so much more approachable as a character than Sevarian, who was always a dark little weirdo with a personality that's hard to extricate from the present moment, his future self writing, eating brains, his "memory", the "first Sevarian" stuff, etc. Also fun contrast in how Sev fucks every woman he meets, while Silk gets mad pussy laid at his feet and is nothing but mortified every time a girl so much as looks at him.

In short, I'm having a good time. I've heard the next two are on the slower end, so I'm thinking about putting them on audio and listening to the rest at work. Heard good things about Short Sun, looking forward to that one. After that, I'll probably dig into Gene's earlier catalogue; still haven't read Fifth Head, in spite of starting it 3-4 times.

Gaius Marius posted:

I swear there is a part in Urth where someone in Typhon's camp outright states that he built a fleet and sent it out to return and reconquer Urth as a backup plan, but I cannot find it with a simple text search, one of the few drawbacks of the baroque vocabulary used.

Pistol_Pete posted:

I've mostly have no idea what's going on in Wolfe novels, 'cos I'm dumb (and a lazy reader): I'm just along for the ride. I don't know how you guys come up with all this stuff like: "Obviously Corrian's digressionary journey through the shifting city echos the arc in the previous book where that protagonist (who may or may not be related to Corrian) lost his powerful faith and wandered helplessly for a time. It also contains clear references to the parable of the Prodigal Son, in that yadda yadda yadda."

And I'm all: "The main dude just chopped that bad guy with his sword: cool! And now he's following a mysterious cloaked figure into a cave for some reason. Perhaps there's treasure in there!"

Gaius Marius posted:

I swear there is a part in Urth where someone in Typhon's camp outright states that he built a fleet and sent it out to return and reconquer Urth as a backup plan, but I cannot find it with a simple text search, one of the few drawbacks of the baroque vocabulary used. Regardless It fits with his character the man is completely obsessed with his material form achieving immortality, in contrast to his clone Silk who desperately wants to end himself because the fragile emotional state he is in nearly constantly being torn between his duty and his feelings, not knowing if the gods he worships are real gods, or even worthy of respect, and finding that he can't tell how much of his life was of his own volition, based on his genetic disposition as the heir of Pas, or part of the Outsider's grander plan. Imagine falling totally and completely in love with a woman, someone you'd throw away every precept of your upbringing for, and at the back of your mind knowing that some/all of it must be because you were designed to fall for her because she is possessed by your Father/Genetic Twins favorite mistress. If we take Typhon and Silk and treat them as the same character, you can see that the reason Typhon acts as he does is a fear of being dominated himself leads him to dominate others, it is a response built out of fear, Silk himself cannot seem to walk his own path even when he tries and he himself is scared of the latent impulse to destroy and dominate that comes out in him when he is cornered or forced to act.

One of the greater themes in the whole of the Solar Cycle is that there is no distinction between Grand Events and Inconsequential Events, it's a series where time is malleable and traversable, entire universe cycles occur, and seemingly Godlike beings are a regular feature, and yet a man slipping a knife under a door, curing a diseased child, teaching a young pupil, or giving permission for an alien species to join the world are crucial events. Typhon tried to hijack religion of the Whorl, and shaped Silk as a perfect avatar of himself with the ability to be enlightened preprogrammed into his brain, Pas in turn is hijacked by the Outsider to bring the conclusion to the Whorl project implemented by Typhon and advance the grander cycle once again. For Wolfe evil always serves good in the end, and the ending of the Solar Cycle is the grandest statement of it. The Lucifer figure of Typhon is finally redeemed in Silk who is merged with Horn and has a fragment of the Neighbor in him, these finally balance Silk and allow him to live in the world instead of just outside of it, it fulfills Horns goal of becoming Silk like just as Silk becomes more like Horn, and it fulfills the final goal of the Neighbor who sends Horn's spirit back to the Whorl and revives the three of them inside Silk who's just slit his wrists in front of Hyacinth's grave. This new Hybradized Silk eventually encounters another Typhon in Blanko and proves his superiority, shows that the Inhumi are both only a threat to humanity because of human's own malice and hatred and also that they are no great threat if humanity works together instead of trying to kill each other using them, and then he leaves humanity to make it's own destiny on the planets instead of trying to lead them as God-King like Typhon did. He even symbolically reconciles with his daughter Scylla. Eventually the Whorl becomes Tzadikiel's Ship and then Yesod, it's mentioned that Tzadikiel's ship is the only ship in the galaxy, and Yesod is described as a ship a few times, it's Wolfe playing with us again forcing multiple versions of the same ship to occur simultaneously but giving us just enough hints to realize it. Silk eventually becomes Tzadikiel, cocoons are made of Silk and the first time we see Tzadikiel he is portrayed as a cosmic butterfly, we can then assume the Whorl is what eventually leads Silk to this form, and seeing him in the book is what really breaks the chain on Severian's mind and forces him to realize just how large the world really is and in turn allows him to reject Typhon and instead push forward unknowingly for the New Sun.

Like with the three alien wisemen, the meeting between Silk and Severian is not a once occurring thing. They are constantly meeting and parting under newer and unknown circumstances and forms. Like the Hieros and Humans, or the Humans and Inhumi they too are engaged in a mutual creation process with only some of the parts known to them. They are both at once each the father and son in the relationship. Severian causes the New Sun which leads to the eventual creation of the Green Men who become the Neighbors who transfer Horn to Silk and allow Silk to eventually leave to become Tzak who then guides Severian into bringing the New Sun and stopping Typhon from relaunching old humanities plan of conquest. Each follows each other in mythic terms, the clearing of the Inhumi city echoes the flood that creates Ushas but also the cleaning of the Vincula in Thrax and the clearing of the stable by Heracles during his labors, and of course of God flooding the Earth. The Inhumi city itself is the remains of Nessus and like Severian clearing the way for humanity to continue with the creation of Ushas, Horn's actions pave the way for the rebirth of a newer, better humanity on Green.


Man I gotta reread Long/Short. I feel like I'm forgetting a ton of poo poo.

regarding Seawrack

The two thing's with Seawrack are looking at how Horn and Nettle viewed Hyacinth. They, especially Horn, were totally devoted to Silk, considered him nearly godlike and Horn did his best to emulate him in speech and action but found himself struggling without Silk's direct guidance often. He also struggles when Sinew is born believing, childishly, that Nettle is now giving the love due to him to Sinew. His quest for Silk then is at once a way to regain his mentor, friend, and to escape a life that in his heart he doesn't truly want to live anymore. Now, when you look at how Hy is described she comes across remarkably poorly, vain, self centered and ultimately the one who Silk astray from his duties and from joining everyone on Blue. For Horn there must have been something unbearably seductive for Silk to have been "deceived" by her. For Horn Silk is flawless he doesn't truly understand the level of anguish or love that Silk feels. So when Horn gets a chance to escape his life, and a beautiful woman who seems to have the same semi hypnotic abilities that the gods of the Whorl have shows up. One of the worst things I've seen written is that Wolfe used Seawrack's singing to excuse for Horn to rape her, the truth is much worse. Horn wanted her to sing so he could emulate his hero Silk and be "forced" to break his vows( to the church for Silk and to Nettle for Horn), he wanted his own version of the moment captured in eternity of Silk and Hyacinth captured in the fountain of the brothel and instead created a twisted and disgusting mockery of it, one that he feels so sickened by he can barely acknowledge it, likewise Silk as Rajan also finds it disturbing. Because it's a mockery of his love for Hy, because he is forced to remember his pupil fall so far, and because in some way he feels responsible for it.

Note that he says Krait asked him to make Seawrack sing, only afterwards does he then has his intermission that he will no longer omit anything or lie, then reveals he implored her to sing for him. Horn wants to make excuses to himself, and Silk as Rajan wants to cover for his pupil and save Nettle the heartbreak. But if you go back to the first chapter that Horn meets her he is already conflating her with Kypris and Chenille and imagining his own life stuck in time like Silk and Hy in Ermines.

Blue is explicitly Hell to the colonists and it is so not because of the Inhumi but because of Man, even someone who is trying to live a moral life ends up committing atrocious acts and Horn is no exception, the only redemption he gets is his soul and memory tempering Silk. Horn regrets it, Silk finds it abominable, the only one who is apologetic is Seawrack herself who some take as Wolfe being misogynistic, but Seawrack has absolutely no where else to go, she's rejected being a siren and hates the idea of returning to Mother. Horn is the only person she can rely on to feed and transport her, and Horn is very aware of that and that he took advantage of the mercy he held her in.

Gaius Marius posted:

I don't know who said that the back half of Long is slow but they are out of their gourds. poo poo is popping off so quickly in the last book that it's nearly impossible to keep up with who is allied to who and who is where. It's like the French Revolution, WWII, and a Tsunami are all happening simultaneously and the writing and pace reflect that.

You'll be glad to hear Short brings back some of the weirdo xeno poo poo like the Nodules. Fifth Head is also important for slotting some thematic poo poo in the oeuvre together. Plus 2/3 of it are fantastic.

Appoda posted:

And I like Silk, who in spite of having what I'd consider an unrealistic level of devotion (and is sometimes treated as such), is so much more approachable as a character than Sevarian, who was always a dark little weirdo with a personality that's hard to extricate from the present moment, his future self writing, eating brains, his "memory", the "first Sevarian" stuff, etc. Also fun contrast in how Sev fucks every woman he meets, while Silk gets mad pussy laid at his feet and is nothing but mortified every time a girl so much as looks at him.

Levitate posted:

Gaius Marius posted:

In the same dream that Silk is revealed definitely to be a Pas/Typhon clone you also learn that Hyacinth is possessed by Kypris, same with Chenille. That is why Silk conflates his mother's face, Kypris, Chenille and Hy.

quote:

Hy is also a Trivugante agent. Consider she is a high class escort whose clientèle includes the highest general in the Vironese army and she lives with a crime lord connected to the Ayuntamiento, she also immediately starts getting down with a Trivugante general when they arrive and is given an Azoth by Crane, another agent, to avoid her being captured or killed if discovered. When Silk is about to kill himself on the airship it is in part because after he made his final break from his duty to the church by marrying Hy, supposedly carving his own path for once, he gets a one two punch of sub consciously realizing this too was part of Pas's plan and that the woman he fell head over heels in love with may just be using him to gain information. Silk always wants to see the best in people, which also means he understands the worst and this creates a gulf that makes all of her actions suspect to him.

As an aside when the outsider speaks to him it has a male and female voice. a Mountain and a Dove. Doves are associated with Kypris and the Mountain is Mt.Typhon the symbol of Typhon's dominance of Urth and the stars. He never says it but the longer it goes on the more he comes to believe that even his enlightenment was engineered.

Lex Talionis posted:

Short Sun:

• Because Long Sun is actually just Horn making stuff up years later, I take it all to mean that Silk though broadly speaking a good guy was hardly the perfect saint we see (a saint wouldn't be suicidal for one thing; those moments are very jarring in Long Sun). The merged Silkhorn is basically a synthetic person formed out of Horn's hero worship, as if you trained an AI on the character of Silk from Horn's Long Sun. So the saintly Silk that Horn imagined, though fake, really does come to life. Like Jesus, Saint Silk isn't going to establish a kingdom on earth even though that's what his followers expect and want. Instead he delivers some doctrinal updates to Horn's Old Testament and peaces out.
  

Lex Talionis posted:

I've never found anyone's grand unifying theories to be satisfying and don't have one of my own but here's a few things I think.

Long Sun:

• Silk is a genetically engineered embryo designed to have smarts, super-charisma, super-athleticism, and fast healing. This was done prior to leaving Urth so that when they reached the new colony, Pas would possess this body and rule. I don't think there's textual evidence but I assume Pas either told the old Autuarch to thaw out the zygote or else possessed him and literally did it so that Pas would literally lead the plan of Pas. But the whole thing goes hilariously wrong: Pas gets beat up by his wife and isn't around to take possession of the body, and meanwhile this born-to-rule Perfect Man becomes a priest, counter to what anyone wanted but in line with Wolfe's own views about what the best things in life are.
  
• Hyacinth would be Kypris' choice to inhabit. She's probably not engineered like Silk but she's the fairest one of all so that's who Kypris picked. She's a manipulative, ambitious, and mostly unlikeable woman but that might actually be the sustained Kypris influence rather than Hyacinth herself. What kind of woman becomes Typhon's mistress? Silk and Hyacinth together don't make sense but Kypris sets all this up. Silk finds the goddess of love irresistible, but who wouldn't? Kypris might not love Silk so much as initially cultivate the body for her husband and then realize either that too much of Pas is gone or, maybe more likely, that Silk is a big improvement on her old husband and this is an opportunity for her to upgrade Pas into being a much better dude.
  
• But what's really going on is that Wolfe has recreated in Silk and Hyacinth the love that Christ has for the Church. Humanity (Hyacinth) is objectively horrible and constantly unfaithful but Jesus (Silk) loves us in spite of this with a perfect love. Wolfe challenges us (via Horn's lack of comprehension of this) to accept this as a good thing rather than just Jesus being an idiot.
  

Short Sun:

• Sorry but I don't see how Green can be Lune, it's a major plot point that they draw close to each other every once and a while and this isn't at all how the Earth/Moon orbit works. The Whorl also seems nothing at all like Tzadkiel's ship on either the inside or the outside. And it would have been super easy for Silk at the end to take on some Tzadkiel characteristics if we are meant to make that association; this doesn't happen. And in any case I don't know how you get to Silk -> Zak -> Tzadkiel? Finally Tzadkiel is from a previous universe helping to bring Severian to his ordained spot; Silk meets the Severian of his own universe in what I agree seems like a dumb bit of fan service. Severian has to specifically take the time to explain to Silk, who doesn't care, why this won't be put into his autobiography that won't be written for a decade. Come on, Gene, this is just dumb.
  
• Because Long Sun is actually just Horn making stuff up years later, I take it all to mean that Silk though broadly speaking a good guy was hardly the perfect saint we see (a saint wouldn't be suicidal for one thing; those moments are very jarring in Long Sun). The merged Silkhorn is basically a synthetic person formed out of Horn's hero worship, as if you trained an AI on the character of Silk from Horn's Long Sun. So the saintly Silk that Horn imagined, though fake, really does come to life. Like Jesus, Saint Silk isn't going to establish a kingdom on earth even though that's what his followers expect and want. Instead he delivers some doctrinal updates to Horn's Old Testament and peaces out.
  

Gaius Marius posted:

Dude has a serious problem of talking with authority on poo poo he completely fails to grasp.

mellonbread posted:

Glad nobody here does that.

my bony fealty posted:

I have no idea why but for some reason Fifth Head is a Christmas story to me, moreso than the actual Christmas stories he wrote, so I'll be rereading that for the nth time soon.

mellonbread posted:

The two Christmas stories I remember were real downers. There's the one where the toys have to fight to avoid being incinerated, and the one where the living house holds a Christmas party for the kid while his parents are dead in the freezer then the house burns down and I think he gets molested by a guy in a Santa outfit.

my bony fealty posted:

I have no idea why but for some reason Fifth Head is a Christmas story to me, moreso than the actual Christmas stories he wrote, so I'll be rereading that for the nth time soon.

Levitate posted:

I feel like the Outsider is setup to be literal God but when you put it that way as well I guess it gets somewhat interesting in thinkign what the Outsider could be. What are your thoughts on that? Another construction of Typhon to carry out his plan one way or another "outside" the influence of the family feuds? AI of Mainframe carrying out Pas' plan?

mellonbread posted:

Silk being a clone of Pas is not something I ever considered, but it does give new context to a throwaway line from Sword of the Lictor.

In New Sun Typhon says he had his head transplanted onto a new body rather than just his brain because it was important that people recognize his face. I originally interpreted that as an inability to rekey retinal, facial and voice scanners that let him use lost technology. But if Silk is a clone of Typhon, and a guy with genetically engineered super-charisma as the characters in Long Sun suggest, then Typhon might have had genetic super-charisma powers that required him to keep his original face. Severian's description of his initial encounter with Typhon implies the guy was some kind of psychic, but it's not clear whether that's actually what's happening or his own interpretation.

mellonbread posted:

You may be thinking of Cyriaca's story about the ancient autarch (though they were not called autarchs then) and his plan if his empire should fail him, where he would retreat into a vault of stories that he had, in imitation of the ancients, been determined to cast aside. That's the only Typhon backup plan I can think of, though it's been a long time since I read Urth so he might have one there. The story of the ancient machines is my favorite part of New Sun and I've basically got it committed to memory.

Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:

i personally think urth is p skippable but that's not, shall we say, orthodox

hobbez posted:

Nearly done with my first read through of BOTNS. I’m ready for more. Is it recommended to progress to Urth of the New Sun next, or proceed to Book of the Long Sun?