Ultan’s Library
a resource for the study of Gene Wolfe
Author Archive
The Wizard Knight Companion
Ultan Contributor Michael Andre-Driussi’s latest work of Wolfe scholarship, the Wizard Knight Companion, is now available to purchase from the assorted Amazons. Read the rest of this entry »
The Book of Gold… returns to Ultan’s Library
A few years ago Ultan contributor Jeremy Crampton offered us the chance to host PDF (Acrobat) copies of his old fanzine, THE BOOK OF GOLD.
Jeremy published 2 issues of the fanzine, focussing on Wolfe’s two books about Latro, SOLDIER OF THE MIST and SOLDIER OF ARETE. There’s some really interesting commentary on Latro, which nicely supplements the articles Jeremy has written for Ultan’s Library.
We published the PDF versions of the fanzine on our old site, but ran into problems when we upgraded Ultan’s Library to Wordpress. Thanks to the sterling negotiating skills of my co-conspirator, Nigel, we’ve resolved these difficulties and are now able to make both issues of THE BOOK OF GOLD available once more.
You’ll need the Adobe Acrobat reader to open the files.
New Wolfe novel in September
Gene Wolfe’s latest novel, An Evil Guest, will be published in hardback by Tor later this month in the USA.
Described as “Lovecraft meets Blade Runner”. You can purchase it from Amazon UK using the link below, although Amazon UK seems to think it’s coming out in November. It’s the same ISBN, so this may just be an error, and not a different edition.
The Death of Catherine the Weal and Other Stories (1992)
by Michael Andre-Driussi
This essay was written for John Clute’s proposed book of essays on Gene Wolfe’s fiction. Back in the early 90s, before the Internet as we know it existed, I was posting messages on the Gene Wolfe topic at GEnie (it was a message board system). Before long, Gregory Feeley kindly suggested that I write an essay for John Clute’s proposed anthology of Wolfe criticism. It seemed at the time that the book would be published by 1994. It may well be that my essay killed the whole project with its leaden prose. I once read it aloud at a bookstore and literally put people to sleep–good people, I might add. [Jeremy Crampton's essay, Some Greek Themes in Gene Wolfe's Latro novels, was also written for Clute's collection of essays]
The publication of Lexicon Urthus (1994) was still in the unknown future when I wrote this, but the Lexicon did exist in manuscript form and was looking for a publisher. So in many ways, the essay was intended to be an overture for the Lexicon, showing a bit of the work ahead of time.
Now it serves to celebrate the publication of Lexicon Urthus, Second Edition (2008). In preparing the essay, I initially thought I’d insert commentary in the Clute style, using square brackets, pointing out details where my thoughts in 2008 are different from those in 1992. But upon looking it over, warts and all, I find I’d rather not clutter it up more than it already is. Instead I will put that energy into a new Wolfe essay altogether.
So without further ado, allow me to present the essay itself: hidden for sixteen years, a “lost overture” to lexicons past and present.
Where’s Ultan?
We’re currently revamping Ultan’s Library.
It appears that, depending on your browser, some readers will see this page by default instead of the current list of articles. We hope to fix this soon.
The current list of articles is available at this link: http://www.ultan.org.uk/index.html
Lions and Tigers and Bears . . . of the New Sun
by Michael Andre-Driussi
1. The Strange Bear Man at the Threshold
The first time I read The Urth of the New Sun, one scene tantalized me more than any other. I could see just enough to know that there was a great deal I could not see yet. The symbols were there, I just could not understand them. Read the rest of this entry »
Desanctifying Victor Trenchard: some notes on Peter Wright’s “Confounding the Skin and the Mask”
by Robert Borski
I’ve now had the opportunity to read Peter Wright’s “Confounding the Skin and the Mask” several times and it continues to generate much thought. Read the rest of this entry »
Confounding the Skin and the Mask: Gene Wolfe’s The Fifth Head of Cerberus and the Politics of Ambiguity
by Peter Wright
Since its publication in 1972, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Gene Wolfe’s collection of three inter-linked novellas, has earned a reputation for being the author’s most perplexing single volume. Such a reputation is entirely justified since ambiguity is the watchword to the text. More significantly, it is also an organising principle of form, a means of confounding interpretation, and a fundamental theme associated with Wolfe’s defining authorial obsessions: the subjectivity of perception, the unreliability of memory, and the nature of identity. Read the rest of this entry »