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.
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 [...]
Gene Wolfe, The Fifth Head of Cerberus (Millennium, 1999) reviewed by Robert Borski “When I was a boy my brother David and I had to go to bed early whether we were tired or not.” So begins, with its Proustian echo, the titular novella of Gene Wolfe’s The Fifth Head of Cerberus, first published in [...]
Gene Wolfe, Strange Travelers (Orb, 2000) reviewed by Michael Andre-Driussi Here is a brand new collection of fifteen stories. Originally published in magazines, theme anthologies, and a program guide, they offer a wide variety of styles and modes for your reading and re-reading pleasures. Since this is a review, I’m going to fly through the [...]
Reviewed by Nigel Price. On Blue’s Waters is a fine book. Beautifully written, it is by turns thrilling and amusing, moving and intriguing but, like much of Wolfe’s work, it defies easy classification. The most commonly used description for Wolfe’s series novels is “science fantasy”. This can be a slippery and misleading category. Some science [...]
by Jeremy Crampton Abstract This document briefly examines the use of torture and confession in Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun and how it both differs from and reflects actual historical practice (at least in Europe and America). It is not the purpose of these notes to provide a full or sustained argument, merely [...]
By Nick Gevers Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the Long Sun (1993-6) is a deeply complex expression of momentum: the momentum of faith, of history, of escape, of understanding. Science Fiction is replete with texts that involve such accelerations of vision and concept; but Wolfe, with his penetrating and parodic understanding of the conventions and [...]
By Nick Gevers The title is a multiplex pun, so typical of Gene Wolfe. The Book of the Long Sun (1993-6) can only closely follow, or mirror The Book of the New Sun (1980-3). And just as Severian, the narrator of the first Book, is the New Son of God, a man becoming Christlike if [...]
by Jeremy Crampton The moon is down Taurus was in the sky before: it’s gone. Time is passing. It is midnight and I lie here alone. Sappho. “Who writes? For whom is the writing being done?” So Edward Said began his essay “Opponents, audiences, constituencies and community”, 1 by asking questions he said were vital [...]