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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
