by
Michael Andre-Driussi
In the fall of 1987 I found myself with a new job in a rural town, where one Sunday I visited the local shopping mall, and there in a dump of used paperback books I found a copy of The Shadow of the Torturer. It was auspicious, I thought, to find an old friend in a new place, especially since it was a Japanese edition. But then again, I was living in Japan at the time.
To be clear, I couldn’t read Japanese very much at all, but I could spot the “Sci Fi” symbol on the book’s spine (a planet Saturn), and I could read the phonetic writing they use for foreign words and names, such that “Jiin Urufu” is Gene Wolfe. Read the rest of this entry »
“The Lupine Scholar”
By Scott Wowra
Michael Andre-Driussi is a courageous sort. After all, only a handful of brave scholars gleefully plummet into the literary mazes of science fiction’s Daedalus, American author Gene Wolfe. In this endeavor, Mr. Andre-Driussi has few peers. Michael’s painstaking research produced LEXICON URTHUS, the Rosetta Stone of Mr. Wolfe’s award-winning tetralogy THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN and coda THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN.
For the uninitiated reader, THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN is full of bizarre and seemingly counterfeit words like omophagist (an eater of raw flesh) and cherkaji (Persian light cavalry). In the early 1980s, frustrated readers accused Mr. Wolfe of deliberately fabricating unusual words to confuse them. Nothing could be further from the truth. All of the strange words that appear in THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN are real. And they remind us just how odd language can sound without science fiction authors inventing new words that lack inherent meaning.
In response to his critics, Mr. Wolfe produced the essay “Words Weird and Wonderful” in THE CASTLE OF THE OTTER (1982) to demonstrate that, in fact, all the words he used in THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER were genuine. The brief essay was an incomplete dictionary covering the first book in his tetralogy. Mr. Wolfe wisely left the rest of the work up to the reader.
And that leads us to Michael Andre-Driussi, the lexicographer of THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN and a science fiction writer in his own right. What sort of person tirelessly tracks down the definition of obscure words, creating hundreds of 3×5 index cards in the process? Undoubtedly, the same sort of person crafty enough to pen them in THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN. In a series of email interviews, I set out to learn more about Michael Andre-Driussi, a leading Lupine scholar. Read the rest of this entry »
Delighted by the recent publication of a new edition of the Lexicon Urthus, Master Ultan tracks down Wolfe scholar Michael Andre-Driussi to find out how he came to write this invaluable reference work. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
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 to outline some possible ways of proceeding. Read the rest of this entry »
