How to read New Sun
Dec. 23rd, 2003 02:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avramThe Book of the New Sun is the classic Gene Wolfe book. It was originally a four book series (well, originally three, but the last one got too big). But, well, wait, let me tell you another story so I can tell you this one:
Within the story of the Book of the New Sun, our viewpoint protagonist, Severian, carries around a book called Wonders of Urth and Sky, a collection of old stories. (Very old stories — New Sun takes place some large but unspecified number of millennia in our future.) Every so often he’ll sit down and read a story. One such is “The Story of the Student and His Son”. The names of the hero and monster in this story are both puns, but the names are not given in the story. There’s enough information for you to figure out who they are, and to figure out what the puns are, and that’s good enough for Wolfe.
“The Story of the Student and His Son” is a retelling of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The student’s son, Theseus, is also the project the student needed to finish to become a master — a thesis. The description of the naval battle is a loose retelling of the fight between the Monitor and the Merrimac, the first two ironclad warships that were built by the North and South in the US Civil War — the Minotaur is the Monitor. The Merrimac was also called the Virginia, and the student’s son’s ship is called The Land of Virgins.
New Sun is built around a climax, but the climax never appears in the four-book series. Instead, there’s enough information for you to figure out most of what happens, and that’s good enough for Wolfe. Not good enough for his editor, who made him write a fifth book, Urth of the New Sun, which I’m halfway through, and I’ve finally come to agree with the folks who say it’s not as good as the other four. I think now that the best way to read the series is to read all five, and then go back and reread the first four.
It’s stated a few times that humanity will go out and find aliens in the universe and remake them into better creatures, and these creatures will go on to improve humanity in the next cycle of the universe.
Having read the Short Sun books, I’m wondering if the inhumi are candidates for this process. There was definitely something in there about the inhumi feeding off of humans to become more like them in an effort to improve themselves.
For a brief while I wondered if Tzadkiel might be an inhumu, or descended from one. It seemed significant that he didn’t start to really become human until after he’d bitten Purn. But given the range of shape-changing abilities Tzadkiel later (or earlier, given the time-travel weirdness) displays, this speculation seems less rewarding.
Within the story of the Book of the New Sun, our viewpoint protagonist, Severian, carries around a book called Wonders of Urth and Sky, a collection of old stories. (Very old stories — New Sun takes place some large but unspecified number of millennia in our future.) Every so often he’ll sit down and read a story. One such is “The Story of the Student and His Son”. The names of the hero and monster in this story are both puns, but the names are not given in the story. There’s enough information for you to figure out who they are, and to figure out what the puns are, and that’s good enough for Wolfe.
“The Story of the Student and His Son” is a retelling of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The student’s son, Theseus, is also the project the student needed to finish to become a master — a thesis. The description of the naval battle is a loose retelling of the fight between the Monitor and the Merrimac, the first two ironclad warships that were built by the North and South in the US Civil War — the Minotaur is the Monitor. The Merrimac was also called the Virginia, and the student’s son’s ship is called The Land of Virgins.
New Sun is built around a climax, but the climax never appears in the four-book series. Instead, there’s enough information for you to figure out most of what happens, and that’s good enough for Wolfe. Not good enough for his editor, who made him write a fifth book, Urth of the New Sun, which I’m halfway through, and I’ve finally come to agree with the folks who say it’s not as good as the other four. I think now that the best way to read the series is to read all five, and then go back and reread the first four.
It’s stated a few times that humanity will go out and find aliens in the universe and remake them into better creatures, and these creatures will go on to improve humanity in the next cycle of the universe.
Having read the Short Sun books, I’m wondering if the inhumi are candidates for this process. There was definitely something in there about the inhumi feeding off of humans to become more like them in an effort to improve themselves.
For a brief while I wondered if Tzadkiel might be an inhumu, or descended from one. It seemed significant that he didn’t start to really become human until after he’d bitten Purn. But given the range of shape-changing abilities Tzadkiel later (or earlier, given the time-travel weirdness) displays, this speculation seems less rewarding.