I first encountered Gene Wolfe’s work when I was a sophomore in high school, when I accidentally stumbled onto the paperback of The Shadow of the Torturer at my public library. I picked it up not knowing anything about it, intrigued as much as anything by the fact that even though it was called science fiction it had a cover that looked like a fantasy novel: a masked and caped figure holding a massive sword. But it also had a blurb from Ursula K. Le Guin, whose Earthsea books I had loved, describing it as “the best science fiction I’ve read in years.” So, was this science fiction or fantasy?
This wasn’t clarified for me by the other words on the cover, where the book was described as a “world where science and magic are one” and, by Thomas M. Disch (a writer I wouldn’t read until years later) as “science fantasy,” a term I’d never heard before. Wasn’t science the opposite of fantasy? In short, I was confused and intrigued. I went into the book not quite knowing what to expect but feeling not unpleasantly off balance—which, I’m still convinced, is the best way to first encounter Wolfe.
Up to that point, I’d been reading fantasy and science fiction largely for escape. The quality of the imagination mattered to me, as did the originality of the concept, the quality of the writing less so—though I was beginning to be aware that the well-written books were the ones that stuck with me longest.
Every week I’d go to the SF/Fantasy paperback section in the library and browse around until I had a half dozen books to take home. If I liked a book, I’d read more by the same writer; if not, I’d choose another writer on the next visit. Being a somewhat anal kid, I usually started in the A’s and browsed forward until I had my books. The only reason I found Wolfe was because I’d come to realize that my usual method rarely took me past the M’s, and I started wondering what was going on with the writers found later in the alphabet. So, for once, I started at Z and worked backward.
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The Complete Book of the New Sun
I took The Shadow of the Torturer home and opened it. The first sentence—“It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future.”—struck me as mysterious and promising. There was something ominous on the horizon for this narrator. The narrative immediately jumped from there to a vivid description of a gate, a description that, by the end of the sentence that introduced it, had become a symbol for something about the narrator’s future self. By the end of that first paragraph, the narrator—Severian, an apprentice in the torturer’s guild—tells us that he’s begun the story in the aftermath of a swim in which he nearly drowned, though we won’t have the details of that swim for a little while. In just that first paragraph, then, we move backward and forward in time, have the doubly-focused sense of what things appear initially and how they come to function later in memory, and establish the narrator as someone who is actively rearranging the story he is telling.
The rest of the book lived up to, and further complicated, the complex texture of that first paragraph, following the apprentice torturer’s misadventures as he makes the decision to betray the principles of his guild, narrowly escapes execution, and is sentenced to exile as a carnifex (an executioner) in the distant town of Thrax. On the way he shares a room with a giant man named Baldanders and meets and joins fates with Dr. Talos, the manager of a band of itinerant players to which Baldanders belongs. There was also combat to the death by flower (kind of), a wandering through a strange Botanical Garden that seemed to weave in and out of time, a character who seems to arise without explanation from a lake in which the dead are laid to rest, and much more. It’s dizzying and exciting, and also full of moments that show their full significance only later, when we have more pieces of the puzzle.
The Shadow of the Torturer wasn’t, generally speaking, what I was used to with science fiction and fantasy (though later, as I read within the genre in a less haphazard way, I found other writers with a similarly rich complexity). It demanded more of me as a reader, demanded that I juggle several different plot strands and moments in time at once, but also rewarded me. I found the book dense and intense and mysterious; I loved the way that the less than reliable narrator led me through it, sometimes hiding things from me for quite some time. It was a challenge to read, the language itself Latinate and rich, and the narrative itself slyly shifting in its telling, so that I found I had to focus to keep everything straight. I encountered words like “fuligin” and “cacogen”, which I didn’t know and which I found I couldn’t look up, but had to figure out by context. The novel did, in that first read, feel more like fantasy than science fiction to me, though not quite like any fantasy realm I had experienced before. Still, there were subtle hints in this novel, and more in the novels that followed, that behind the seemingly medieval moments were hints of vaster realms and other worlds.
By the time I reached the end, I had as many questions as when I’d started, but they were different questions. The world itself was fuller, its outlines more precise. The novel ends with Severian passing through another gate, listening to a tale being told by a stranger, and that tale being interrupted by an eruption of violence. But before we can discover what happened, the book ends: “Here I pause. If you wish to walk no farther with me, reader, I cannot blame you. It is no easy road.” What a curious place to end a book, I thought, even if it is a book in a series.
I did indeed wish to walk farther. The next week I returned to the library, returned to the SF/fantasy paperback stacks, and returned the W’s, only to find that Shadow of the Torturer was the only Wolfe paperback my library had. But, when I asked, the librarian told me a new Wolfe had just come in, the hardback of the just-released The Claw of the Conciliator (now you know how old I am), the sequel to The Shadow of the Torturer. As soon as she put a card into the back of it and wrapped the jacket, I was welcome to it.
The cover of this hardback seemed even more like fantasy: the masked figure was still there, now shirtless, holding a glowing orb, surrounded by bone-wielding man apes. I opened it, eager to find out what had happened at the gate, and realized after a few paragraphs…that I wasn’t going to get that, at least not immediately. The narrative had jumped forward: what the narrator claimed to be a pause at the end of the last book was instead a skipping ahead. For a moment I thought I’d missed a book in the series. But no, this was the second book—the third wasn’t out yet. But by the time I realized that I wasn’t going to get the answer to what happened at the end of The Shadow of the Torturer, I was already intrigued by what was happening instead.
Those movements backward and forward in time, these caesuras, that manipulation by a narrator who, we gradually realize, is telling his story from a very peculiar position, is something that continues throughout The Book of the New Sun. Since that first reading I’ve gone on to read the whole series a half dozen times, and keep finding new things in the books each time. The Book of the New Sun is the kind of series that on the one hand can be endlessly studied (as the many online Wolfe forums testify) but also a book that is propulsive and satisfying in its own terms. In that sense it’s like Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb trilogy, with its very different but equally heady mix of fantasy and sf: complex and satisfying and smart, full of puzzles, but with enough propulsive energy to keep you going even if you’re a little off-balance as you read. Wolfe, at his best (as he is here in Shadow & Claw) can be enjoyed for his puzzles and word games and complexities. But above all he can and should be simply read and enjoyed, for the subtlety of his narrators, for the deftness of his language, and for his embodied understanding that the way a story is told is far more important than the story itself.
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The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell
Brian Evenson is the author of over a dozen works of fiction. He has received three O. Henry Prizes for his fiction. His most recent book, Song for the Unraveling of the World, won a Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction and the Balcones Fiction Prize. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.
This essay reminded me pleasantly of my first read, having checked out the double volume “Shadow & Claw” from the library, knowing nothing of Wolfe. When next I got to the library, I discovered they didn’t have “Sword and Citadel”. We made an urgent trip to Barnes & Noble because I proclaimed: “It’s an emergency.”
When I got finished, I knew it was one of the best books I’d ever read. My guts told me it was literature; my brain is still catching up 13 years later.
Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD.
As a very devoted fan of Gene Wolfe, I am always so very, very pleased to see him mentioned in any context, and especially pleased to see new articles being written about him on a platform with a wide-reaching and genre-loving readership such as Tor.com. So I’d like to truly thank you for the article.
That being said, I was a little disappointed that you didn’t actually delve into “the blending of sci-fi and fantasy” that the title promised. You did a nice job highlighting many of the fantasy aspects, but not so much about the sci-fi aspects. If you were hoping to avoid spoilers by not enumerating some of the subtle hints that place these wonderful books squarely in the midst of the science fiction genre, I can very well understand that. Still, with a title like that, I was expecting a bit more discussion on the “blending” you alluded to.
My own introduction to Gene Wolfe came about because of a young lady that I became very good friends with during my sophomore year of college. We shared an early afternoon Tuesday/Thursday class together (Dr. Delores Washburn’s “American Literary Realism” class at Hardin-Simmons University — Go Cowboys!) and started hanging out in the empty classroom together for lunch. One day she asked if I had ever read Gene Wolfe, and when I replied in the negative, she practically dragged me to her car and drove me across town to Hastings Books & Music (which sadly shuttered all of its stores in 2016) and bought me the paperback edition of The Shadow of the Torturer, and I have been and will always remain in her debt for that.
It blew my hair back for a variety of reasons. The first thing that grabbed me was the completely evocative and compelling voice of the narrator. I’d simply never encountered anything like that before. But the second thing that filled my heart with gladness was that in the midst of what appeared to be a fantasy setting (complete with guilds, villagers who guarded their dead with lanterns and pikes, and traveling executioners) there were all these hints of a fallen technological world. For example, in Severian’s description of the Matachin Tower, headquarters for the Torturer’s Guild, he refers to the walls as “bulkheads” and makes reference to the “propulsion chamber” (I think this is where poor Thecla was tortured), and how even one of the Torturers (Master Gurloes maybe?) had access to some kind of strange energy that allowed communication from elsewhere and who could even communicate with other guilds in other towers. In other words, the Matachin tower was obviously an abandoned rocket ship, some of whose technology (such as the radio) was still functional.
Talk about blowing my hair back. When I first realized the spaceship thing, I think I had to re-attach my scalp. And don’t even get me started on the Neil Armstrong (or maybe Buzz Aldrin?) image from Master Ultan’s library.
I’ve always been a sucker for stories set in the ruins of ancient civilizations, but when I realized that Gene Wolfe had set this seeming-fantasy story in the ruins of a far future Earth civilization . . . well, that set the hook deep in my belly, and he’s still reeling me in more than 30 years later. He plays with a variety of fantasy and science fiction and even horror tropes throughout his work. (For example, his treatment of vampires, which began in The Book of the Long Sun and was really brought to life in the The Book of the Short Sun, is so compelling to me that no other vampire story even makes sense any more.) And in his best work, this blending of and playing with genres is so subtle that the reader often doesn’t even recognize that it’s happening until a second or third reading.
I’m still saddened by the fact that he is no longer with us.
Gene Wolfe was a true word smith. He had a command of the English language that was completely incredible and one that very, very few authors can rival. I literally had almost the same experience in discovering his books with the difference being I found it in a used book store (probably Oxford Too in Atlanta Ga) about a decade later.
As CharlesMR said.. “I’m still saddened by the fact that he is no longer with us”. I still check if there is anything I haven’t read by him when I visit a bookstore. Just in case I’ve missed something.
I was an adult when I read the series sometime in the late ’80s, IIRC. I read a review of the of the series in my local paper’s Sunday book section when the final book came out . Yup, a separately printed tabloid size book review section. I got them. I read them. It was the best speculative fiction I’d ever read. As far as I’m concerned it’s a very good literary novel. Coming of age, detailed description–bordering on ethnographic–of a probably human society. Well developed characters. The Alzabo was the last monster to scare me. It was almost the only novel of ideas I didn’t find sententious and didactic. I’ve reread it several times.
I was first exposed to this work through the sci-fi book club during my service in the US Navy (’83 – ’88). The entire series is mind blowing, I personally have not found anything similr. I have tried to read Jack Vance’s works but they just didn’t quite grab me (just my opinion). However, two recent works by Kai Ashante Wilson, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps and A Taste of Honey (I’ve read Wildeeps, currently reading Honey) seem to have a similar setting but the world is subtler than Wolfe’s writing.
Getting back to Mr. Wolfe, the world is so lush and rich. But the books do demand a lot of the reader; while you can just blast through it, it really rewards savoring and contemplating each scene.
I’ve re-read them a few times now, in fact I’m due for another go at them, I still have my original sci-fi book club editions.
I discovered Wolfe and the New Sun books this year, fairly late in life. I was feeling frustrated after reading several recent books that didn’t provide the depth and immersion I craved–an escape from my frustrating reality of long covid!– so I searched older “best of” lists and found Wolfe’s name near the top. Who was this guy? I had never heard of him! (I discovered Lois Bujold the same way!)
The language of the New Sun immediately pulled me in. The last few pages of book 4 blew my mind, and I immediately turned to page one of “Shadow” and read them all again. I ended up reading the books 3x in a row, something I have never done before! I’ve never read anything like it. The closest comparison might be Dickens, for the detail and richness of character, if Dickens wrote sff.
BTW “fuligin” and other such words are not hard to find in dictionaries. The unique words Wolfe uses are real, they’re just ancient, or derived from roots you can discover, but it’s better to pick up the meaning by context when possible, so not to break the spell of reading. And the audiobooks with narrator Jonathan Davis are wonderful.
Now I’m slowly working my way through the Long Sun and Short Sun series, which I don’t love quite as much, but still, so amazing and multilayered.
ANGELA NELSON wrote:
That was my initial reaction to The Book of the Long Sun as well. I probably read the The Book of the New Sun in the 1990-1991 time frame, and when Nightside the Long Sun came out in 1993 as the first book of a new series set in the same universe, I was soooooo excited to read it. I even remember where I was when I bought it, which is kind-of unusual for me. I was at a Waldenbooks in Abilene, Texas, browsing through the sci-fi/fantasy section when I saw it there on the shelf. I had no idea it was even coming out, but I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to read a new book so badly. When I got it in my hands, though, and started reading . . . well, it just really disappointed me. I was expecting another narrative voice like Severian’s, and Gene Wolfe (to his everlasting credit), wasn’t interested in telling the same story twice. Most writers, it seems to me, will often try to recycle their successes (or worse, try to recycle other writers’ successes). But Wolfe never seemed like he wanted to ride the coat-tails of his most famous work, which he could very well have done for the rest of his life. He was a true writer’s writer, though, and was always looking for the right narrative style to tell the particular story that he was interested in telling, even if it that choice wandered off the path of the highest commercial success.
Long Sun is so different in tone from New Sun, and both of those are completely different in tone from Short Sun. It probably took me about three tries and before I was able to read Nightside without being angry that it wasn’t giving me the same experience as Severian’s story, but I finally did, and I have totally fallen in love with it over the years. I think that love probably comes from the fact that I have simply grown to like the characters so much. Not just Silk and Oreb, who are obvious and easy to like, but everybody from Auk and Chenille and Crane, to Mayteras Mint and Marble, to the grotesquerie of Mucor and the utter annoyance of Patera Remora, to the mechanical beings of Hammerstone and the Talus. I like spending time with all of them, even the annoying ones.
I doubt if many would agree with me, but I place both the Long Sun and the Short Sun series on a slightly higher pedestal than I do the New Sun series, which is the highest compliment I can possibly give them, because I am still head over heals for Shadow & Claw & Sword & City.
Thank you for the wonderful article, Mr. Everson.
I also encountered Gene Wolfe when I was a High School Freshman. He grew up in Barrington, IL, close to where I lived in Geneva, IL. I went to a book signing of The Shadow of the Torturer when I was a High School Junior. He missed the signing because his son’s baseball game went into overtime. If that’s not a wonderful reason to skip a signing, then I don’t know what could take its place. I still own the dog-eared, tattered Timescape Pocket Paperbacks of all four of the novels comprising The Book of the New Sun. All of them are labeled Science Fantasy.
A quote by Michael Swanwick: “Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning.” It is a grandiose claim, but he may be correct.
Mr. Wolfe worked for Proctor & Gamble, where he invented a food extruder that cooks the potato dough used to make Pringles Potato Chips. He died on April 14th of 2019. He was so patient and self-effacing that much of the literary community wrote kind words expressing their condolences. Neil Gaiman calls The Book of the New Sun “The best SF novel of the last century.” A group of sci-fi writers assembled short stories written in Wolfe’s ironically inimitable style called Shadows of the Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe, published by Tor Books.
On July 25. 2014, Jason Pontin had a Q&A with Gene Wolfe published in MIT Technology Review. Mr. Pontin was a fan of Wolfe’s work, clearly shown in his high regard for Wolfe’s writing. Here is an article on Gene Wolfe in The New Yorker magazine by Peter Bebergal written on April 24, 2015. The wallpaper on my iPhone features the same cover art for the first edition of The Shadow of the Torturer painted by Don Maitz.