Well, I’ve done it. I’ve finished The Book of the Short Sun and, with it, Gene Wolfe’s “Solar Cycle”. It was worth it. The rest of this post will assume that you have read or are at least familiar with The Book of the New Sun. The Book of the Short Sun tells the story of a man who strives to fulfill a great vow, perhaps taken too lightly, and changes greatly because of it.
Assuming one has read The Book of the New Sun, I hope to convince you to read the rest of the Solar Cycle.
The Sun Isn’t The Only Thing Long About These Books
A quick summary of the Solar Cycle: it starts with The Book of the New Sun in four volumes. New Sun is without a doubt one of the greatest works of fantasy ever written. Read it. If you don’t like it — I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do for you.
Wolfe wrote a sequel or “coda” to New Sun called The Urth of the New Sun. He tells both in the first-person as the apprentice torturer Severian. The Book of the New Sun is a subtle book, and Severian and his world are deceptively alien to the reader. This results in a very elliptical sort of communication with the reader. Urth deliberately demystifies certain aspects of New Sun. The first half of Urth marks one of the low points of the cycle; perhaps Wolfe gave readers who disliked Severian’s obfuscation what they wanted, good and hard. I do not consider Urth of the New Sun essential reading, but most who “get” the original New Sun books will read it out of curiosity anyway. Just give in.
The Book of the Long Sun occurs in the same universe as Severian’s story but has little practical connection. The “Long Sun” of the title is actually an enormous generation ship (the Whorl) that has arrived at its destination albeit not in 100% working order; Wolfe does not make this explicit until over halfway into the series although the most common cover art “spoils” this fact (the Whorl is far larger than suggested by the scale of the cover). Long Sun tells the story of an “augur” (priest) named Silk who has a vision telling him to start getting people off the ship and onto the two nearby habitable planets, named Blue and Green and orbiting a “short sun” rather than the “long” rod of light illuminating the interior of the Whorl. That the “short” sun is actually larger and “real” compared to the smaller and artificial “long” sun is typical Wolfean irony.
Despite being written in the third person, near the end it is revealed to have been written in-universe by a minor character.
Detail from Cover Art.
Long Sun’s framing narrative functions rather like that of Tolkien’s “Red Book of Westmarch” i.e. it’s an in-universe work but (unlike New Sun) is basically an objective and straightforward accounting of facts. While a quality work of fiction in its own right, Long Sun bogs down in the latter half of its 1400 or so pages and never approaches the sublime heights of New Sun. However, the next entry in the Solar Cycle — The Book of the Short Sun — does not make much sense without Long Sun. All I will say for now is that Short Sun retroactively makes Long Sun better.
There are some other essays and short stories set in the world of the Solar Cycle, collected in The Castle of Days. Most of these have to do with New Sun.
The Short Sun Ain’t So Short Either
The Long Sun chronicler Horn “composes” the Book of the Short Sun in first person. He tells, essentially, two stories at once: in past tense of his journey from planetside back to the generation ship from Long Sun in search of Silk, and in present tense of what happens after he gets back without finding him.
Severian is a rather odd duck. Horn, by comparison, is more of a regular guy; he has some talents, but these are of a familiar sort: engineering, seamanship, journal-keeping rather than eidetic memory, irresistible charm, or a journeyman’s education as a torturer. Of course, this is Wolfe, so there’s more going on with “Horn” than first appears, and when he tells the reader in the first few pages of the first volume, On Blue’s Waters, that he failed to find Silk and bring him back to Blue, well — that may be true only from a certain point of view. Besides: Horn has two volumes left to look.
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
As implied by the titles of the series (On Blue’s Waters, In Green’s Jungles, Return to the Whorl) Horn makes his way from his home planet of Blue after traveling largely by boat towards one of the few functioning spacecraft. He has sworn to find Silk and bring him back to govern the anarchic colony established at the end of Long Sun. He ends up on the “jungle hell” planet Green, home of the leechlike shapeshifting “inhumi” vampires that torment the human inhabitants of the star system before making his way to the Whorl and, as revealed in the opening pages, back to Blue. In between, he longs for his family, fights men and inhumi, becomes friends with a vanished race, and makes terrible sacrifices attempting to find Silk and return home. Horn’s experiences in fulfilling his oath change him profoundly, and Wolfe’s sensitive and skillful handling of these changes is the fundamental although not only appeal of Short Sun.
Some parts of Short Sun occur in the setting of New Sun, and Severian himself appears though is not named. I do not believe that Wolfe had Short Sun in mind when writing New Sun, and these “excursions” to the “Red Sun Whorl” serve more to connect Short Sun to the original New Sun setting than vice versa. However, they do contribute considerable substance to the story — it’s not just authorial preening.
I do not think, ultimately, that Short Sun rises to the level of New Sun. However, they differ so much that another reader might decide differently, and some have. They compare well. I will say that Wolfe demonstrates a greater command of literary technique than even in New Sun; I would venture that Gene Wolfe could not have written Horn’s narrative in 1980. A master wrote New Sun; after twenty years more of writing, he wrote Short Sun. The influence of Jack Vance appeared quite significant, particularly in dialogue but even in a few plot points. Wolfe has a substantially more charitable view of humanity than Vance, although he writes rich repartee and plaintive dishonesty just as well. (On the other hand, I have also read Vance recently, so the connection may have simply been more obvious)
A common criticism of New Sun regards Severian’s voice. I don’t agree that he is inscrutable but he is guarded, passive, and cold (or at least wants to come off that way; witness the suspicious lack of information regarding Valeria). Horn (and hence, Short Sun) dispenses with Severian’s obscurantism (indeed pokes a bit of fun at it given the opportunity to revisit the setting from a more objective point of view). By comparison, Horn narrates Short Sun with much more pathos and clarity. Overall Short Sun strikes a happy balance between New Sun‘s oblique narrative and Long Sun‘s straightforward chronicle.
Continuing the Solar Cycle past New Sun will be worth it. Do it. The culmination — The Book of the Short Sun — pays off.
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