The Urth of the new sun
Sequel to: The book of the new sun. Severian, the Autarch of Urth, leaves the planet on one of the huge spaceships of the alien Hierodules to travel across time and space to face his greatest test, to become the legendary New Sun or die.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
14mentions
12people
2009–2026years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I really love Wolfe for his small almost throwaway visions of the future, which are used like an aside in a few lines and mostly inconsequential to the story.
In the Urth of the New Sun for example he has a kind of AI lock, the only function of which is to recognize a person and open only to that person. Being in that role for thousands of years, some of the locks develop a kind of personality or at least personal traits, but they are totally defined by and cannot exceed the role they were initially given, nor do they want to. It is still a haunting image for me how personality or something close to a soul might be an accidental byproduct of something as mundane as wanting to have a convenient lock. And of course you cannot stop to wonder how far we are from that.
In Book of the new sun there is the Green Man who Severian saves from imprisonment. He only appears on a few pages but we learn that he is from a distant time where mankind incorporated plant cells in their genetic makeup in order to perform photosynthesis. That brilliantly plays on two themes of the book: the sun as live giving and how a single person can be independent (or "autarch"), here in so far as producing their own energy.
There are many more instances and it’s what makes the Book of the New Sun or the Solar Cycle so fantastic. The future is so vast and strange here, that it cannot be fully depicted and ideas which another writer would stake a whole book or series on are only good for a few lines.
- If you enjoyed that experience, read The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe (5 books, 1-2 and 3-4 commonly printed as combined volumes: Shadow & Claw, Sword & Citadel, The Urth of the New Sun). I re-read them this spring, and they remain among the top ~3 series I've ever (re-)read.
- Gene Wolfe.
The whole Solar Cycle (The Book of the New Sun, Urth of The New Sun, The Book of The Long Sun, The Book of The Short Sun), Fifth Head of Cerberus, Peace, There Are Doors, The Sorcerer's House ... .
Wolfe is a genius.
Before that I also finished Malazan.
- Ah, East of Eden. I'm halfway through it right now, and it is fantastic so far. I've found many good recommendations over the years from HN threads. For example, I've read 7/10 of the Culture novels by Iain M Banks now, and a couple of them were exceptionally good (Use of Weapons, Surface Detail). Most discussion here ranks the books roughly the opposite of how I would, but chances are good you will thoroughly enjoy at least some of them.
Last year I finally got around to reading the Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe (another series recommended more than once on HN). Oh wow. So, so good. Yet I hesitate when recommending these books, because they are challenging to read, both in terms of vocabulary and deeply entangled story. Many times I had, "Wait, what?" moments where I reread entire chapters to make sure I really understood what had just happened. And there are many pieces I won't be able to fit together without at least another reading or two. The prime audience for these books is narrower than most of what I've read, but if the books speak to you, you're in for a huge treat. There are five books, but the first four are commonly published as pairs:
- Shadow & Claw
- Sword & Citadel
- Urth of the New Sun
- This is a great loss. When I was quite young I made the mistake of joining the Science Fiction Bookclub, unaware that it's intent and purpose was to mislead kids into over-buying books they didn't want. At the time, one of the books they sent me was Gene Wolfe's "Urth of the New Sun", and it bewildered me and fascinated me so much that I reread it in college, and realized it was part of a much longer tale. I went on to read virtually everything he ever wrote. Unlike so much science fiction (and fantasy, on occasion), Wolfe's uses tremendous texture and nuance; reading his work feels incredibly dream-like to me, even though there's nothing overtly trippy. As I get older, and recognize so much of what I once enjoyed as the same juvenile power fantasy told over with slightly different mechanics, Wolfe is (was) one of those rare genre authors who was doing something very different.
For anyone who wants to try a Wolfe book, the most accessible one is "The Wizard Knight", IMHO. It's still quite good, and has that gauzy, dreamy style and unreliable narrator Wolfe is known for, but is rather more straight-forward than, say, the Torturer series (which is actually part of the series in which Urth of the New Sun played a role). Ironically (to me) this is also the closest he got to "juvenile power fantasy" but ends up deconstructing the bildungsroman in a really beautiful, even loving way. Highly, highly recommended.
Also, I remember reading somewhere that he was a working engineer while he wrote some of his first novels; I presume he was writing full-time later. I think that's cool, too.
- If you want to read a series about a time traveling torturer that becomes king of the planet earth and replaces the dying sun while raising the dead, eating the dead, avoiding death, all while working as a carnifex. Then read the Book of the New Sun and The Urth of the New Sun.
