I remember picking it up back in the 80s because one of the stories was supposedly part of the inspiration for SimCity.
Thanks for the heads up. This is one of those I never got around to picking up so I figured that for $3 I may as well grab it
Yeah, thanks Charlatan. Good find. I haven’t read anything from Dan Simmons since Hollow Man.
Heads up sci-fi fans, Kindle edition of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, the first half anyway, is on sale today for $2.99. Second half is still $9.99 though, maybe it will be on sale later this week?
We can hope, but there are several other older but high profile SF novels on sale and the Stainless Steel Rat one is the last book in the series, for example, so it may just be a one off that won’t help fill out a series.
I just noticed Book of the New Sun because it’s been on my wishlist for like ever. I need to see what else may be on sale.
First half has Shadow of the Torturer (Book 1) and Claw of the Concilator (Book 2) together in one book. I only point this out because I loved Shadow of the Torturer. It kind of reminds me of Charles Dickens books, I don’t know if you’re a fan of those. I read Great Expectations and David Copperfield as a kid, and this book feels very similar to those.
And then Book 2 (Claw) was completely incomprehensible to me. I had no idea what’s going on in it. I don’t know what characters we’re following, and what they’re doing, and what connection this has to what was happening in Book 1. I can usually soldier on when this sort of this happens, because you only have to bear through this kind of confusion for a while, and then things come together and start making sense again. But in Claw, I never reached this point. Each chapter just kept bringing more and more things. With nothing to anchor them to, not knowing what I’m reading has anything to do with anything, it just becomes jumbled nonsense eventually. How many things am I supposed to juggle in my head until it finally connects to events in the first book? How long am I supposed to keep reading until I finally get an inkling as to what is going on?
Anyway, there was this one scene where someone (remember I don’t know who any of the characters are in book 2) disturbs something in the depths. And these creatures come out, chasing them, changing everything these characters believed of what they were doing. But who am I reading about? Them being chased by creatures from the depth, why does that change everything? Is this the equivalent of dwarves digging too deep, like the mines of Moria? What does this have to do with anything in the rest of the book?
Anyway, so yeah, sorry, I’m just… so bewildered by that book. Maybe I should just skip Claw, and go to Book 3. Book 2 is like reading a series of short stories that don’t make any sense that I’m supposed to remember for later, perhaps.
I had the same experience with book 2, and it put me off the rest of the series. With Wolfe you’re reading literary fiction that happens to also be SF. Nothing wrong with that, but it can get a bit heady. Book two was just really out there.
I found this article on how to read the books:
https://www.tor.com/2017/12/04/the-best-way-to-approach-the-book-of-the-new-sun/
You have to re-read the books to understand everything. I guess that means that once you find out what’s going on, you’re expected to re-read book 2 to understand it, instead of remembering all the mysterious things that happened in it. And he recommends reading the whole series pretty fast.
He also implies Severian is still the narrator in Book 2. So maybe I should get the Kindle version and start over.
No thanks. Even books in a series need to stand on their own. There are too many other books in the world to enjoy, most of which I will never get to.
The Book of the New Sun is by far the most dense and difficult thing Wolfe has ever written, as far as I can tell, at least. It’s worth checking out his other work, which is also very good but much more accessible.
I’ve read Book of The New Sun at several times, and I still get lost sometimes (I don’t remember the specific part you’re talking about in Claw of the Conciliator though, I usually lose the thread of the narrative later on in Sword / Citadel with the two-headed monarch and all that). I should also eventually read part 5 (The Urth of the New Sun), which I’ve never gotten around to.
I recommend The Knight / The Wizard, which is much closer to a standard adventure narrative, but still dense enough to reward closer examination.
Well now I feel better having never made it through Book 1 despite having tried multiple times…
Still dense and a bit confusing. But, to me, worth it.
Crazy number of books on sale today:
https://theportalist.com/may-sff-sale
That’s just page one. Scroll to the bottom for the link to the following page (I don’t even know how many there are). And that’s just the SF books, replace “sff” in the URL with “mystery”, “fiction”, “history”, or “true-crime” for other categories.
Anybody want to recommend anything?
That’s insanely huge! What are you in the mood for?
Uh, I dunno! There’s some Simak in there, he’s usually good, but I don’t know if any of them stand out.
I think I’m going to buy Dog Wizard, just because ha ha, dog wizard.
There’s some books in there from the Seaford Saga (by David Feintuch). I read all those. But I can’t say I recommend them. They’re very depressing. And I read them at a time when I was really down myself, so they were self-reinforcing.
Stay away, is my verdict, unless you’re in the mood for some first-person narrative that feels very depressing at times.
I just looked up the saga. It turns out the author was working on yet another book in the saga, and had finished it, and given it to the publisher, but he died, and no one from his family approached the publisher about going forward, so it will get left unpublished.