THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS - GENE WOLFE

AVAILABLE I’ve read Wolfe’s most famous thing, THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN, a tetralogy of novels that is so far-out and bizarre and confusing that only after finishing the whole thing did I feel prepared to actually read it and understand what was going on. It is certainly one of those things that requires several rereads (I am not at all pressed to do this in, say, the next five years) over a lifetime. The series has it’s own dictionary for god-sakes. Anyway, I love those books but this one, THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS, would be a much better intro to Wolfe. It presents itself as 3 novellas, which is a bit disingenuous since you do need to read them in order and, while it certainly doesn’t seem that way at first, they all both take place in the same world as well as connect thematically. The overarching story concerns space-colonialism, specifically Earthlings colonizing the twin planets of Saint Anne and Saint Croix and the issues they run into with the possibly-extinct-possilby-ubiquitous shapeshifting aboriginals. The final story deals with all of this directly, using the Le Guin technique of having a anthropologist study an alien world. This being Wolfe, he’s in space-prison and questions of identity are central. The middle story is “by” the aforementioned anthropologist, who is also a non-central character in the first story, and try to tell the story and recreate the vibe of the planet before human contact. It was my favorite part of the book and I love the name Cedar Branches Waving. The first section is part of a sub-genre that I’ve currently only found 2 members of. The other story, which is also the first story in the volume it’s collected in, is Purity by Thomas Ligotti. The genre (or sub-sub-genre) is “kid finds out his father is a mad scientist.” Again, this being Gene Wolfe we get all sorts of crazy body modifications and comments on slavery and space prisons. I’d recommend this to people new to Wolfe. Also, are there more stories in that sub-sub-genre? 5 Heads.