ON BLUE’S WATERS - GENE WOLFE

Every closer to finishing the complete Solar Cycle. Wolfe’s twelve novel long scifi/fantasy epic has loomed over my reading list for a couple of years now. The books themselves can be slotted into the four-volume Book of the New Sun, plus a one book coda, followed by a four book long series called Book of the Long Sun, and now this final series of three novels known as the Book of the Short Sun. It’s a pretty amazing accomplishment, it’s mind bending that he could keep all of this in his head and release it over 3 decades, it sort of as if George RR Martin was able to complete this Song of Ice and Fire books successfully. But on to this book in particular, the first of the Short Sun novels. At first glance, these volumes are much more closely related to the previous series. It takes a while to see how Long Sun and New Sun are connected but OBW takes place about 20 years after the events of Long Sun and stars a “minor” (who we learn, late in the Long Sun series, is the diegetic author of the Long Sun books) character from that series. But, of course, since this is Wolfe there are immediately all sorts of questions about the identities of the characters and the circumstances of the books writing. Nominally, it is Horn’s Journal and his story, told from 2 perspectives. In one story, he’s reminiscing on his quest to leave Blue, a mostly water planet where he’s been for 20 years, to travel back to the generational spaceship, the Whorl, that was the setting of Long Sun, in order to find that series’ main character, Silk, and to convince him to come to Blue and be their leader. While recounting that story, Horn is also telling us the “contemporary” circumstances of his life, where he is Goan, or ruler, so another city on Blue that is at war with a neighbor as well as a race of quasi-vampires called Inhumi from Green, a nearby planet covered in forests. In this timeline, he seems to have already returned from the Whorl and Green and seems to suggest that he’s failed his mission. But it’s Wolfe so there’s also the strong suggestion that the book is actually being written by Horn’s children, Hoof and Hide, and their wives, at some point further in the future, and many, many suggestions that the Goan Horn is perhaps Silk and he doesn’t know it for some reason. I’m also going to guess that the setting, Blue and Green, are Ushas and Lune, which are Earth and the Moon, set far, far into the future, and that the mysterious sea-monster Mother is the sea-monster Abaya from BotNS. I’ll also guess that Horn has died and been resurrected at this point, though he doesn’t know it and we’ll find out about it later. He also makes several references to not eating, not being hungry and not being thirsty, which makes me believe he might also have some connection to the Inhumi. The book also parallels The Odyssey, including a cyclops, a pig/man connection (two actually) witches and a  journey to all sorts of strange lands. In the most troublesome part of the book, it also features a siren-character who joins the crew. However, when she sings her song, Horn violently attacks and rapes her, which he feels bad about but is sort of dropped as a plot point. It reads as a real fumble, incredibly off-putting and misogynistic in 2022 and it’s not clear what we’re supposed to take away from the scene.  Horn writes at one point, “There are many things I should have written less about, and a few about which I should have written more.” which is a sort of perverse inversion of reading Wolfe, where he writes very little about what you actually need to know and leaves it up to the reader to piece together the narrative and themes. I’m excited to read the last 2 books in the series. I'm sure this will only be the beginning of my engagement with the Solar Cycle. Wolfe writes for rereads so after the next two I’ll be able to truly start to begin to understand the greater picture of the whole series. 2 Alien Worlds