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People Places and Things
Explanations of people, Places, and Things. Most of these are still deep in development.

Aristeas of the Long Sun
TBOTLS as a re-telling of the story of Aristeas

Apocalypse of the Long Sun
The book of Revelation meets tBOtLS

Apocalypse of "The Fifth Head of Cerberus"
The book of Revelations meets tFHoC

Midas of Urth
Story from Aelian's Varia Historia suggests the unwritten backstory of the Whorl. Also, a lesson in taking Wolfe's online answers at face value.

The Binding of Zeus in Mainframe
Pas vs. Echidna -- an obscure tale from the Homeric cycle enters TBOTLS

Shadows of the Sun
Western Philosophy Vs. Eastern Philosophy in the Short Sun

Thelxepeia’s Mirror
This is a dissection of the major themes of mimicry and artificiality in TBOTLS

The Wolfe and the Laidley Worm
Wolfe's use of the Northeastern English ballads of the Laidley Worm and the hero Kemp Owyne in the Soldier of the Mist and The Book of the Long Sun.

Cmry Mythology in the Whorl

Hesphaestus in the Whorl

Naming Conventions in the Whorl
Who is related to whom? How is silk like sand? What does marble have to do with roses and mint?

The Sacred King of the Long Sun
Robert Grave’s theories of the Sacred King in the Long Sun tale.

Click here to read Marc Anthony Aramini's complete and fully referenced argument that the Planet Green in The Book of the Short Sun is actually Urth in the distant future.

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Map of the Whorl

Elucidations of the Suns

This site is devoted to examining the words and themes of Gene Wolfe’s works. That's a lot of ground to cover.

New

y2karl mentions Map of the Whorl in a quick epitome of websites related to Gene Wolfe arcana.  His reference seems complementary if that can be said of a recommendation in which the reader is told to "shun it".  Heh heh.

Currently the articles and essays on this site only touch on The Fifth Head of Cerberus, The Soldier Novels, The Book of the Long Sun, and The Book of the Short Sun.

If you are not familiar with the Gene Wolfe's works, then Lord knows how you found your way here. Some would warn that to peruse these articles before you have read the complete Sun Cycle will spoil the books for you. I do not argue with that.

But maybe if you haven't read all the books (or perhaps any of them). It could be that sampling a few of these articles will get you decide to find out what you've been missing. Certainly, many people have finished The Book of the New Sun and decided that while they enjoyed the experience at the time, they found it too intellectually exhausting to contemplate taking on a new multi-volume Wolfe novel. I can understand that. The Book of the Long Sun volumes sat on my shelf a long time before I took them down. It was finally a suggestion much like what you may find in one of these articles that made me finally crack the books and see if what I thought I might find, was actually there.

Or maybe you are not interested in Science Fantasy at all. Maybe you came here googling for "termagaunt" or some mythological reference. I assure you, you will find in Wolfe's major novels the proper chemicals to stimulate your lexigraphical and mythological neurons. Nothing else I have read is as thematically dense as Wolfe's writing. If you think you have, then you are likely missing a lot that is going on. One could write a whole book analyzing a single non-central character.

In my opinion, Wolfe is hands down the best SF writer in the business. And he is probably one of the best writers (judged on craft alone) being published today.

Wolfe's major novels, as I see it, are:

By far, the major major novel is The Book of the New Sun. The Wizard Knight is half-way released as we speak and promises to be one of the big ones as well.

The demi-major novels are:

These articles were not written with any kind of plan. As I felt I truly understood a character, influence, or word, I explained it to the best of my ability. Some things I understand better now, than when I first wrote them, but I will stand by 99% of what is here. I've also been derelict about writing new articles lately. Investigating Wolfe's novels leads me compile large lists of books that need reading. However, if you think an article has a large hole in it that needs filling with an article, let me know and I will try. I can see where an article on Incus would be useful. But don't ask for an article on Chenille or Hyacinth. I'm not ready for that yet.

Besides that, I am pretty busy with another Wolfe project. I used to say that in the Long Sun and Short Sun stories, Wolfe had recreated Gwydion's riddle as exegeted by Robert Graves in his The White Goddess -- threading many various themes and inviting the reader to unravel them Graves-style. I slowly began to grasp that (while I was not wrong in that assessment) Wolfe is even more dense and twisted than than that. After reading The Knight, I saw that there was actually an underlying method to Wolfe's particular madness. I am in the process of writing a Preliminary To Further Wolfe Criticism -- a critical work on which all other Wolfe criticism should build. Does that sound grandiose? Well, it I suppose it is. Actually it will only cover the common thread...the common foundation of Wolfe's major novels. I'm finally beginning to think I understand Wolfe, and my admiration for his work has grown with that understanding.

 He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty...By pure thought, by concentration of mind, the riddle, he believed, would be revealed to the initiate.
John Maynard Keynes, Newton the Man

--- James Wynn

The Book of the Long Sun

A single novel in four volume's (Nightside of, Lake of, Caldé of, and Exodus From the Long Sun), it is set in the "universe" (a questionable term in this case) of The Book of the New Sun.

The setting is a humongous ship planet sized, called the Whorl. The inhabitants live in cities when they look up, sky is filled with the lights of distant lands. This is the sort of information on the fly-leaf so I don't consider it a spoiler.

You will be glad to know that this story does not include lots of obscure words that you will feel obligated to look up. You will be glad to know that Wolfe will at least trick you into thinking that this story is less occult than The Book of the New Sun. It will not be true, but you will think it. In my opinion this work it is every bit as enjoyable as The Book of the New Sun – more in some ways.

The Book of the New Sun was the first Gene Wolfe story I ever read – and it was work. It was worthwhile work -- I could not stop reading it -- but I had a miserable suspicion throughout that I had no idea WHAT was going on. Severian seemed to drift from one place to another, from one woman to another, on an invisible literary current without any dramatic motivation. I had never seen anything like Wolfe’s writing at the time (I now recognize it as a style influenced by Jack Vance); I was transfixed, but befuddled.

The Long Sun is like The New Sun and most of Wolfe’s fiction I’ve read since in that everything has a subtext – a bird is never just a bird, a tower is never just a tower – but to me it was pure fun. Wolfe has managed to imbued his characters with normal seemingly transparent dramatic motivations for their actions while maintaining their deep subtexts. The characters are clearly more than just puppets of the plot. In fact, the characters are positively Dickensian in that you meet someone, and think “he’s a Remora.” Potto alone reminded me of half a dozen college professors.

Yet, I am convinced that the narrative is not so transparent. There are several undelineated sub-plots going on here, and even the clues to them are devilishly concealed.

The Book of the Short Sun

A novel in three volumes: On Blue's Waters, In Green's Jungles, and Return To The Whorl. As I explain in "Aristeaus of the Long Sun," The Book of the Long Sun was conceived as a complete story. However, The Book of the Short Sun is the true originally conceived ending of the Long Sun story. It covers the trials of the Whorl's colonists on their destination planets.

The Soldier Novels

These consist of The Soldier of the Mist and The Soldier of Arete. These stories are the daily diary of a man in 478 B.C. in Greece just after the Persian invasion. He has general amnesia, and cannot retain new memories longer than a single day. Consequently, not even he can attest to the veracity of the bizarre events written there. He only believes he wrote it because people tell him he has -- so the narrator is in the same fix as the reader. And to what the entries attest is pretty fantastic.

Not much here on these books yet except for the essay "The Wolfe and the Laidley Worm."

We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us,
and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.
G.W. Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse