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On Blue's Waters: Volume One of 'The Book of the Short Sun'

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Nobody can sneak up on a reader from behind like Gene Wolfe. Many writers can aspire only to devising plot twists, and unless they're very lucky the reader will see the suprise coming from miles away. Wolfe, by contrast, is perfectly capable of making revelations in the midst of his narrative, or near the end of it, that are profoundly shocking to your expectations.

And it's not merely the details of the plot that reader has to re-evaluate when Wolfe draws the curtain away like this; it extends to the most basic assumptions about the story, things that you believed settled on page 1, like "who's telling this story?" and "why are they telling it?" This author knows that the answers to these questions are the source of a novel's power to engage the mind and the emotions of the reader.

In this book, as in others, he's provided answers that are mobile. You may end up answering the questions differently at the end of the book than you would have when only halfway finished. And if you re-read the book again later, you may come up with yet a third set of answers.

Wolfe is admittedly not as easy to read as, say, Robert Jordan, but the rewards for reading Wolfe are on a different order of magnitude altogether. Somebody like Jordan lets you live for a short time in another world. Wolfe lets you live for a short time in another world, to discover that the real world has become larger when you return.

I read this book the first time it came out, then I reread it when I receieved the second (In Green's Jungles)in the trilogy to refresh my memory.

Written as if it were an actual journal, the narrator describes his journey and its purpose: an odyssey across the oceans of the planet Blue to reach a spaceship that will return to the Whorl (a generation starship) to retrieve a god-like man named Silk, who is believed to be capable of saving the narrator's city from self-destruction. There are also the the events currently happening to the character, who is the Solomonesque Rajan (a type of ruler)of a people far from his native land. Both stories escalate in tension. During his odyssey (and I use this word deliberately), the narrator encounters a number of wonderfully drawn characters. There is the blind and probably crazy robot Maytera Marble and her 'granddaughter' Mucor, who is capable of sending her spirit across the whorl of Blue. (Both are characters from the Long Sun series; it is best to read Long Sun first, but not necessary.) When leaving the rock, the hero is joined by Mucor's loyal hus named Babbie, an eightlegged creature of enormous intelligence. Later, he will also encounter a mermaid and her goddess Mother and an inhumu, a vampire-like creature from Blue's twin planet Green.

Have you wondered why I haven't named the main narrator? That is because it is unclear exactly who he is. Ostensibly, it is Horn. Throughout, Horn describes physical changes that have occurred to him. He occasionally lapses into describing Horn in the third person. He also carries artifacts that at one time belonged to Silk, including a night chough and an azoth. It is likely that he is a least partially Silk, though that is unclear.

Running out of paper, the narrator quickly describes the climax of both stories, which are more cliffhangers than legitimate endings.

Throughout are references to his visit to the planet Green, which are tantalizingly vague but detailed enough to whet the appeptite for the next two books, and then there are the numerous references to his failure to find Silk. Yet if he is at least partially Silk as seems probable, then what happened on Green and did he reach the Whorl?

Like nearly all Wolfe novels, it demands an enormous amount of patience and focus on the reader's part. It is initially disorienting because it is the rambling thoughts of the narrator and because it is difficult to know exactly who he is; it is definitely worth a second and perhaps even a third reading. It is not a novel for readers who want those nine billion page pale Tolkien imitations; it is not a beach novel. If your definition of speculative fiction encompasses only the innumerable Star Trek paperbacks (and those terrible crimes against the wallet: the hardback novels), then this novel is not for you. It is a difficult read, but for the patient and careful reader it offers the pleasure of discovery and thoughtful analysis as well as the wonderful style we have come to expect from Wolfe. Sadly, while it will no doubt be enjoyed by the many Wolfe fans and perhaps a few other adventurous souls, it will largely be ignored by both the critics and the majority of readers. This is shameful, for this is likely to be one of the greatest American novels of the last hundred years.

Gene Wolfe is a treasure. A true original. Authors hold him in awe. Readers fumble trying to express the magic of his work. Astounding stories, perfect craft, and a depth of emotional and philosophical courage that is nearly impossible to describe. Among its many delights and shocks, ON BLUE'S WATERS is perhaps the most moving portrait of a haunted man that I have ever read. Under the guise of a typical science fiction extended adventure series Wolfe is creating an entirely new thing: a meditation on the journey of faith and the search for truth refracted through a dazzling array of unforgettable characters. Why doesn't everyone know Gene Wolfe is the best writer alive today?

Gene Wolfe has been hailed as a modern day Melville. No superlative is too great for this wonderfully gifted writer. He is also one of fictions best kept secrets. While other far less talented writers continue to grace best seller lists, Mr. Wolfe remains, despite having won numerous awards as well as the accolades of nearly all of his contemporaries, an almost unknown writer. Perhaps this is because Mr. Wolfe prefers to remain apart from those authors who write mere formula fiction. Mr. Wolfe writes what he is moved to write, perhaps choosing to ignore what publishers today claim audiences read; perhaps hoping that his audience will find him, as I found him many years ago after my first reading of The Book of the New Sun. Since that first reading I've lost count of how many times I've enjoyed the treasure those four books comprise. Mr. Wolfe writes with passion, his characters are wonderfully flawed, truly human, and his plots are character-driven. His language is at once simple, yet elegant. Certainly his work contains very little, if any, of what defines today's formula fiction. Alas, perhaps that is what keeps it from enjoying far greater acclaim.

On Blue's Waters is the latest creation from this gifted writer. On Blue's Waters, the first book of a trilogy, picks up twenty years after Exodus From the Long Sun (the finale of Mr. Wolfe's previous tetralogy). Horn (one of Silks former students) is the central character and narrator. He has been charged with returning to the long sun whorl - the gigantic spaceship that brought them to Blue - to find Silk and to persuade him to return to Blue and rule as Caldé. As do all of Mr. Wolfe's previous works, On Blue's Waters brims with wonder as Horn must find his way to the village of Pajarocu, where he must board one of the landers that brought the emigrants to their new world and return to the whorl on which he was born. Horn has many encounters along the way; he meets and falls in love with a woman from the sea - a siren - as well as one of the inhumi - strange creatures that feed on human blood. In return for saving Horn's life, Horn promises to allow the inhumu to accompany him on his journey back to the long sun whorl.

Since Horn is the narrator, On Blue's Waters takes on the flavor of a diary, with Horn's entries written to Nettle, his childhood sweetheart and wife, whom he left behind on Lizard, the island they chose to settle on when they first came to Blue. Strangely reminiscent of The Book of the New Sun, Horn, er, Mr. Wolfe populates On Blue's Waters with many similar thought-provoking little philosophical gems. Horn: "This short sun is well named; it speaks daily of the transitory nature of all it sees, drawing for us the pattern of human life, fair at first and growing ever stronger so that we cannot help believing it will continue as it began; but losing strength from the moment it is strongest." Horn again: "Time is a sea greater than our sea... Its tides batter down all walls, and what the tides of time batter down is never rebuilt. Not larger. Not smaller. Never as it was." Horn yet a third time: "To do nothing is a talent, one I have not got. I have known a few people who possessed it to a superlative degree, as one of my scribes here does. They can, if they wish, sit or even stand for hours without occupation and without thought. Their eyes are open and they see the whorl before them, but see it only as the eyes of potatoes do." Marvelous prose. As a writer myself, I can only hope to one day write something half as beautiful and meaningful.

On Blue's Waters will not disappoint those who have read Mr. Wolfe's previous books, and for those who have not, it will serve as a wonderful introduction to this most gifted writer. Mr. Wolfe, I look forward to the conclusion of this epic, and anxiously await your next masterpiece.

J. Conrad Guest

With On Blue's Waters Gene Wolfe begins a new trilogy to stand with (and perhaps complete) the other series in his Urth cycle, the Book of the New Sun and the Book of the Long Sun. This trilogy, called The Book of the Short Sun, tells the story of the adventures of the settlers of the Whorl, a generation starship, as they colonize two habitable planets, Blue and Green.

In this trilogy Wolfe has adopted a rather unadorned first-person voice, stylistically suitable for the novel's narrator, a seemingly straightforward man named Horn. Horn was a teenager when he boarded a lander to leave the Whorl: Now he is a man in middle age, well settled on Blue with a wife and children and a prospering business. Yet he readily leaves to search out his former teacher and mentor, the one-time Calde of the City of Viron, Patera Silk.

On Blue's Waters follows Horn as he begins his quest for Silk, which will, over the course of the trilogy, take him across Blue (much of the narrative takes place aboard a small ship), to the virulent jungle planet Green, and at last back to the Whorl where he and Silk were born.

Blue was not uninhabited when the humans offloaded from the Whorl. It's former owners, known variously as the Vanished People and the Neighbors, are still seen from time to time. This species, as well as humans, are plagued by creatures known as inhuma. As Green makes its approach toward Blue the inuhuma fly from one planet to another, where they feed off the humans as they fed off the Neighbors, gaining nourishment and more from the blood they drain.

Horn makes his way toward the city of Pajarocu, where a working lander waits to return to the Whorl. Along the way he collects a surrogate family. There is Seawrack, a siren-like woman who is a foster child of a strange entity of Blue's oceans; Krait, an inhumu who becomes Horn's adoptive son; and Babbie, a hus, an animal of Blue who cannot speak, but may be intelligent.

Much has been made here and elsewhere of the difficulties in accessing the writings of Gene Wolfe. Wolfe writes dense, subtle and sometimes contradictory novels, and often employs a highly ornate style. Some have suggested that On Blue's Waters is perhaps a place for Wolfe neophytes to begin, as Horn "speaks" far more plainly that Severain, the narrator of The Book of the New Sun. In truth, however, this simplicity is, like so much of Wolfe's work, deceptive. The nature of many characters remains unclear throughout the series; motivations are never plainly explicated. The events may seem to be clear -- Horn leaves his home and family, sails across an ocean, finds new friends -- but are, perhaps, far less understandable than they first seem to be.

In truth, On Blue's Waters is vintage Gene Wolfe. If you are among his fans (as I am), it is an engrossing and wholly satifying return to his themes of virtue, piety, sin and redemption, as well as a first rate romp across an alien world. If you've read and enjoyed other volumes of the Sun series, you must continue onto the Book of the Short Sun. However, if you've disliked Wolfe in the past, there's no assurance this novel will provide a friendlier introduction.

The hardbound edition is a very handsome volume, with good binding and paper (something which would be of great importance to Horn) and a nice dust jacket design. I would recommend the purchase of a hardcover edition to Wolfe's fans, as there is no writer more worth rereading.

I looked at my local Barnes and Noble. I drove to a Borders which was over 30 minutes away, betting that Borders would be better than B&N (typically, it is). I called the two local sci-fi specialty shops to see if they had it. None of the above had the new Wolfe book. It is terribly embarrassing. Orson Scott Card, who once was a fine writer and is now turning out drivel, has lots of shelf space. The Phanton Menace has lots of shelf. Even William Shatner, unconsciouly ironic in his latest, has space. What is going on? Is Wolfe too literate for people?

IN any event, you simply cannot continue living if you haven't read Wolfe. Start with the Torturer series; it and Dune represent the two best achievements of the genre. Then read the Calde series -- the prose is not as rich as the Torturer series, but the plot is more compelling. And then go buy this book, and pray Wolfe continues to write.

Many have compared this to Homer's Odyssey. On retrospect I would agree. This book continues Horn's story and adventures on the planet Blue. What I like about Wolfe is that from any point in time you not only go forward but backward. As he reveals Horn's future we continue to learn more and more about his past. What we thought we already read and understood in the Long Sun books is further explained, questioned and explored. Like peeling the layers of an onion Wolfe keeps us hooked looking towards the future and the past.

I am currently reading In Green's Jungles and can't wait for Return to the Whorl. Once finished I'll probably go all the way back to the Book of the New Sun and reread all three series in order. You can never reread Wolfe enough. You will always find more nuggets.

On Blue's Waters is the start of a new trilogy by Gene Wolfe, that are The Books of the Short Sun. The story takes place fifteen years after the Book of the Long Sun, where the inhabitants of the planetoidal starship, the Whorl were forced to flee.

Horn, the narrator of the earlier work, now tells his own story in a simple clear prose that is straightforward yet filled with twists at every turn. The narration is a mixture of journal entries looking at past events, the present and dovetailing along the future with references to the book In Green's Jungles. Life is hard on the newly settled planet of Blue with very little or no technology. Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves and he is regarded by all as a good character of man. Whilst the city states of Blue grow, there is a burgeoning need to establish civil rule. Horn is the only one who can locate the once great leader Patera Silk, and convince him to return to Blue and lead them all to prosperity. Horn sets sail in a small boat (reminiscent of the Odyssey), on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now legendary Patera Silk (reported to be maybe on the elusive island of Pajarocu or the planet Green). Along the way, our hero meets some fantastic characters each of whom can have a novel unto themselves. One of them is Seawrack, a beautiful sea siren and Babbie an intelligent 7 legged boar-like creature. Then there is the enigmatic inhumu. A highly intelligent alien race of space vampires (who are shape shifters), just to name a few.

The book can stand on it's own but I highly recommend reading the Books of the Long Sun first to know who and what Patera Silk was all about. The pathos, irony, the plot and prose are all well done and Horn's tale of adventure and struggle, will be with you for a long time. These works will be celebrated for years to come as exemplary 21st Century literature. Blue aptly makes-up for any shortcomings in Epiphany of the Long Sun (the end was little confusing but this book clears up a lot of that). As with Mr. Wolfe's stories, the end continues to ask more questions. So, the only drawback to this work is you'll want to start reading the next book, In Green's Jungles. Thank you Mr. Wolfe!

In the continuation of Wolfe's classics, The Book of the Short Sun and The Book of the Long Sun, On Blue's Waters is a tour de force for Wolfe. His ability to describe the fantastic and the ugly with equal beauty make this book impossible to put down. The best part is that it's a trilogy. A must read for sci-fi/ fantasty buffs.

This is a work of art.

I would be hard pressed to call it "Science Fiction": it transcends the category.

Beautiful prose and wonderful story-telling.