Customer Reviews

The Fifth Head of Cerberus

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Out of the many, many fine books Gene Wolfe has done, this is probably considered his greatest single novel (as opposed to the Long Sun, Short Sun, etc series, all of which deserve their critical acclaim) due to its richness and complexity. People looking for an easy way to break into Wolfe's writing won't find it in this book, he piles on the head hurtin' stuff pretty early and it doesn't let up, adding layer upon layer of meaning and detail to the point where the reader cannot ignore it, you have to spend time actively interepreting the novel or reading it becomes a wasted effort. Such is the genius of Wolfe and of not taking the easy way out. The novel actually consists of three fairly separate novellas and while Wolfe could have devised some vague basic linkage and taken three novellas and dumped this arbitrary linkage over them and been done with it, he goes way further than that. The novellas are all different, but they're also all connected in some way, either through offhand scenes or subtle clues or overarching themes or perhaps all of that and more. There's a reason for nearly everything done in the book, from the placement of the novellas to the order of events happening in each section, heck, even the titles are chosen for specific reasons that resonate within the structure as a whole. The first novella sets the scene, a pair of sister planets orbiting each other, colonized by man, and rumored to have once been home to a race of shapeshifters who may have been so good at shapeshifting that they took humanity's place and then promptly forgot they did (the "copy is not the original, or is it?" argument), one of the ideas explored throughout the novel is this question of identity, whether the human race has really been replaced and if so, do the new people count as humans since they're like them in every way. And would anyone even notice? This is not typical SF stuff and it's not told in a typical SF way, for every nuance that I "got" I'm sure a hundred more went over my head, this is a book that demands rereading and is so far from the "So, Zolgar, we meet again" type of SF that fans of literate, intelligent novels will want to jump up and cheer. For all the literary tricks in the novel, it never comes off as pretentious, Wolfe is exploring real themes with real resonance and it all works with the scheme of the novel, none of it can be confused with arty indulgence. Still kind of in print (most bookstores seem to carry at least one copy) it's an excellent introduction to Wolfe, since the longer series can be a bit overwhelming, but again, don't think you're getting off easy. Smaller doesn't mean simpler and shorter doesn't mean less work is involved. People who demand a little more effort from their book and want more than simple entertainment, regardless of genre, should give this a look.

THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS, Gene Wolfe's first book-length work of note, is a collection of three seemingly unrelated novellas that are, at the close of the third, shown to be cunningly interlinked. The first novella, "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", was published in one of Damon Knight's Orbit anthologies in 1974, while the latter two were written and published together to expand the themes and plot of the first. The setting of it all is Sainte Anne and Saint Croix, two sister planets revolving around a common center of gravity in a far-away solar system, colonized first by Frenchmen and later occupied (in a brutal fashion, it is hinted) by later waves of English-speaking colonists. Before men arrived, legend goes, Sainte Anne was inhabited by an indigenous race of shapeshifters, which humans wiped out. Or did the aboriginals wipe out the colonists, imitating them so faithfully that they forgot their own origins? The novellas touch upon many themes of post-colonial theory.

In the first novella, a young man grows up in a strangely sheltered environment on Saint Croix, discovering at last the secrets of his scientist father's work. Here, the aboriginal inhabitants of the sister planet are only briefly mentioned, but the plot has much more local concerns. The second novella "'A Story' by John V. Marsch" is inevitably confusing to first-time readers, and initially seems unrelated to the first. It is the story of an adolescent's initiation to manhood in a primitive society, a dreamquest that brings him across a bizarre landscape and introducing him to various tribes espousing peculiar religious beliefs. In the third novella, "V.R.T." a bureaucrat on Saint Croix goes over the diaries of an imprisoned anthropologist. Again, it seems a complete change of direction with little to link it to the first two, but by the end a story arc spanning the three novellas is revealed. THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS is an excellent example of Wolfe's love for mysteries, some revealed so casually the reader might easily miss it, and others so deeply buried that it may take several tries for the author to find the key. This all gives the book excellent re-read value. And here one can see the genesis of the techniques that Wolfe used in later works, such as his masterpiece The Book of the New Sun.

The narrative here is so ingeniously constructed that I would recommend THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS to any lover of literature, even those that are usually wary of anything called science-fiction. Wolfe's novel PEACE, published a year later, continues this strong writing and is also highly recommend, and its plot might be attractive to a more general audience.

When I originally read this book, I had trouble making it through the first of the three novellas. I wasn't prepared for Wolfe's many layers, and thus missed a great deal of symbolism and hidden meaning.

When I came back to this book and read the final two novellas, something clicked and I realized how beautiful and subtle a writer Wolfe is, filled with ideas. The stories are interpretable many ways, and thus with each reading of them I find myself thinking more and more, and enjoying the book more and more.

For anyone who is interested in the deeper meanings of Wolfe's works, I would suggest searching the Internet Public Library for criticism on him, specifically the Post-Colonial thought found throughout the novellas in Fifth Head of Cerberus.

Get this and all of Gene Wolfe's works.

Three seperate stories, which when completed, reveal a fourth hideen story that proves to be as perplexing as the other three. While none of the three stories are directly connected in any major way, one character travels through the first and third, and is the author (apparently) of the second.

These stories do not directly tell the reader the truth behind the mystery of the abos, indeed, only the third is directly related to the search for them. Yet, we find ourselves catching glimpses of hints of them, hiding here and there.

In the first story, a character is accused as an abo. Initally this is discounted - the character doign the accusing has an ulterior motive, of which the reader is well aware. Yet in the third story, the accused is revisited, and having read this third story - I am no longer sure.

Who was an abo? Were they all abos? Or no? Did the abos intermingle witht he human populace to such a degree that they forgot themselves? Did some humans, seeking to return to a simpler form of life, become the Free People, the term the abos call themselves? Did the abos ever exist?

While the book doesnt provoke any of these thoughts while reading it, in retrospect and rumination - it provides a thought-provoking read. If humanity met a shape-changing species that took on our form - how would we tell ourselves from them? Would there be any difference?

A great book.

I liken another of Gene Wolfe's works, The Book of the New Sun, to the myriad pieces of a mosaic that have been jumbled and have no mortar to hold them together. There are pretty bits and pieces but no overall impression that emerges from it. The stories in The Fifth Head of Cerberus, however, are more like three paintings -- a triptych, as it were. Each brush stroke is thoughtfully applied, revealing only as much as Wolfe wants us to see. The synergism of the three stories -- between the slight overlaps of theme, character and location -- becomes entrancing.

The key to why this works is focus. Each tale has a unique story structure. Each of the three has a different voice and perspective. Symbolism and allusion are used sparingly and well, enmeshed with Wolfe's imagery to add depth to the stories. There is an attention to detail that fleshes out the stories convincingly, giving them a distinct sense of place.

In the title story, Wolfe describes a melancholy world of decaying grandeur where the humans make your skin crawl and the most sympathetic character is a machine.

The second tale is in some ways the strongest entry and in others the weakest. The imagery is lyrical and haunting, told in an intriguing folkloric style. I enjoyed the issues of identity and consciousness Wolfe raises, and the elliptical change in subject to convey these. But, unrelated to this theme, he peppers throughout the story awkward sentence structure and the use of vague pronouns. This seems to be intentional, as if Wolfe enjoys these little mental misdirections. It pulls me out of the experience of the story and so detracts from the work, though not greatly.

In my favorite of the three, Wolfe lets us peer over the shoulder of an officer and read the private journals of one of his prisoners, presenting them to us out of chronological order so that important hints are dropped in the most careful way, culminating in a clever conundrum: is he really what we think he is or merely mad from long confinement? It's rewarding fun to fit these puzzle pieces together.

All in all, Wolfe delivers enough of a payoff to be satisfying, and yet keeps the reader wanting more -- in just the correct proportions to be both entertaining and thought provoking.

How does one even begin to describe The Fifth Head of Cerebrus. Needless to say, very few authors have ever had a first novel that good. In fact, very few authors have ever written any novel that good. A lot of people found the book strange and complicated...well so did I, and that's the whole allure of this book.

Mr. Wolfe has an amazing imagination, as you will immediately see upon reading any of his novels. Fifth Head is filled with haunting visions of a distant colony in the far future; technology is advanced in some areas but antiquated in many others. The society and culture are masterfully rendered.

The second novella is about a young man finding his twin; the viewpoint of these people is so strange and alien that I should have quickly become confused or bored. And yet I didn't; such was Wolfe's mastery of the writing style. No matter how strange things got, you read right along as if you had no other option.

The third novella consists of a military captain reading a prisoner's diary, returning to the society of the first novella. Again, the pure imagination is astounding. The characters seem like real, tangible people, not prefabricated creations placed down for our amusement. They are real people coping with impossibly strange situations.

If you're looking for a good book to read, then read The Fifth Head of Cerebrus. No, it's not light reading, but it's worth every minute. After reading this book, I immediately became a Wolfe fan. Great, amazing stuff.

Oh, and if you liked this book, I recommend Frank Herbert's "Dune" and Dan Simmons' "Hyperion." These books also have outlandish and amazing scenes, worlds, people, technology, etc.

Gene Wolfe seldom tackles genuinely "new" science-fictional ground. Clones, shapeshifters, colonized planets, genocide, "uploaded" intelligences, and the other SF tropes of this masterfully interwoven set of three novellas are often-visited ground. But only Wolfe brings the intensity of vision and nuanced, complex, evocative, winding prose of Proust, the nightmarish flagellation of the soul of Kafka, the moral clarity and sympathy of, well, Gene Wolfe to bear--not so much "talking about" these ideas as using these ideas to go deeper and to examine the nature of identity, self, guilt and knowledge. Wolfe is not guilty, however, of the sin of using his created worlds merely as metaphors for our current conditions; rather, Wolfe grounds his insights, which are universal, in the concrete conditions of a fictional reality, as only the best writers manage--to neither be idealistic nor materialist, but rather, Incarnational.

Like a Flatlander getting to explore a tesseract, this novel will at first leave you scratching your head in bewilderment. What really happened? Do the three novellas contained within FHoC truly interlock, other than sharing a few characters? Do so many of the baroque, seemingly oblique character descriptions have a deeper meaning? These and more questions arise until at last you're forced to realize that a two dimensional, linear plot analysis won't yield a satisfying interpretation.

So, as is often the case with the fiction of Wolfe, subsequent readings are a must. Dusting off chips of clues picked up in the last two novellas to fill in cracks in the first, and vice versa, you begin to see that all is not as it first appeared. Yes, the novellas interlock; yes, the descriptions are highly relevant. And, your idea of what really happened is likely to change with each of several readings.

Wolfe was quoted as saying (roughly) that good fiction may be defined as that which yields greater reward upon subsequent reading. If this idea of re-reading a book puts you off, this one is not for you. In fact, this could be said of most of Wolfe's work. His attention to detail, use of arcane etymology in deriving character, place, and object names, and subtle refusal to bow to the now standard requirement of a Hollywood wrap-up speech at the end to recapitulate and explain everything you've just read -- well, let's just say that Wolfe's work doesn't lend itself to "airport" reading.

FHoC is multi-faceted, and although later works such as the Sun series are quite entertaining even at the surface, this novel lacks such fine lapping and as such isn't as rewarding if a certain amount of thinking isn't attempted by the reader.

FHoC gives the reader a glistening of some of Wolfe's earlier ideas that were later incorporated into the stories that have been given greater acclaim. This is a must-read for hardcore fans of the Sun series. You'll see the genesis of some of Wolfe's New Sun philosophies diffracted throughout this novel, along with a refinement of his unreliable narrator technique.

If you did happen to find this book in an airport, it was likely put there by mistake. Put it back, grab the Stephen King, and enjoy your flight. King writes himself into his own novels, too, but with so much less tact.

Science fiction as a genre is a useful place for Wolfe to explore the theme of uncertain and time-dependent identity, because the reader only knows as much about the setting as the book lets on. Understanding of Saint Anne and Saint Croix, the twin planets on which the three novellas of the "Fifth Head" takes place, requires us to take an analytical approach: perhaps as a psychologist or anthropologist (there is one mad psychologist and two anthropologists to show us the way). After re-reading the first novella, I think that the real enthusiasm of Wolfe was to show how limited the characters' understanding of their world is; and the surprises that come up are subtly foreshadowed in the first story. This is following in the footsteps of the good (and often great) Jack Vance.

Wolfe goes beyond what Vance has done (at least in the Vance books that I've read) in using allusions and indirect points of view to enrich the story. By allusions I refer to the tie-in to the Book of Revelations in the first part and the resemblence to Conrad in the last part. Indirect points of view are used in all three novellas: childhood memories drive the first (and the most enjoyable) novella, the middle novella is a recitation of a (fraudulently) indiginous inhabitant of Saint Anne to an anthropologist, and the last novella is a mixture of writings of the same (?) anthropologist in a scrambled time-order.

Wolfe presents Vail's hypothesis and lets us decide whether or not it's true - the shifting identities throughout the book create what appears to be a complex puzzle to which the answer might be buried in the details. In this way, Wolfe shows just how difficult contemporary science is: in order to find something new and useful about nature, one has to rely on the validity of a mountain of past observations and reasonings. Often,there's no real certainty about the most fundamental things that the sciences are built upon.

Some of the reviews of this book centered on messages Wolfe may have been sending about colonies and the treatment of indiginous populations. I'm thinking that anthropology and psychology (two sciences going under radical changes around the time of first publication, 1972) were not devices, but the purpose of "Fifth Head."

One does not have to be scientist, obviously, to appreciate the complexities of the book, but it helps to understand how equivocal some of the fundamental questions were being addressed in the "human" sciences at the time. How should we raise our children? Where did we come from? Who came to North America first? These days, genetics are revolutionizing and (apperently) clearing away a lot of the fog surrounding these basic questions: something like Vail's hypothesis would get answered very quickly by a gene chip. It's much more difficult now to imprison somebody with purely circumstantial evidence with the availability of DNA testing. I give my highest recommendation to read Wolfe's novel, as well as re-reading of the first part. "Fifth Head" may serve as a classic reminder of the natural world, as was understood, before the genome revolution.

Gene Wolfe's _5th Head of Cerberus_ was originally published in 1972. The Orb Books / Tom Doherty Associates re-issue is paperbound on acid-free paper. The first of the three novellas originally appeared in Damon Knight's 1972 _Orbit_ anthology; Wolfe dedicated the book to Knight.

Wolfe manipulates the reader's point of view in a three headed story that examines the themes of Personal Identity and Self-Knowledge. Wolfe is particularly adept at looking outward from within the minds of his characters, and the structure of the intertwined novellas is calculated to capitalize on this strength. The protagonist in the first novella resonates with the same qualities of dispassionate narrative that Severian uses to relate his story in the more richly-developed world of the _Shadow of the Torturer_. The second novella is a story within a story that follows the form of Wolfe's early other-worlds narratives. The third novella reminds us a bit of the fragmented introspection typical of _The Doctor of Death Island_.

The behaviorial sciences -- anthropology, sociology, and psychology -- form the template of the book's ideas, but Wolfe weaves many dark threads into his tapestry: a revered house of prostitution, five generations of self-cloning, a close approximation of a replicated personality, slavery, murder, cannibalism, infant kidnapping, tribal warfare, racial genocide, colonial conquest, and an imputed identity theft.

Wolfe's fine writing style is a consistent delight for the thinking reader, filled with multiple layered symbols, metaphors, and wit.