The Book of the New Sun, Vol. 3: The Sword of
the Lictor – Gene Wolfe (1981)
My real-life “Severian”,
as opposed to the person narrating the Book of the New Sun, would be so
happy. This guy has been hassling me (kindly)
for a while now to finish reading the Book of the New Sun, and I put it off due
to my mind being pulled to other topics and books. However, having picked up and read the 2nd
volume of Gene Wolfe’s masterful tetralogy, I found myself unable to pull away
from the ancient world of Urth, and the lives of the people that Severian runs
into and becomes part of as he sets off toward his destiny. I had to pick up the 3rd volume,
and start in on it as soon as I had finished The Claw of the Conciliator.
Our narrator, Severian,
has experienced and grown much since we first met him as an Apprentice to the
Guild of Torturers. He has become a
Master Torturer, and his services have been put to use as he travels through
Urth. He has glimpsed through the myths
and tales of his world, and begun to see the truths underlying everything he
thought he knew. Urth is a very, very
old place, seemingly a far-future Earth, one in which, as Severian finds out,
humanity left for the stars and returned from the stars a long time ago. Much of humanity exists in a feudal system,
with a few ruling groups and most of the masses just working hard at staying
fed and alive.
Gene Wolfe is such a
clever writer. His narrator claims to
have an eidetic memory of sorts, being able to recall any and all events that
have occurred in his life, but this is not exactly true. He doubts his memory at times, due partly to the fact that his mind has “absorbed” the mind of an aristocratic Lady named
Thecla, which causes him to recall memories that are not his own. To add another level to this, Gene Wolfe
writes this tale as if it were his translation of an ancient text recounted by
Severian himself. This allows Wolfe to
keep the reader on edge, wondering what new revelation is to come next, and whether
it will even be recognized as that. As
Severian works to unlock this puzzle he experiences the disjointed state that
comes from the knowledge that every new revelation actually leads to more
confusion, much like reality.
Most science
fiction/fantasy books do not work this way.
As their protagonists progress in their stories the world around them
becomes clearer, and their knowledge of it more secure, leading to a great apex
where the truths of that fictional world are revealed to the characters and the
reader. I am unaware of where Gene Wolfe
is taking this tale, but that makes for a more thrilling ride! The real world, the world we all live in, is
exceedingly complex, and the more you seek the more complexity you find. It is true, as the wise man is claimed to
have said, that the more you learn the more you realize you know nothing.
We are victims of our
personal reality tunnels, and seeking any answers will always lead you to more
questions. In this sense, consciousness
and reality appear to be fractal systems.
Maybe Gene Wolfe was somehow innately aware of this, even before Chaos
Theory and fractal geometry were studied and understood as they are today. The best writers and artists are the ones
that can pull truths from our collective experience and share it with the rest
of us, sometimes encapsulating past experiences in novel ways, and at other
times seemingly predicting the future state of humanity as they gather from the
clues all around us. Gene Wolfe was a
master at both of these, and it is what makes the Book of the New Sun such
gripping reading. One more to go…
(This book can be read here: THE SWORD OF THE LICTOR )
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