The Book of the New Sun (1980–1983, 1987) is a four-volume science fantasy novel written by the American author Gene Wolfe. The work is in four parts with a fifth novel acting as a coda to the main story. It inaugurated the "Solar Cycle" that Wolfe continued by setting other works in the same universe (The Book of the Long Sun series, and The Book of the Short Sun series). It chronicles the journey of Severian, a journeyman torturer from the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence. After helping a client kill herself, he is exiled in disgrace to journey to the distant city of Thrax where he is to live out his days as their executioner. Severian lives in the ancient city of Nessus in a nation called the Commonwealth, ruled by the Autarch, in the Southern Hemisphere. It is at war with Ascia, its totalitarian northern neighbor. It is a first-person narrative, purportedly translated by Wolfe into contemporary English, set in a distant future when the Sun has dimmed and Earth is cooler (a "Dying Earth" story). The four volumes and additional fifth coda are:
In a 1998 poll of its subscribers, Locus magazine ranked the tetralogy number three among 36 all-time best fantasy novels before 1990, behind only The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Major themes
Severian as a Christ figure Severian, the main character and narrator of the series, can be interpreted as a Christ figure. His life has many parallels to the life of Jesus, and Gene Wolfe, a Catholic, has explained that he deliberately mirrored Jesus in Severian. He compares Severian's profession as a torturer to Jesus's profession as a carpenter in The Castle of the Otter:It has been remarked thousands of times that Christ died under torture. Many of us have read so often that he was a "humble carpenter" that we feel a little surge of nausea on seeing the words yet again. But no one ever seems to notice that the instruments of torture were wood, nails, and a hammer; that the man who built the cross was undoubtedly a carpenter too; that the man who hammered in the nails was as much a carpenter as a soldier, as much a carpenter as a torturer. Very few even have seemed to have noticed that although Christ was a "humble carpenter," the only object we are specifically told he made was not a table or a chair, but a whip. Severian's life parallels Jesus' occasionally, with his descent into the cave of the man-apes being a Harrowing of Hell scene, his resurrection of Dorcas being a Lazarus of Bethany scene, and his friendship with Jonas reflecting Ahasuerus. Jonas has traveled the world looking to reconnect with the Hierodules, "tinkers with clumsy mechanisms", and is redeemed from wandering exile after befriending Severian. In this respect, he represents the wandering Jew. Severian also suffers from occasional seemingly random bleeding from his forehead, as if from a crown of thorns. Also mirroring the crown of thorns, the Claw of the Conciliator, a thorn that causes Severian to shed blood, becomes a religious relic due to its relation to Severian. Terminus Est represents his crucifix, with Severian describing his sword in Urth of the New Sun as a "dark cross upon my shoulder." In the following volume, The Urth of the New Sun, Severian is resurrected as well, escaping to a Heaven-like plane of existence where an angel resides and then emerging from a stone tomb, as Jesus rose from his stone tomb. However, Wolfe said in an interview, "I don't think of Severian as being a Christ figure; I think of Severian as being a Christian figure. He is a man who has been born into a very perverse background, who is gradually trying to become better."
Related works During the years when The Book of the New Sun was published, Wolfe published two stories from it separately: "Foila's Story: The Armiger's Daughter" (one of the entries in the story-telling contest in the Pelerines' hospital) and "The Tale of the Student and his Son" (one of the two stories that Severian reproduces from a book he obtained for Thecla when she was imprisoned). Shortly after The Citadel of the Autarch, Wolfe published The Castle of the Otter, a book of essays about The Book of the New Sun containing a few fictional elements, such as jokes told by some of the characters. After the original four-volume novel, Wolfe wrote a novel often called a coda, The Urth of the New Sun (1987). He also wrote three short stories, "The Map", "The Cat", and "Empires of Foliage and Flower", that are closely related to The Book of the New Sun. Later he wrote two book series that are set in Severian's universe. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database catalogs it all as the "Solar Cycle", comprising the short works and three sub-series. The two later subseries are The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996, four volumes) and The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001, three volumes). Two of the Long Sun books were nominated for Nebula Awards.
Place within the genre The Book of the New Sun belongs to the Dying Earth subgenre of speculative fiction. Peter Wright calls the series an "apotheosis" of traditional Dying Earth elements and themes, and Douglas Barbour suggests that the book is a foundational mosaic of that literary heritage: Wolfe has not only written a truly marvellous science-fantasy set millions of years in our future on a dying 'Urth', but he has also written the book on such works ... where every formal development in this sub-genre is laid out for our interpretation and then done right. Traces of this literary tradition can be found throughout the book. In The Sword of the Lictor, Cyriaca (the woman whom Severian spares in Thrax) tells Severian a legend about an automated city, with rebirth as a central theme. This mirrors John W. Campbell's Twilight, where sentient machines remove the need for human labor. Wolfe himself said that when he was a teenager Twilight had a great effect on his writing, and this homage to that story is not just a passing reference, but an allusion to a literary predecessor. Earlier in the story, Wolfe alludes to The Time Machine, with the scene where Severian meets the glowing man-apes mirroring the Time Traveler's confrontation with the Morlocks. In both stories, the protagonist holds up a light to awe the cave peoples, but in the Book of the New Sun Severian relates to the humanity of the man-apes with the glowing Claw of the Conciliator, while in The Time Machine the Time Traveler intimidates the Morlocks with his fire.
Publication history
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