 Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe is a heck of a thing. I've done several Should You Read It videos and I think this more than most deserves a Should You Read It video because Book of the New Sun is wild and I think it's worth it to figure out if this is a thing you're interested in at all before you pick it up and it's also I think important to kind of know what it is you're going to be diving into before you dive into it because as with so many things expectation has the capability of making or breaking your experience. What is Book of the New Sun? Book of the New Sun was originally published in the 1980s and is by Gene Wolfe. He originally intended it to be a novella called The Feast of St. Catherine and then it kind of just like grew and grew into a quartet later, tetrology later even more because there are more stories that takes place in the universe of Book of the New Sun but the Book of the New Sun in its sort of final form was Four Volumes. Those Four Volumes are the Shadow of the Torturer, the Claw of the Conciliator, the Sword of the Lictor, and the Citadel of the Autarch and then as a coda to making it a tetrology he added later Earth of the New Sun but the official Book of the New Sun is those first four volumes and then we also have Earth of the New Sun. These books are part of the dying earth genre of sci-fi, not the first but among the progenitors. As I said there are more works that exist in this universe, Book of the Short Sun and Book of the Long Sun. There are some short stories as well. I have not read those. I've only read Book of the New Sun and Earth of the New Sun so that's what I'm going to be talking about in this video today. There's always more to explore with Book of the New Sun even with just those four books but there are further there's further reading to be done within this universe. So I think one of the most important things when going into Book of the New Sun to be aware of is for lack of a better word the structure or the format of it. So unlike other books and this is my understanding I haven't actually read any books by Gene Wolfe that are not Book of the New Sun. My understanding is this is the only book that he has written in this way where it is sort of um I kind of coined the phrase method writing meaning it's sort of similar to method acting where a method actor on screen on screen on stage off stage is embodying the character and living as the character that they will be playing. Book of the New Sun was not written by Gene Wolfe. It was written by the character Severian and then Gene Wolfe translated Severian's text for the present day audience. Gene Wolfe is committed to this format by which I mean he does not stray from this device. Nothing is included that Severian would not include. There is nothing explained that Severian would not feel the need to explain. There is nothing stated that Severian would not have a reason to state and Wolfe repeatedly draws attention to this device. The whole narrative is unambiguously from the perspective of Severian and Severian is telling you I'm writing this and I'm including this and you may wonder why I didn't tell you this blah blah blah so Severian is constantly drawing attention to himself and the narrative as being the author of this narrative and then also there are translators notes at the end of each volume where Gene Wolfe speaking as himself is addressing you the reader and saying here when I was translating Severian's work here's some of the problems I encountered here's some of what I tried to do there are some things that you know was difficult to make sense of because of the way Severian described it so I did my best when I translated it so he is constantly drawing your attention to this these books are Severian's voice this is from Severian's perspective and now of course Gene Wolfe wrote this but he's constantly making it clear that he does not want you to regard this text as being written in his voice or to reflect his thoughts or to be in any way Gene Wolfe if that makes sense and again he doesn't really cheat in fact he goes the other way so other authors who have single POVs you know who have a character and first person telling their own story will find ways of including things that like seem a little bit unlikely but it's a way to like have this character know about it or comment on it and they'll include it in the narrative Gene Wolfe never strays from the the the project of these books if Severian would not see it would not notice it would not have a reason to comment on it then it does not get said it does not get explained it does not get described only what Severian would think do and actively write and that's why I describe it as method writing because it's only what he's imagined what Severian as a character would do what Severian so what Severian's motivations would be in even writing this text in the first place and he does not stray from that here again the language comes into it and is part of the method writing of this so the idea again this is the far future it's a dying earth book Severian in the far far far far far far far far future has written this memoir autobiography thingy and through time you why me reasons Gene Wolfe in the present day has been able to get his hands on this manuscript from the far future but language being the living ever-changing thing that it is language has changed a lot in the interim both in terms of just how people speak but also there's a lot of things around that aren't around in our time that Severian would be referring to talking about and relying on in his narrative so Gene Wolfe the translator has insisted on never making up any words never inventing any words he only uses real words in English if we don't really have a word for this thing he tries to find an analog and for this reason he relies on some really archaic terms that we don't have in common usage but are in fact actually words in English sabertache destreer fuligin these are all real words in English what he's using them because Gene Wolfe the translator is saying look that Severian is talking about this from what I can piece together I think this is what he's talking about and so I've chosen to use this old English word because I feel like it's like the closest thing that I can find to like be what Severian is talking about and to also so that you don't confuse it for this other thing that we do presently have and refer to so for the example of destreer the translator's note in the first volume Gene Wolfe says that Severian talks about some you know animals that they use for transportation and he's pretty sure that they're not horses like the the animals that we have nowadays are horses and that is not what he's talking about that it's a different animal or at least if they are horses they're very different from the kind of horses that we have now they've changed so he uses the word destreer which is a real word um not that uncommon there are much more uncommon words in the in the text as well but he specifically calls this out as like well he refers to them as destreers because that's he feels that's a little closer to what it is but we don't actually like know what it is and he's got no word for what it is similarly the translators notes will call that when Severian is not being specific about something or not making distinctions about something so it's hard for Gene Wolfe the translator to make those distinctions so for example the difference between an airship and a water ship that Severian doesn't really distinguish between the two so that Gene Wolfe is now as a translator saying I've done my best to kind of like figure out which one he's referring to but he's not really specifying so now when it comes to themes in Book of the New Sun you could probably do hours and hours and hours and hours of a video to just kind of list the themes that you'll find in here so I'm not this is not meant to be an exhaustive list this video is just kind of meant to give you an idea of what you're likely to find and what your experience will be like so quickly some highlights Gene Wolfe was a Catholic a very devout Catholic and there's a lot of religious imagery in Book of the New Sun some very surface-level religious imagery that pretty much anyone that's even a little bit familiar with Catholicism would be able to pick up on but also subtler and more hidden Catholic imagery is also in the text Wolfe was a student of literature and of sci-fi fantasy in particular there is a lot of reference and homage to other works of literature and other science fiction works for example The Time Machine but many many others there's a lot of philosophical themes that are outside of just religious ones specifically what it means to be human what it means to have an identity what meant the way that memory plays a role in your identity a human nature itself these kinds of questions and then broadly the books kind of explore a hero's journey but also an antihero's journey or possibly neither depending on how you're reading this text but it certainly it's playing with that archetype whether or not it's following it there's certainly a lot of controversy to be had when looking at this text for many reasons so obviously the religious imagery is the source of controversy in and of itself whether you are religious or are not religious you could be offended by the text as a religious person I could easily see you being offended by the text in fact I've often remarked that I find it kind of shocking that he is Catholic when I read Book of the New Sun the religious imagery is so kind of dark mirror version of a lot of religious things that it almost feels more like a critique of religion than an allegory or in some way pro-religious text um but I could see reading it the other way around and saying no but this is ultimately an argument for religion either way religion is always a contentious topic so that in and of itself is source for controversy Gene Wolf himself said 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 which leads me to another point of controversy Severian the point of view of this story is not a good person he's chosen to write these books from this perspective and reading it from Severian's perspective reading the way that Severian describes what he does what he thinks the way that Severian justifies what he thinks and what he does the arguments that he makes for his terrible positions and the terrible behaviors people ascribe these positions to Gene Wolf even though Gene Wolf has repeatedly made a point of distinguishing Severian from Gene Wolf but nevertheless Gene Wolf wrote these words he chose to write these words so people ascribe Severian's terrible behavior and terrible positions and and arguments for or in favor of the ways that he's behaved or his justifications for it to Gene Wolf I personally don't think that that's fair to do but we're debating literature here and that's just my personal take so again point of controversy point of contention within that more specifically is Severian's treatment of women one of the many ways that Severian is is bad and one of the many ways that he transgresses is in his treatment of women and it can be extremely difficult to read about I'm not going to lie especially reading it from Severian's perspective and the way that he's so glib about it and the way that he doesn't really see a problem with what he's doing and one might well wonder why Wolf would include this now I think there is a reason for it and I think that reason can be it becomes apparent in the text but nevertheless you're reading four books from the perspective of a character who is doing bad things and thinks it's fine and is frequently justifying that to you that's that's really hard to read regardless of what you think is going on with that or why Gene Wolf would do it and then if you feel like it's Gene Wolf arguing for these things or that he's uh that Severian's views reflect Gene Wolf's views which I don't think a case could be made for that but if that is what you think is going on when you read these books yeah I can see why you'd really hate Gene Wolf because if I thought that Gene Wolf and Severian were one and the same person I would hate Gene Wolf so how do you read book of the new sun patiently book of the new sun is like an onion stinks no it has layers and so there's there's a bajillion layers to it and there's even more layers probably than Gene Wolf even intended so much like with themes um this is not meant to be an exhaustive list but here's just a few of the kinds of layers that you can expect fine depending on how deeply you engage with the text on its surface book of the new sun is an adventure story coming-of-age story a hero's journey type story Severian is a young man who is thrust out into the world with uh very little but the sword on his back sort of make his way and be a chosen one and have a lot of adventures along the way and a lot of self-discovery along the way that of course makes it sound a lot more straightforward than it is and if you want something straightforward this is not the book for you this can also be read as allegory here's is where some of the religious themes come into it Severian is a messianic figure a christ-like figure although as Gene Wolf himself says he doesn't regard Severian as christ nevertheless there are a lot of parallels between um certain parts of Severian's journey and christ but aside from Severian's overall journey there's a lot of pieces of his journey that also have a lot of religious symbolism and religious allegory next we have the unreliable narrator i think it was Neil Gaiman that said something to the effect of when you read book of the new sun you should trust the text implicitly but you should also not trust the text at all you should throw it across the room which i think is a pretty fair description of the experience of what you're gonna find in in these books so Severian is the author and narrator of the story and as i've said many times Gene Wolf method wrote this so Severian only ever says things that Severian would think to but also Severian only ever says things that Severian would want to and so in addition to being just generally confused and unmoored by the fact that you don't exactly understand the world that Severian is living in because he doesn't feel the need to explain it to you Severian might have good reason to purposely hide things or obfuscate things or draw attention to things draw attention away from things he has his own reasons for writing his own story in the way that he's choosing to and that is not to be disregarded when reading what he's chosen to share with you there is an element of mystery to these books first as i said the world that Severian occupies is a mystery to you the only thing you do know about this world is that it is different from our own but you're not going to have anything to describe to you unless it's something that Severian feels is out of the ordinary or has reason to think that his audience whoever he imagines as his audience to be would find peculiar or would not necessarily understand or expect to see or that he himself did not expect to see or understand you're trying to unpack the mystery of just the world in which this is taking place the world of Severian but Severian himself is a mystery to you why is he writing this story and if he's an unreliable narrator is that by accident is that on purpose is it a bit of both so when you're reading the text you're going to find yourself asking what is true how true is it true in what sense Severian himself believe what he's saying why is Severian telling us this and why isn't Severian telling us this other thing does Severian realize if and when he's contradicted himself and lastly dying earth sci-fi so outside of just you know the particulars of how gene wolf has constructed this world there is just sort of this genre of so how would the world look in the far future how would extreme climate change affect the world affect people culture individuals how would it affect society how would it affect technology how would structures of power be affected and what things from our present might become reinterpreted or repurposed or reexamined or what have you earth of the new sun is a tricky beast as well essentially when gene wolf wrote book of the new sun um his publishers were like this is this is really complicated and we don't people don't really know what you're on about um you need to write earth of the new sun and there was there was more to this situation but like to keep it really really brief so essentially it was like hey explain yourself right earth of the new sun so earth of the new sun is in part that is him saying okay so to make a little more clear things that i have hidden in the text in book of the new sun to answer questions that i have like implied the answers for or hidden the answers for or that you could have pieced together through context clues and found the answers for in book of the new sun let me just come out and say some of those answers let me confirm some of those things if you read book of the new sun and you came to the these conclusions or some of these conclusions yourself then reading earth of the new sun isn't so much of a oh what as it is like knew it but if you didn't come to those conclusions if you hadn't pieced that together then reading earth of the new sun will be what it meant what it is a book with answers but big old asterisk it's also a book filled with new questions so it does confirm things answer things um outright say things that were previously only ever implied it does serve to kind of like clarify things in that sense these aren't necessarily new things as as pertains to what happened in book of the new sun when it comes to addressing things that happened in book of the new sun according to gene wolf you could have found those answers in book of the new sun so he's just kind of giving you the cheat sheet for it but it's not that this is necessarily new information he's just coming out and saying it so again this is where if you did find those answers for yourself in book of the new sun this just serves as like a moment of vindication for you to go ha that's what i thought but for most people they won't have pieced it together so it is more of an aha but as i said it isn't just that it does answer some things confirm some things but it also brings in new questions it brings in new plot threads it brings in new mysteries and so new philosophical questions now take center stage new crazy tiny wimey things and sci-fi things and tech things and severely and being the narrator question mark things it's just like fresh questions it almost feels like you'd end up in a cycle because then you'd kind of want to go hey i know you wrote earth to explain book but you need to write something new to explain earth now in my experience i would say that earth of the new sun the the religiosity becomes much more overt and that's again that's not to say there's not a lot of religiosity in book of the new sun because there definitely is and some of it is quite overt but it's even more prevalent and even more overtly so in earth of the new sun but should you read it once you finish book of the new sun should you read earth of the new sun maybe i personally i am glad that i read it i don't i don't regret reading it i don't think it's as good as the original four but i personally think it's a case of sort of tanking the bad with the good let me explain it is overtly confirming things things that were previously left ambiguous in book of the new sun and to me that is a little bit irritating i would prefer them to be left ambiguous as they are in book of the new sun but earth brings up new questions earth brings up new ideas that are also really really interesting and that are not in book of the new sun and so i feel like it's up to you to decide if having these new ideas these new questions these new mysteries if if the having of that is worth the cost of having these other things from book of the new sun overtly confirmed and answered so i you just kind of have to like weigh that for yourself you get some cool new things that i do think are really interesting at the cost of then having these previously interestingly ambiguous things become less ambiguous so it opens new things while closing others and if it's worth it to you to have these things closed in order to open these others then sure read it i think it's really really interesting and it could be satisfying to have things that you surmise to be confirmed i ultimately found it rewarding but i do think the original four are better a small caveat is that i personally feel like i don't think that theorizing about book of the new sun is ruined by the answers provided by earth of the new sun because i don't think that it invalidates theories that are internally consistent so if your theory for what is going on in book of the new sun or your theory for what is the meaning of book of the new sun if that theory holds up within book of the new sun and nothing in book of the new sun contradicts that then i think that's an interesting and valid theory even if earth of the new sun that comes later contradicts that or makes that no longer possible or that theory no longer holds true like it doesn't extend into earth of the new sun the theory would then fall apart i don't think it's an invalid theory for how to read book of the new sun which is supposed to be the sort of self-contained project that was intentionally ambiguous and within that ambiguity is lots of interpretation and gene wolf had an idea what was going on what he was suggesting and implying was going on and so in earth of the new sun he's saying here's what i think is going on here basically and he's the author so you can say okay he's the god of this universe but if the text of book of the new sun supports your alternate theory and nothing within book of the new sun contradicts it well then that's a great other interpretation of it and i i don't know if the man and unfortunately he has passed away but i don't think gene will hold me mad about an alternate theory about book of the new sun that was an interesting way to reflect on it even if it's not exactly what his answers in earth of the new sun were so my conclusion having read book of the new sun is one wolf is a genius book of the new sun has so many layers to it that i could read it 20 times and still find new things in it i think the method writing approach is done so incredibly well and so consistently so cleverly that that in and of itself is really really impressive i think the book of the new sun is really difficult to read and i mean that in multiple ways i mean that the practically speaking the prose is dense because it's written in this kind of like archaic way with archaic words that are no longer in common usage if they were ever even in common usage it can be like a bit of a chore to like just physically get through because the senate on a sentence level it's like it's not a casual read it's the prose is dense the world that you're reading about is pretty bleak i mean dying earth i don't think you go into that expecting sunshine and rainbows literally not sure rainbows are an option your point of view character is also like pretty bleak and awful it's kind of the worst being in severeans head and it can reading things from his perspective can be pretty harrowing if you find yourself too repulsed by severean and by being in severeans head to read these books like i that's totally valid and i totally get it because being in severeans head not great and the story itself can be hard to follow even if you're reading it kind of in a let's just like read it as a story the first time through read it as a surface level adventure unpack you know for other meanings to it later let's just kind of like let's see the story for itself even that can be hard to do because even that is convoluted and obfuscated and non-linear and kind of hard to follow at times as well so even if you're just like just just trying to read it as an adventure story even that is difficult again it is not a casual read but i am really glad that i read book of the new sun and i'm doubly glad that i read it with a group of people and could spend three plus hours talking about each installment of it even then was barely scratching the surface of everything that's packed into these books i fully intend to reread these books many many more times and as i said i don't regret reading earth of the new sun at all i think the new ideas are interesting and again i don't think that that ruins or invalidates theorizing about book of the new sun even if it contradicts a theory about book of the new sun so should you read it well no not if you dislike convoluted narratives not if you do not wish to read about a protagonist that is unambiguously abusive towards women that is totally valid not if you dislike religious imagery not if you prefer happy positive stories and certainly not if you prefer simpler more straightforward more window pain prose but you should definitely read it if you enjoy unpacking convoluted multi layered narratives if you're willing to engage with the admittedly dark project of reading the unreliable memoir of a torturer turned messiah if you're not bothered or are in fact interested in religious imagery or symbolism if you're interested in the dying earth genre of sci-fi and if you don't mind or in fact enjoy more difficult prose if you do not wish to walk this way reader i cannot blame you it is no easy road so my theory about book of the new sun is that savarian is crazy hang on hang on hang on don't don't at me that that's a cop out hang on it's it's not just that he's crazy well it is but but it's not okay so savarian's narrative is extremely biased obviously it's really self aggrandizing it's really narcissistic um it's filled with statements that sound like they are completely divorced from reality so i think they are i think the story can be read not like that the whole thing is just like schizophrenia that like nothing happened whatsoever that's not what i think because then like that would be stupid and a cop out that's not what i think like i don't think that this whole thing was just a massive hallucination and that like he's a a brain in a jar that's not what i mean but i think that the events of the story are being filtered through an unwell mind and that that's the narrative that we're getting so savarian is in the torturers guild so i think that is where he is and that's what was happening or at least that he was part of some kind of guild and then he's probably you know malnourished and possibly just mentally ill i you know in the far future i don't think who knows what medicine is like so i don't think he's well for many reasons i think the leaders um of the guilds have had enough of him um maybe he did give a knife to thecla maybe it was something like that and he's interpreted it that way point being they've had enough of him and they're sending him on his way and he interprets this quite grandly as this grand mission we have his word for it that terminus est is this like amazing sword could easily have just been given like just a regular sword that he in his mind is like this is like this epic sword that becomes this big symbol to him doesn't mean that it really was we only have his word for it the fact that they would have been like we're getting rid of you but like here's a bit of money here's like a weapon so you can defend yourself but like get out of here and he's like turned it into this like big thing and like every person that he meets with or nearly every person that he meets with like sees his specialness all the women like want to sleep with him according to him like that sounds insane that sounds really divorced from reality things surrounding how the claw is used most of the time there's nobody around to corroborate this some of the time it doesn't even work i mean in his mind he's got this magical relic and it really is doing these things and anytime it doesn't work well then there's like some deeper reason to why it didn't necessarily work or there's something particular about this person or the situation that's why it didn't work but this this relic is really magic we have several times people actually telling him no this is just a rock and i think it's really possible that he really does just have a rock and he's just like poking people with a rock and if that person wasn't dead to begin with like they were asleep or they were you know unconscious and he woke them up he's interpreted this as like i have resurrected them i have revived them or whatever when in fact it's just poking people with a rock there's there's no one that can really confirm this like a lot of it can be interpreted as like he's imagining it so like he tries to use the claws on jonis and gelenta and it doesn't work right so like okay maybe there's a non schizo reason why the claw sometimes works and it doesn't work and that there's something particular about jonis and gelenta and this is why it doesn't work um on them sure or it was never working on anyone so when somebody is actually injured or is actually dying or dead it's just a rock and so it's not going to do anything and that's why it didn't do anything for them so the reason i like this theory so much because um i mean it was kind of how i felt about things the whole time because it's a very such an unreliable narrator and i was like how how unreliable you sound pretty nuts a lot of the time you sound like you're coping a lot of the time you sound really divorced from reality a lot of the time so i'm like okay how much of this is real and then the like the clincher for me was that when we get to the end citadel of the autark he's come back to the to where he started he's not in the house absolute if he was in the house absolute and now all these people that served the autark were like oh severeian you are the new autark for sure z's bow down to you you're the new autark if that's what was going on that'd be like okay well i guess i guess but no he's back with the torturers he's back with people that know who he is possibly know that he's mentally ill and are humoring him he there it's like a still a secret according to him that he's autark that's very convenient so it's not like some like grand ceremony proclaiming this there aren't a bunch of like exultants around going ah you're the new autark there's nothing like that it's just the same old people that he was around when he was growing up according to him they're looking at him in amazement yeah okay maybe or maybe they're looking at him like ah he's back oh no he thinks he's the autark oh boy i think i would also look kind of amazed and then he's you know given private his private chamber as the autark yeah or he's put in a cell he's being restrained so all all these like signs that he's really the autark these magic words that he supposedly says to just people back with the torturers guild color me unimpressed like it's easily he just returned and they're like ah he's back um he's super unwell we probably shouldn't like send it back out again let's just have him stay here under lock and key he's supposedly writing his memoir from like the ship on the way to the big new sun test because he's the chosen one and he has to take this test yeah okay or he's in a cell and they're giving him parchment because that seems to keep him happy and you know he's he's on his way to the big test you know like sure buddy of course you are whatever makes you happy calls himself autark and they're like sure okay you can be the autark whatever so to be clear i do not think that this is the interpretation of the book earth of the new sun more or less contradicts it although i mean you could extend it into earth of the new sun and just say he's massively coping now and he's full on schizomode and he's still in his cell and he's managing literally all of that that doesn't work so well for me because what i enjoy about my interpretation of book the new son is that the whole of it pretty much works like he's still going to these places he's still meeting these people he's still interacting with objects it's just like his interpretation of how those people are reacting to him his interpretation of what these objects are his interpretation of how these objects affect the people and the things around him that that is extremely suspect and that the whole book of the new sun can be read as him going through this experience and this adventure more or less as described in its basics but that his again his interpretation of everything is where it's nuts that like okay like they don't think you're special the women probably aren't in love with you like the the claw is very possibly just a rock like but there's like explanations for things that he's interpreting in the grandest possible way and that this is a delusion so for earth of the new sun to work that way pretty much the whole of it would have to be one massive hallucination delusion and that's not interesting to me that's when i'm like okay that's an uninteresting answer for what's going on he was crazy all along that is boring to me but again i don't think that my interpretation of the new sun of like severe is just crazy is the only interpretation um i think it's equally interesting to examine the text as you know this is all literally happening the way severian tells it i think it's also interesting to examine it as these things are happening but maybe not necessarily exactly the way severian's telling it why would severian tell it differently what is severian's motivation for telling it at all or telling it in the way that he's telling it what is his motivation for obscuring things or hiding things or omitting things um not him being crazy but like a calculating you know political mover who's got his reasons like i think these are all really interesting ways to examine and to to lenses through which to read book of the new sun as well i do just really enjoy that he's crazy one partly because of how self-aggrandizing severian is how smug he is especially about women like i take great pleasure in being like or maybe you're crazy but i think that's the fun of these books is just how many ways you can interpret it and it still be pretty consistent how many like lenses through which you can read this how many different layers of symbolism and meaning and allegory and metaphor and et cetera et cetera et cetera like there's just so much to unpack with these books and that is the fun of it so even if you hate my theory that's fine because there's like so many theories and so many different interpretations and that's why i think that i will read these books like 20 more times so let me know your theories if you do please mark them as spoilery if they contain spoilers so other readers who are interested in these books don't get spoiled yeah let me know your theories if you have alternate ones or why you hate my theory why my theory totally falls apart the part that i overlooked that like clearly makes it clear that that's not possible as a theory i would love to know let's chat book of the new sun