Last night, I finished the Book of the Short Sun, which wraps up a year of wrestling on and off with the entirety of the Solar Cycle, from the Book fo the New Sun to the Book of the Long Sun through to the Book of the Short Sun. The reading cycle happened over the course of a year, where many things happened - I spent January puttering around Europe, dealt with the loss of a dog and moved cross country from DC to San Diego.

Unlike other posts, I’m going to collect some scattered thoughts here in a followup section while it’s still in my head. More so, I’m less confident I can do the throughlines, references and themes any justice, nor do I want to spoil it for anyone willing to embark on the journey.

On the latter, the only shilling I’ll do is the following: that every step of the way is worth it for some of the best fiction you’ll read.

That the books themselves are a puzzle meant to be contended with are a bit of a meme at this point. I’ll gently push back on that assertion, because I think it does a disservice to the reader. While reading Gene Wolfe made me feel like doing any work while reading was both a pleasure and a luxury, I’d argue that letting them wash over you has an equally as profound effect. The books contort themselves to your outside world as you read them, a bit like Baader-Meinof on steroids. You start seeing echoes of the world Wolfe describes everywhere. I’m looking forward to a reread a few years from now, where a whole different series unlocks.

“No Cut!”

Said Scattered Thoughts (Spoilers!)

• Lately, the Inhumu from the later two legs of the cycle (Long and Short Sun) feel like perfect analogies for competent AI - systems that are reflections of our wants and desires, that are therefore saddled with both our negative and positive qualities.

• Avid readers of nravic.com will remember my post on BoTNS and PKD’s VALIS. (https://nravic.com/blog/severian/). I had similar co-reading luck with the Book of the Short Sun. I was fortunate enough to be listening to the Odyssey, which Wolfe has some subtle and not-so-subtle references to throughout Long and Short Sun. I think it’s clear that the Outsider is a reference to a Christian God, in parallel to the Long Sun Whorl’s pantheon a reference to the Greek pantheon.

”There, where a fountain’s gurgling waters play, they rush to land, and end in feast the day: they feed; then quaff; and now (their hunger fled) sigh for their friends and mourn the dead; nor cease their tears till each in slumber shares a sweet forgetfulness of human cares. Now far the night advances her gloomy reign, and setting stars roll down the azure plain: At the voice of Pas wild whirlwinds rise, and clouds and double darkness veil the skies.”

Word for word from Return to the Whorl (BoTSS) but also (excluding mention of Pas, who is kind of analogue to Zeus (but more so Janus?)) word for word from Pope’s translation of Book XII of the Odyssey.