Reading Book of the Short Sun for me is like being talked out of suicide. There’s always this jolt, and then this burning resentment: what if I wanted to die, Gene Wolfe??? What business is it of yours if I live? How dare you talk me out of the only action that makes sense? At the beginning of my RPG Crescendo I had written the following dedication to Gene Wolfe:
In eternal memory of Gene:
I’m still a coward.
This is the best I can do, for now.
I know you’d understand.
A few friends of mine have quibbled with me over this dedication. They don’t see me as a coward! Not at all! No, they see the horrors I’ve survived and assume courage got me through them. They don’t see that a part of me still hasn’t made up its mind. It stands on the ledge, it still holds the knife at my thigh, the gun is in its mouth, and it cannot make up its mind. It’s too afraid to jump, to cut and bleed out, to blow its brains out… but the alternative scares it just as much. I’ve seen much in my life, why would I try and live through more? How could I be so crazy??? Why the hell make such a choice? So here I sit. Not making up my mind. I am the worst coward of them all. And it wasn’t until Short Sun that I knew it. I could practically hear Wolfe chuckling from beyond the grave, as step by wretched step he showed me my true colors.
Book of the Short Sun takes place decades after Book of the Long Sun. Without Silk’s leadership the new colonists of Blue and Green, as well as those still aboard the colonizing worldship called the Whorl, have stagnated. Devolved into war and barbarism. The blood-drinking inhumi treat the new inhabitants like livestock. Horn, Silk’s closest student, resolves to find Silk and bring him back to save everyone from moral and physical death.
It is the saddest book I’ve ever read. It is also the only book that made me cry harder on a reread. I don’t mean pretty little tears; I howled as something in me finally died, gently and quietly. There’s a complexity to rereading Short Sun that I’ve not found in the rest of the Solar Cycle. I’m not saying that there isn’t complexity in the others, but for my money so far Short Sun’s layers have made the reread more tragic than anything I’ve ever read. Horn and Silk are both on the ledge, they both have a knife to the thigh, the gun’s ready to go… and so they’re kind. Almost as a matter of course: a dying man wants his last acts to be something he can live with in those last few moments, after all. And everyone mistakes it for courage. For normative kindness. Horn and Silk know the truth of course, you can’t convince someone whose soul you just accidentally saved that the only reason you were any good at all was because you knew exactly how they felt.
You were only a step behind them is all, and not because you were later in your decision.
There are more than a few who do not see Book of the Short Sun as properly part of The Solar Cycle, but instead choose to see it as this retcon that has little to do with its supposedly finer entries, Book of the New Sun and Urth of the New Sun. After the second reading I not only declare that manifestly and obviously wrong, but I ask those who disagree a question: who are Tzadkiel and where does his ship come from? Not to mention Father Inire?
Short Sun actually answers those questions, whether you like it or not.
I will leave you with yet another biographical note. Once not so long ago that undecided part of me was about to make up its mind. Again. I could not argue; the decision was made. I was so worn out. I begged for mercy. I’d not come so far and fought so hard to lose here! But it was no use. I could feel my body go cold. It was over.
I was, in my mind’s eye, suddenly holding a young woman’s face in my hands, which tingled with her tears. I found myself saying over and over “Hold the course. Just hold the course”. Her streaming eyes widened and she whispered “It’s YOU”. I’ve prayed for this girl ever since. The part of me that hasn’t made up its mind now has something to do. And so it does it. I don’t know why that’s enough for now. But I’m not going to argue.
A few weeks later my long estranged Mei-Mei, the first woman I ever loved fully platonically, died. I was devastated; we’d had a nasty falling out and had never really been reconciled. I also happened to be on a med that had the side effect of making managing emotions practically impossible. So that made for a uniquely hellish cocktail. I went into a grocery store, praying for Mei-Mei.Choking back tears I could normally handle… but with the drugs? No way in Hell.
Hello. I’m scared.
I stopped. Dead in my tracks. The female voice that reverberated in my skull was just shy of audible. And familiar.
I’m scared, she said.
“Not on my account,” I whispered.
There was a sigh of relief. And I was alone with the water, pumping shoulders, and the raggedy gasps of someone who knows he will have to see his friend at another time. A very long time.
The next day one of my best friends seemed on the verge of giving up on himself. I don’t know how true that was, given how addled I was by grief and the side effects of the drug. So I put my foot down. I stamped. I may have screamed at my friend. By the end of it he was only getting more and more angry and something inside of me began to wear out. But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, give up. The conversation ended and I was convinced I hadn’t just failed, but had made it worse.
The next morning I found myself hardly able to move. I could feel my soul had had enough. I was so weary as I sat in the bathroom I was genuinely afraid I was going to die. My body felt wearier and wearier, the type of tired I couldn’t possibly feel upon waking up more than a few minutes ago. I found myself lying on the cold tile. I couldn’t not close my eyes. I couldn’t hold the dark away with my eyelids , not anymore.
No, something said. It was firm, but gentle. No. You stuck it out with your friend. You don’t die today. You have so much more to do yet.
And I was back with that strange black-haired girl, holding her face as she wept. “Hold the course” I heard myself say. And I knew then the words weren’t just for her. Somehow I’d spoken those words to myself too. And that past hers could hear it too
Life coursed back into my veins like an electric blanket someone had just turned on. I could move again, somehow. So I got up and moved about my day. I made it to the end of the day and collapsed into my bed, and passed out immediately. The little death is such a mercy, is it not?
If you think that has nothing to do with this masterpiece of a book you’ve either not read Short Sun (which, while sad, is forgivable) or you have and quite possibly thought Green is Luna, Urth's moon, a bunch of years in the future. Or that the Neighbors are just aliens.
Neither of which is true.
I changed the dedication to Gene in Crescendo. Here’s what it says now:
In memory of Gene:
I couldn’t remember.
Try as I might, I couldn’t do it
So I sat in the dark.
I’d not seen light in so long.
But I heard you.
You reminded me I was not a creature of light. But I could be, once again.
I could return.
And so now I wander, stumbling through it all. I do not do so without hope.
I will see you someday, at the Gate, where Eve awaits all her children. Adam will be just beyond, beckoning.
I’ll be holding this.
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