The Book of the Short Sun: Second Go

 

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.

Book of the Long Sun: Second Read

 

Book of the Long Sun is a difficult read. It’s about 1400 pages of world building, character work, theodicy, broken hearts, and a vision of paganism and Christianity that is impossible to undersell in its subtlety. Part three of four seems to be the culprit for most quitters, as it meanders in a way many find intolerable. I can’t blame them. 

But the quitters  miss out on the earnest honesty of part four, and that’s sad, because it’s there that Wolfe finally gets to the point. And it ain't a comfortable one: the good guys are the ones who forgive. Eventually you have to come face to face with the absolute absurdity of whatever it is you're doing and how pointless it can actually get: children leave you, your goals in life can be totally invalidated by whatever is going on in the world, and you're not the person you thought you were, not now or ever. All the characters in part four meet this looming absurdity. The good ones let go of what once meant so much to them, because doing good is more important than anything they thought was going on. The bad ones hold on to what they think is absurd, even if it would destroy them and others around them. Good grieves. Evil gets even. And thus good wins.

Out of all of the Wolfe's works this is the book I find myself still struggling with the most. To call Book of the Long Sun dense would be an understatement most criminal. If not for the fact that all of the denseness is packed around a plot that’s entertaining I’d just drop it. The issue, of course, is that when I ask myself what I'd have dropped the answer comes up a blank. Everything in here seems logical, and I'd not cut it. That being said, Book of the Long Sun is significantly better on a reread. With an idea of where it’s all going it’s easier to take in the massive plot and character work, not to mention just having a sense that the book isn’t going to drop the ball goes a really long way. Out of all the Wolfe I’ve read Book of the Long Sun is the one I’d recommend the least for an initial read; it’s probably going to take me a dozen reads to wrap my  head around this monster. I look forward to it, because this reread was really rewarding, but this isn’t the one I think folks should cut their teeth on.

Some say that Long Sun is only a distant sequel to New and Urth. I fail to see why; this is a very direct thematic sequel.  All of the themes from New Sun, from the transmigration of souls to the nature of lies and truth to the necessity of pain and so much more are still here. They’re just not being filtered through a degenerate society and one person trying desperately to not be like the rest of the pack. I will repeat it: this is a direct thematic sequel. The same stuff in New and Urth of the New Sun is being talked about here and has been advanced, like in a true sequel. It just so happens to be all the thematic work of the first two books.

Also of note to me was that anyone who got anything done in the story was not wholly "themselves". Patera Silk, Chenille, Mayteras Marble and Mint, Auk, they were useless to others and themselves until they met an entity beyond themselves. All the above characters meet with the gods and have to contend with them. And after that? They're able to move. Not before. I do not think that an accident, and I do not think that unrealistic. Even the mighty Pas himself had to bring someone else into his soul in order to change. The comparison to the cyborg chems, who take parts from their dead compatriots to upgrade themselves, is very clear. And more than a little disconcerting. 

On a personal note I find Silk to be the most challenging of Wolfe's protagonists. While he is definitely not an everyman there is a vulnerability to him that's reminiscent of the archetype. Silk is consistently finding out that there is more to him than he imagined, in the most uncomfortable ways possible: the man of peace and theology is a fantastic thief, fighter, and liar. And unfortunately all the things that he discovers about himself are really important... until they're not. The story would be so much less if being an awful person would solve everything. It doesn't. Silk has to figure it out. And  because of Silk's refusal to sell his soul more than he has to, the character is compelling.

I dunno, folks, this is a tough one. If you’re willing to dig into Book of the Long Sun and give it your time it’s an amazing book. Wolfe epitomizes the juggling of many plates. He’s doing some stuff here I found truly revolutionary. But you have to be willing to really dig. If you are I think you’ll find gold. If not you’ll have problems. 

And I don’t think you can get more fair than that.

Design Journal: Crescendo and Gene Wolfe

There is no author with half the influence upon Crescendo as Gene Wolfe; Crescendo is meant to emulate the deeply psychological and spiritual fantasy shown in The Solar Cycle and the Latro Trilogy. But Wolfe's works are almost impossibly large, not to mention byzantine in structure. So what do I mean when I say Crescendo is heavily influenced by Wolfe? I mean a few things. Protagonists make their way through worlds that are always moving, regardless of their actions. Wolfe's stories are as much about the protagonists learning to be a part of the world, with adventure being just one aspect of their lives. Stories are not centered on defeating the Big Bad(s), but end when the protagonist has reached a point of development that makes an ending statement. Wolfe's stories are almost ruthlessly character oriented. Crescendo grabs all these points and is attempting to make a cohesive RPG from them.

Sorry, no complex interweaving of enigmas, not yet! If anyone has ideas for that let me know! But I've never personally felt a draw to the puzzle-unravelling that a lot of people seem to have with Wolfe. What Wolfe is saying, behind those puzzles that I can't figure out, is a lot more interesting to me than the puzzles themselves. That's not a knock upon those who like doing that, but if you're looking for a game that is an enigma in a box, I'd suggest Bleak Spirit. Maybe some of that tech may wind its way into Crescendo. But it's not my focus, not at the moment.

Most RPGs I've played and read are not deliberately psychological. Play centers around the actions of the characters, with the psychological impact of those actions left up to the player. Crescendo will be a deeply psychological game. Players draft Tenets, which are what their character is willing to fight for. These Tenets have what are called Resilience Points, which measures how much failure the Tenet can take before the player has to make a decision about that Tenet. Characters also have Limits, which are traits that the player can use to recharge the RP of Tenets; act on the Limit and heal your Tenets! There's a lot more than that involved, but those are the basics: act upon Tenet, lose RP, and use Limits to recharge. At each stage of development I've checked in with licensed psychologists of varying backgrounds to ensure that the mechanics are psychologically accurate and healthy, with more input to be sought in the future.. I have always found gaming to be a cathartic and helpful experience, and wish Crescendo to be deliberately so. 

The Catholicism of Wolfe is indispensable in understanding his work. But Wolfe was no ordinary Catholic; he was well-experienced in the healing power of God, not to mention his historical, theological, and philosophical background. Thanks to my own experiences (some of which I have put on this blog), combined with my private studies of the Philokalia, Leanne Payne, Thomas Carlyle, The Book of the Elders, Antirhetikous, Meditations on the Tarot, The Emerald Tablet, The Golden Legend... I really hope I'm up to the task. Cause I assure you that's a drop in the bucket in comparison to what Wolfe had read. Wolfe's emphasis on the healing of a personality by encountering Others, especially those of the supernatural order, will be a primary theme throughout the mechanics of Crescendo. To be whole one must encounter the whole of creation. Locales provide feedback loops that create encounter that would be random in any other game, but here are deeply significant to the development of your character.

The setting the players have crafted will always be in motion; the actions the players take will be mirrored in the setting, producing a living and breathing world that will have an uncanny familiarity to them. On the GM's side this means Movements, which are the big three things happening in the setting at the moment. The GM and players will keep journals of some of their actions, so that they can be imitated by the NPCs in the setting, as well as informing further actions in the narrative. Your decisions matter, they reflect into the world over the course of the game.

One of the things that's struck me as I've read Homer and other ancient writers was their emphasis on games and festivals, not to mention philosophical discourse. Characters exist in a larger world and not only do they enjoy it but they talk about it! Wolfe takes this trope and runs with it. And so will Crescendo. There's festivals, executions, strategy games, and other contests. Characters get bored and will have conversations that build the world, as well as the themes of the story. This means that when conflicts do occur, whether by word or steel, they are quite unusual and intense. Crescendo will not just be about the big plot. The game will reward any action you decide to take equally, so it can take almost any tone you like in any given session. But because of the focus upon the player's Tenets and the GM's Movements you'll find that the experience is cohesive. Wolfe writes to see the journey of a character. The narrative meanders along, with elements from the background jumping in to develop the protagonist... only to fade into the background when its end is complete. Crescendo is entirely based upon the interactions of the players. There's no grand scheme at the forefront of the action. What the players put on their character sheets is only a beginning, the fuel you put the fire of your time to. Each session ends in a twist, wrenching the narrative into unexpected territory, forcing the story to stay on the characters.

And this brings us to what I think Wolfe and Crescendo are about: the person, with all their flaws and virtues, in the context of their world, with all its flaws and virtues. Person and world crash into each other, evolving into something different and new. After processing what they've changed into they run into each other again. And again. And again. And at some point you know they're going to be fine, somehow. So you leave them be.

Everything I've read of Wolfe's has made me a better person, in no small part because he's part of the original story, the primal narrative of the ancients: man looks at the cosmos; the cosmos stares back. They size each other up, trying to understand each other.

And then someone blinks.

The Lie of Self-Identity

light spoilers for Book of the Short Sun to follow

ADDENDUM: As has been brought to my attention, my terms are not well defined. I'll attempt to define the most important one: Self-Identity. By Self-Identity I mean a constriction of yourself to what you think of yourself. I am not using Self-Identity as a noun, but as a verb that indicates a toxic toxic attempt of self-smothering so you may continue to retain your illusion about yourself, including suppression of experiences that would change how you see yourself and the world, trying to change your environment (or yourself) to match an image you have of yourself, lying to yourself that you didn't mean to do whatever mean thing you very clearly did on purpose, etc. Hopefully that clears things up.

I don't recognize the person that looks back at me in the mirror. I just don't. I haven't for decades. The person who gazes back at me isn't who I feel myself to be. The person people seem to know and talk about with my name attached to it I haven't recognized in even longer, and when I do recognize the person they're talking about it's the raging thing I work as hard as I can to restrain (which means I've failed yet again), or this deeply insightful person who is really just the byproduct of decades of heartbreak. There are memories people try to share with me that I find myself completely ignorant of. All I find when I look into my memories is a dark pit. How do you tell someone that you recognize them, but that may really be it? So I smile and play along. The memories I do retain most people don't seem to remember, to the point to where I wonder if I didn't just make them up. Maybe I did. Maybe my memories just aren't real. 

Maybe you're not real.

I've no way of knowing, the vast majority of the time.

Retreating doesn't seem to do me much good, so I just throw myself into whatever situation it is, hoping I'll figure out what's going on. I frequently don't. But I didn't back down. And that means something to me, whatever that's worth.

Gene Wolfe, an infantry vet of the Korean War, has always dealt with identity. What is it? How do you define it? Can you define your identity? Is it an individual's choice, who they are, or is it the community, your relationships, some weird combination thereof? Book of the Short Sun deals with these questions the most directly of the Solar Cycle, and I'd argue it is the point of Wolfe's science fantasy series. We follow along with Horn as he runs smack-dab into the fact that he's not who he thinks he is, over and over. Bad or good begin to blur as Horn's self-conceptions prove to not just be lies but damnable lies, causing more trouble than they're worth, but yet how are you supposed to move about in the world?

How are you supposed to act if you can't develop a proper conception of you? And never will? 

What if your ideas of you don't matter for being a person at all?

I'm not sure what exactly I'm driving at with this blog post. All I know is that the ending of On Blue's Waters, the first volume of The Book of the Short Sun, stopped me dead in my tracks. That first volume is watching someone's self-identity crumble. Horn does truly heinous things that are truly beyond his control but he did them and he experienced doing them and nobody can tell them they weren't his fault because fault doesn't matter and never did. 

He experienced it. 

And that was enough. 

Fuck the whole concept of fault, period.

The rest of the book shows Horn trying and trying to grow beyond his (supposed) misdeeds and failing, over and over. He wants to be the person that he thought he was and he knows he can't do it, but there's just no other thing for him to do, right? If you aren't who you think you are then why live? Why even bother? But he holds onto this mirage we call identity, fighting for it harder and harder. Horn doesn't ask what seems to be obvious to me now: why does what I think of myself matter, at all? But he doens't ask. He gets a lot of people killed over it.

And at the end of that volume Horn finds himself looking into a pool of water. And he doesn't recognize himself. What's staring at himself is a broken shell of a man who Horn does not want to accept.

He failed to retain the mirage.

I put the book down and sobbed for him. And me. There wasn't anything to be done. Self-identity is not real. And it never was. There is no way to sum up a person, especially if it's the individual in question. Because we all want to be something that we're not. And it does us no good, even if we think we achieved it. 

The rest of the Book of the Short Sun delves into this concept much harder and provides an answer, of sorts. I'm not really going to get into that now. But the beginning of self-knowledge is to be able to let go of the concept that you know who you are. And that you will ever fully learn who you are. You are larger than you know, infinitely so. So am I.

And no cheap thing like self-identity is going to even scratch the surface of the depths.

Every translator is a traitor, and that goes double for the lie of self-identity, which is when you try to translate yourself to yourself.

What a miserable concept.

Idolatry, in one of its purest forms.

The First Go Around on the Solar Cycle

 

Aesthetics is the height of morality. If you want to know who a person is ask them what their favorite bits of media are, and you'll get a very good idea of what it is they think moral. And for the most part this is fine. We read things that help us find meaning in a world that can be very difficult to navigate, sticking to them because they help us inform what to find joy, and thus meaning, in. It is pleasurable to rest in our ideas of how the world works.

But pleasure is not enough. We like it, but ultimately pleasure stifles us and helps create addiction. One must challenge oneself with things that are beyond taste. And that's what I think classics are for. Books that are inherently hard to read because they're not out to tell some plot about people going and doing the things, but are intrinsically honest to the point of discomfort. Meeting people will always shatter your expectations of reality. And that's ultimately what a classic is: it's a person, coded into written form. Some of these books get collected up into the canon of humanity that we've put together and get passed down, sometimes to referred to as Great Books.

I don't know if The Solar Cycle will ever be counted amongst that number for the rest of humanity, but it sure has been a classic to me. While it has said a lot of things that I agree with, and while I do find it enjoyable, every last book of the Solar Cycle has pushed me, forced me to re-examine my beliefs, to ask what it really means to be a human being, what being good and evil truly are, and even what the nature of reality is. And, similar to the other classics I've read, I've found that I developed a relationship with the books the way one does with a person. But, unlike most classics, The Solar Cycle has made me uncomfortable because it has told me that what I had already suspected wasn't even the half of it. That, instead of being insane, I was timid. 

That's not a word that usually gets thrown at me. And the Solar Cycle throws it at me often. I am timid for seeing what I've seen and not saying it louder. That the paradox that is reality needs to be pushed louder, harder. That to be confounded is the result of true perception. To see even a little bit of the world is to break your mind.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this news. I kinda figured I was in everyone's face as it was, but that's not really what's being asked by the books, now is it? This book doesn't fight or scream or tell people they're wrong. No, the book just presents the paradox. And asks for you to either take it or leave it. And I suck, so very badly, at that. 

So much of the world makes very little sense. It's not that the world in abstract doesn't have some sort of sense to it, only that we cannot predict what we're going to run into. It's always a question of what we're going to do with what we understand, and what we'll do when it turns out we were wrong. And we are always, always, always wrong. The world is a far more compassionately ruthless place than could ever imagine. God is kind and cruel in equal measure.

And without embracing that paradox no one will ever be their own, truly paradoxical, selves.

Damn skippy I'm rereading it. I may never find anything like this, ever again.

Book of the Long Sun

 

I hoped this book would be different from Book and Urth of the New Sun. The last thing I wanted was for Wolfe to try to bottle lightning again. I mean, it had been well over a decade since the last two books had been released, so I kinda figured that Wolfe wasn't out for a cash grab. 

Boy, I did not know what I was getting myself into.

The set-up of the book is simple. Patera Silk, a priest of a small parish onboard the "whorl" (a roving space station filled with people who have forgotten they're in a space station) is called by the Outsider, a minor and obscure god, to save his parish from imminent destruction. Of course at this point he wasn't really aware that it was in danger in the first place...

And thus begins the rollercoaster.

Now, I'd heard people complain about how slow this book was, so I was prepared for it. I don't think they quite sold it hard enough; parts of this book are an absolute slog to get through. Wolfe's prose requires sometimes a pass or five to get a basic understanding of the text, and there's some points in time where I shrugged and went on, filling in what happened from the context of the next few hundred pages. This sucker is 1300 pages long. It is packed with plot, characterization, so much freaking worldbuilding, philosophy, and theology, that to call this anything less than a science fantasy attempt at a Russian novel would be idiotic.  The plot in particular seems rather byzantine in structure, looping around on itself multiple times, intentionally producing impasses that let you learn more about the characters and their whorl, and to take a breather.

Y'know, several hundred page breathers.

No big deal.

Up until the last fifteen pages (no, I am not exaggerating!!! The last fif-frickin-teen!) I'd no idea what the hell I was reading. None. The plot continued to balloon and balloon and I felt like I was watching some ancient sea monster come out of the ocean to devour me alive. And then the last fifteen pages happened. No, do not skip to the end. Even if it does make sense to you, the surprise is well worth the wait. Yes, I do mean it. Those 1200+ pages were ample build-up to the surprise at the end, at least in my estimation. I cannot tell you why that is. You either trust me and can weather the cloud of unknowing for 1200 pages or you can't. But when it snapped into place, when Wolfe finally revealed what he was doing for 1300 pages, I found myself nodding in appreciation and enjoyment.

Book of the Long Sun does not work as Book and Urth of the New Sun did, but that is what is makes it special. As I sit here, with the dying embers of the story living inside of me, as I look back at one of the longest journeys with a book I've ever taken, I feel years and years older. That was one hell of a journey. I learned a lot of things, most of which were barely registered, nevermind understood.

Whereas Book and Urth of the New Sun were waking dreams, which I loved so much that I almost sobbed when I stopped reading them, Book of the Long Sun feels like a conversation with a grandparent. They have a lot to tell you. Sometimes you don't know why they tell you what they chose to. But years later, their words still glow in my memory and I find myself taking strength from what they said. 

I remember how they looked when they said their words.

I find myself back in the car, or the room, or that afternoon walk. I can smell the air. Hear the birds. The crickets. The sky is the exact same size as it is now. The world made absolutely no sense. But I didn't need it to.

Because they loved me, then. And they do, still.

I promise that I will see you again. I find myself whispering that to them, now, as I think about the Long Sun. Or is it when I think about the long walks? Or the car rides? Or when we were just sitting in their living room, talking about nothing in particular?

Does it really matter?