Book of the short sun
4 total works
v. 1
ON BLUE'S WATERS is the start of a major new work by Gene Wolfe, the first of three volumes that comprise The Book of the Short Sun, which takes place in the years after Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. Horn, the narrator of the earlier work, now tells his own story. Though life is hard on the newly settled planet of Blue, Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves. But Horn is the only one who can locate the great leader Silk, and convince him to return to Blue and lead them all to prosperity. Horn sets sail in a small boat, in a small boat, on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now legendary Patera Silk. The story will continue in In Green's Jungles and Return to the Whorl.
NO. 3 OF 3
v. 2
Gene Wolfe's In Green's Jungles is the second volume, after On Blue's Waters, of his ambitious SF trilogy The Book of the short Sun. It is again narrated by Horn, who has embarked on a quest away from his home on the planet Blue in search of heroic leader Patera Silk. Now Horn's identity has become ambiguous, a complex question embedded in the story, whose telling is itself complex, shifting from place to place, present to past. Horn recalls visiting the Whorl, the enormous spacecraft in orbit that brought the settlers from Urth, and going thence to the planet Green, home of the blood-drinking alien inhumi. There he led a band of mercenary soldiers, answered to the name of Rajan, and later became the ruler of a city-state. He also encountered the mysterious aliens, the Neighbours, who once inhabited both Blue and Green, He remembers a visit to Nessus, on Urth. At some point, he died. His personality now seemingly inhabits a different body, so that even his sons do not recongise him. And some people mistake him for Silk, to whom he now bears a remarkable resemblance. In Green's Jungles is Wolfe's major new fiction, which builds towards a strange and seductive climax.
Vol 3
Horn has travelled from his home on the planet Blue, reached the planet Green and visited the starship, the Whorl and walked on the planet Urth. But Horn's identity has become ambiguous, a question embedded in the story, whose telling is itself complex.