The Book of the Long Sun

It seems to have been a long time since the phrase "Christian literature" was more than something good for a laugh. Ask people to name a fiction writer who's a devout believer, a deep thinker, and an excellent artist, and chances are Lewis, Chesterton, Tolkien will spring to mind. Thing is, they've all been dead for quite some time. And I've got nothing against older works (some of my favourite authors are dead! Ba-dum ching!), but as a lifelong rabid reader, and a Christian for about fourteen years now, I do have a big problem with artistic stagnation. I've read many fantastic books that embody Beuchner's idea of "the world expressing holy things in the only language it knows", but until these past two weeks I'd never read one by someone who I knew was embodying that idea intentionally - one of his characters even paraphrases the quote - and who's still alive and working, to boot! American sci-fi master Gene Wolfe has been described as "the best author you've never heard of". I'd second that motion. It's surely a sign of the apocalypse that Joe Haldeman has a Hugo, but Wolfe does not. However, the Hugos are a mob award, and something Wolfe does have is the admiration and respect of other writers, Neil Gaiman probably being his loudest and most famous fan. After reading The Book of the Long Sun, it's easy to understand why.

The Book of the Long Sun (comprised of Nightside of the Long Sun, Lake of the Long Sun, Calde of the Long Sun, and Exodus from the Long Sun, volumes published from 1993-1996) is a Dyson Sphere allegory set against the exploration of the fallout of false religion, and the free-will debate that was a very big deal at the time this story was written, as worked out by a writer who has spent many years considering and practicing the truth. Its protagonist, twenty-three year-old Silk, is an augur of the false gods, and the story opens with him receiving an enlightening vision from a largely forgotten, minor god known as the Outsider. The Outsider tells Silk that it is his responsibility to "save his manteion" (a sort of church/school/monastery, over which Silk presides), and that he should not expect to receive any help from the Outsider, as Silk is the help the Outsider has sent. Silk's interpretation of this command then sets off a chain of events which, in a series of four or five days, lead to a full-scale revolution in the city-state of Viron, with Silk at its head. Though he interprets the warning to expect no help as a warning that he will receive no help, help comes to him in such varied forms as a local high-profile thief, a couple of prostitutes, a quiet and timid nun, a talking bird with a serious fixation on fish heads, a "legitimate businessman", and even a few of the gods themselves.

It's hard to figure out where to begin discussing this story, because my main goal is to convince whoever's reading this to read it, and it's not an easy story to summarize, and probably even harder to sell. It's what is commonly referred to in literary circles as "hard" or "high-concept" sci-fi, a genre that isn't quick or simple, very off-putting in its appearance but ironically often more accessible to those who avoid sci-fi as a whole because it's primary concern is story, whereas "low" sci-fi is more concerned with setting and all the trappings of the genre. It's also a dense work of literature, and I don't mean long, I mean dense. Averaging under five hundred pages per volume, and totaling just over a thousand in trade paperback format for the whole shebang, The Book of the Long Sun is easily half the length of the average epic and/or high-concept sci-fi/fantasy story. However, nothing's missing, and no space is wasted. Wolfe accomplishes this in two ways that are somewhat radical in the literary world: first, he dispenses with traditional descriptive writing, offering visual descriptions only as immediately necessary. For example, when Silk first encounters one of the mechanical military "guard dogs" known as taluses, Wolfe offers a description of the talus only as necessary to convey the experience of encountering one. In other words, that initial description is visually incomplete, and it is only until later in the story - when it becomes important to understand what a talus looks like - that he paints the rest of the picture. It's an unusual device that takes some getting used to, but it leaves nothing out and it's absolutely brilliant. It keeps the story moving where other stories take a time-out to gawk. The second way in which Wolfe tells a full and thoughtful story in a flowing and economical fashion is by thinking. As anyone who reads this blog can attest, the hardest aspect of writing is communicating one's full intentions while being concise. The Book of the Long Sun is packed with big ideas, ethos, theologies and philosophies that Wolfe has evidently been pondering for years, probably decades, and which he manages to fully express in the space of two to four sentences. For example, towards the end of the second or beginning of the third volume (I'm afraid it's gone back to the library, so I can't be more precise), Silk has a conversation in which an android, explaining how the world is (having much more empirical knowledge on that count than Silk), makes a casual mention of how "chems" (chemical people) are more valuable than humans, because chems take seventy or eighty years to make, and are not easily replaced, but humans are quick and easy to make, and we grow them inside ourselves. It's a loaded thought on the value of life and casual attitudes towards sex; there's at least a whole semester's worth of bioethics class to be had out of that one brief exchange, and it is typical of Wolfe's writing throughout the whole story. It's intelligent, it's masterful, and it's art. It also makes the book one that's not suitable for reading in short chunks.

Originally, I flipped through the book and resolved not to read it because it was full of "made up" words, and I can't stand books like that. They get tacky and annoying very quickly. Then my husband sold me on the absolutely fascinating story, and I realized two very important things about Gene Wolfe. The first was that every other sci-fi or fantasy book I've read which is packed with alternate words for everyday things is a cheap imitation of Wolfe. The second was that his words aren't "made up" - they're either archaic and unfamiliar English, or logical progressions thereof. The world in which The Book of the Long Sun is set is one in which several generations have passed, and for the common folk language has morphed and evolved into a strange sort of bastard patois which, once you get the hang of it, makes sense and is also ingenious. For example, street people and soldiers using various forms of the word "chill" to refer to killing, or someone being dead. What's a current slang for killing? Putting someone on ice! British slang, mostly the offensive sort, works its way in to substitute for common American curses, like "shag" and its variants in place of "fuck" et al., which I find quite funny as a lot of people I know consider British cursing to be appropriate, to not be swearing, to be unoffensive, which is absolutely ludicrous, but it happens. My absolute favourite language twist of Wolfe's has to be the word "lily" substituting for "truth". We say "gilding the lily" or "don't gild the lily" to refer to embellishing something that's so perfect and beautiful it needs to enhancement or alteration. Just like the truth. Brilliant.

In the end, though, what makes The Book of the Long Sun truly worth reading is what makes any book truly worth reading: its deep and thoughtful message, one easily and often hijacked by hysteria and hyperbole, does not take precedence over the quality of the story. Nor does the quality of the story take precedence over the message, relegating it to a backseat. Here, message and story are equally important, depending on and complimenting each other, and quality and artistic integrity is never sacrificed as they all too commonly are when writers have a Big Idea. Anyone who's read a good book or watched a good movie that had something to say knows that there's no reason why story and message shouldn't coexist in perfect harmony. If you aren't sure what that harmony looks like, may I suggest reading Gene Wolfe. And if you've ever read an article about who sci-fi is the best genre for exploring and explaining the human condition, but weren't convinced, The Book of the Long Sun should be suitable proof.