Full Details
RYO Review: The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
** Beware Spoilers **
So, I was in the mood for starting a new multi-book fantasy and sci-fi saga and after reading a little about the New Sun series and a little about the author I was intrigued to give The Shadow of the Torturer a read and was hoping that this was going to be the start of a relationship with a well respected author who I had not previously read before. This was also part of a challenge to read twelve Damon Knight Grand Masters I had not read before in 2014.
To put my review in context I would like to say I really wanted to like this and also that I probably did enjoy the book more than the review suggests as there was quite a bit in the book that niggled me.
The book is set in Urth that is our Earth in the far-future. The Sun is dying and Urth is essentially a medieval society with some future tech (lasers, space travel etc.) The author states that the book is a translation from a ‘future language’ and it is the language of the book which was the most rewarding thing for me. Wolfe uses language and words from all over Europe, America, Africa. He uses words from the 16th, 17th and 18th Century as well as formal language from more recent times. I can imagine this grating on some people but I found much enjoyment in looking up words – it’s a book that benefits from the ‘future tech’ of built in dictionaries of e-readers. Quite often Wolfe makes words up. In 1980 I suspect many readers would be quite lost with this book due to the difficulty for most readers not having such an enormous vocabulary. I totally understand a reader’s opinion that Wolfe thinks he is smarter than his audience.
When “Science Fiction” Is an Insult
Originally, I had intended to post the above video to further the ongoing conversation about what constitutes science fiction, as there can be few better authorities on the matter than a panel including Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, and Gene Wolfe. But then, I discovered what had transpired shortly before this interview.
As it happens, Ellison’s view of science fiction was quite passionate. Carolyn Kellog, at the L. A. Times, reports that he had just come from assaulting his publisher for misclassifying “Spider Kiss” as a sci fi:
“I put him in a hold that I had learned from Bruce Lee. I took him to his knees. Then I duck-walked him back to his door,” on his knees all the way, Ellison recounts. The typing pool, all women then, stopped work and watched the show, he says, “with enormous pleasure.”
When they got back to the man’s office, the publisher on his knees, Ellison says he banged the man’s head into the door until he opened it. They went inside — the publisher, Ellison and Ellison’s editor, a woman he remembers fondly, who soon was huddling on a couch.
“I picked up a chair and threw it,” Ellison says. Rather than shattering the windows, “it bounced around the room.” The publisher had scrambled behind his desk and was dialing the phone.
“I jumped onto the desk and ripped the phone out of the wall,” Ellison says. Back in 1982, that’s how phones worked — they had cords, attached to walls. “He tried to crawl through the desk’s kneehole. I grabbed him by the collar and threw him across the room.”
From his comments in the interview, Mr. Ellison seems to share Margaret Atwood‘s view of the genre. Compare his comment to Mr. Turkel that sci fi is “women in brass braziers being molested by green-eyed monsters,” to Ms. Atwoods famous talking squids in outer space characterization.
We all know what was going on, back then. Certain authors didn’t want their books to be shoved in the back of the bookstore in the SF/F section. Writing is their bread and butter, and they wanted to get paid. Perhaps that is what made Harlan react with violence to the horrid insult of being called a science fiction writer.
Well, Harlan Ellison currently has 28 novels listed by WWEnd that we call “science fiction.” Perhaps I should get a bodyguard.
2012 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Awarded to Gene Wolfe
In news that will surprise absolutely no one on the planet, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America have named the legendary Gene Wolfe as their 2012 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master.
The award is given, more or less annually, for contributions to the literature of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Check out the official press release for some nice comments from last year’s recipient, Connie Willis, and others.
If you’re a participant in WWEnd’s 2012 Grand Master Reading Challenge you can add Mr. Wolfe to your challenge list if you’ve read him this year. If you’re a fast reader you have a couple weeks to get him in under the wire!
Our congratulations to Gene Wolfe!
