Rereading Wolfe

Cyriaca's Story, a breakdown

I wrote the attached document, in hope that this historical backdrop related in Cyriaca's story would help me understand the up-coming Play, chapter 8 of The Claw, the Tale of the Student and His Son, and the Spring Wind story, I broke down Cyriaca’s story in Sword of the Lictor and applied interpretations as best I can. 

Ultimately it didn't elucidate any of those other stories for me at this time -- for me they didn't.

The parts in RED signal a sentence I...

Patron Episodes and Public Content

This page is updated as new episodes are released and it is public facing. Currently we're working our way through Borges's oeuvre.  If you have a suggestion for stories we should cover here, this is the place to do it.  To listen to these episodes you'll need to become a patron at the Journeyman level ($2).  But you can listen to our totally free Gene Wolfe-related content HERE.

• Near the en...
  2021-05-01 13:27:32 +0000 UTC View Post

Borges 1b - Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Craig and James finish their conversation about an encyclopedia from a fictional country created by a non-existent culture that is only known from a forged, reprinted encyclopedia .

Full text of the story can be found here.

Full list of Borges episodes 2021-05-01 04:06:50 +0000 UTC View Post

Split comments and chapter sections?

ReReaders! We've got a question. Occasionally we get people who aren't interested in the comments and want to jump right to the chapter. And lately, the comments section has been almost as long as the chapter. So we were wondering if it would make sense to split the episodes into comment episodes and chapter episodes. Or would that make the feed too messy? Are there any other good reasons pro or con?

Borges 1a - Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Craig and James begin their conversation about this short story by Jorge Luis Borges about an impossible encyclopedia entry of a fictional realm in a non-existent country.

Full text of the story can be found here. 

Full list of Borges episodes 2021-04-21 03:05:28 +0000 UTC View Post

James Wynn’s The Life of Malrubius, the First Severian, Timeline

TLDR; FAQ

• Doesn't this theory make Severian's story unnecessarily more complicated?

It raises questions of the same sort as when you find out that Thecla and the Old Autarch are sort of involved in the writing of The Book of the New Sun.  But, for me, it resolves almost all of the big questions in Shadow that are directly connected to Severian. (Hethor and Agia are left unresolved.) 

• Questions it provides straight-forward, lite...
  2021-04-12 00:23:15 +0000 UTC View Post

Solar Cycle Reading Order

I’ve noticed this question gets asked a lot on Reddit. So I’ll lay it out here.

1.  If you read The Book of the New Sun and didn’t like it or you’d give it mixed reviews, try The Fifth Head of Cerberus. It breaks the envelope of “the novel” in a different but equally fundamental way.

That was me. Fifth Head recontextualized The Book of the New Sun for me. I went from seeing Wolfe as an amazing world creator but a so-so writer to...

Presentiments, still...

Hi, everyone! Thank you all again for your support! We're blown away by the response to this so far, and we don't deserve it. I mean, really, we don't deserve it because our grand plans for getting the bonus content up quickly got sidetracked.

I'm finishing up the first half of our first bonus episode for you guys only. It's on Jorge Luis Borges' story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." I wanted to have it out before the end of the month, but some last minute family travel stuff is slowing ...

Welcome! And prepare thyself...

Why did I use "thyself?" I think I saw that in a videogame somewhere. It has nothing to do with Wolfe.

You'll also notice that there's nothing else Wolfe-related yet. But we're feverishly working on our first patrons-only episode.

We can't say enough how much we appreciate your support!

- James & Craig