Gene Wolfe

by Michael Andre-Driussi

  While Catherine is the most elusive of all the women in Severian’s life, her namesake St. Catherine is one of the most popular saints of all time, despite the fact that she probably never existed. Like Palaemon, Catherine is a figure with Christian as well as pagan roots. Catherine of Alexandria is said to have been a maiden martyred in A.D. 310 under Maximus Daza, and legend has it that she argued with fifty pagan philosophers before she was to be put to death by means of an engine fitted with a spiked wheel. (She overcame them all, and on this account she is considered the patroness of philosophers.) Then the wheel broke (legend adds roses bursting forth) and she was beheaded instead. Her alleged relics have been enshrined for the last thousand years in the Orthodox monastery of Mt. Sinai, but in 1969 her name was dropped from the liturgical calendar.

  For the pre-Christian Catherine, a closer examination of the rosy/fiery Catherine Wheel is in order. Roses and fire are iconically nearly identical (a fact that Wolfe is well aware of: note how Frog calls fire ‘red flower’ [III, chap. 19, 136], and at the original center of Catherine’s cult in Sinai, the Asiatic Goddess was once depicted as the Dancer on the Fiery Wheel at the hub of the Universe. In the 8th century A.D., a Greek convent of priestess-nuns at Sinai called themselves kathari, meaning ‘pure ones,’ but this name is also akin to the kathakali temple-dancers of India, who performed the Dance of Time in honor of Kali, Goddess of the Karmic Wheel. A group of medieval Gnostics known as Cathari had great reverence for the wheel symbol, and considered St. Catherine almost as a female counterpart of God. Catholic prelates made efforts to have St. Catherine eliminated from the canon in the 15th and 16th centuries, after the Cathari were exterminated. So if Saint Catherine has a hidden name, it might well be ‘Kali.’

  Thecla the nocturnal huntress

  Allusions have been made to the correspondence between Thecla and St. Thecla, but no note has been made of the fact that St. Thecla is one of the most spurious saints in the canon. The legend of St. Thecla comes from an apocryphal document, the Acts of Paul (c. A.D. 170). It says that she was converted to Christ by St. Paul. She broke off an engagement to marry and dedicated her maidenhood to God, whereupon she was subjected to much persecution, in the form of attempts to kill her by fire and wild beasts. She retired to a cave where she lived for many years (recall the mine at Saltus). At the age of ninety she was again persecuted, by local medicine men who were jealous of her healing powers; she was saved from their hands by being swallowed by her cave, ending her martyrdom.

  ‘Thecla’ (meaning ‘famous one’) was a title of the Maiden Moon Goddess Artemis at Ephesus (now western Turkey), where she was worshipped in her second aspect as Nymph, an orgiastic Aphrodite with a male consort. Her shrine in Seleucia (Mesopotamia) was a popular pilgrimage center in pagan times, and remained so even after the goddess was Christianized as a saint. Tertullian (3rd century Roman theologian) knew she was nothing but an epithet of the Great Goddess, and he denied the legend connecting Thecla with St. Paul, hinting that Paul might have been honored by the connection. So Thecla’s hidden name might be ‘Artemis,’ and with this in mind, the unbelievable trials of St. Thecla can be recognized as the same sort of goddess rites that Inanna, to give an early example, had to perform.

  So in Wolfe’s Thecla, with her memories of hunting both beasts and humans (the attacks on the prisoners in the antechamber), we find another disguised goddess.

  Juturna of the deep

  A third mother figure for Severian is the undine Juturna, and hers is the name of a Roman water-goddess, responsible for putting out fires. Her name gives no pretense at being anything but an Enemy of the New Sun (a mythological name and a water-related one as well), and as concubine to Abaia, Juturna’s motives for sporadically helping Severian are obscure: she gives rebirth to him at the beginning of The Book of the New Sun, but later tries to lure him into drowning. She seems unique among her kind in being able to travel the corridors of Time, and she survives the deluge: these two points may form her motive (i.e., she has seen the future and is picking the winner). Aside from a cameo in a corridors of Time episode (IV, chap. 4, 25), Juturna appears four times in the Urth Cycle:

  1) rebirth of Severian in volume one,

  2) attempted drowning in volume two,

  3) her warning of deluge in Urth, and

  4) pointing out the way to Brook Madregot in Urth.

  From her point of view as a time traveler, the order should probably be rearranged as 2-3-1-4.

  Juturna is important for showing the link between what might be too readily termed ‘Good’ and ‘Evil.’ Just as the djinn of The Arabian Nights can convert to the True Faith, so can the Other People of Urth come over to the side of the New Sun. The undines claim that they can swim between the stars, which is just what the Hierogrammate Tzadkiel does. This should come as no surprise: devils are just fallen angels, after all.

  Goddesses of Urth

  Thus, Severian’s mother-figures form a trinity of goddesses, each one an aspect of the Great Goddess: Catherine, or Kali, the fiery one, the absent mother; Thecla, or Artemis, the nocturnal huntress, the teacher (a little bit of Athena, here) who becomes the indwelling goddess; and Juturna, the frightful aquatic guide. One could take this further, and consider the nine women with whom Severian is intimate (Thecla’s khaibit, Thecla, Dorcas, Jolenta, Cyriaca, Pia, Daria, Valeria, and Gunnie — Apheta in Yesod is not human) as nine muses or aspects of the Great Goddess, or add them to the trinity to form a solar calendar group of twelve goddesses, with Agia as the spurned, unlucky thirteenth member (like Eris/Hecate).

  But that would be another essay.

  A Timeline of Events (Chart)

  Year: Events

  70 PS: Autarch Maruthas closes roads (assuming Palaemon is 90 in 1 PS) (I, chap. 12, 102).

  67: Reign of Appian. Scandal involving Lomer (28 years old) and Sancha (14 years old). Odilo I serves.

  63: Sancha leaves (I assume at 18 years of age) for 50 years.

  50: Winnoc born (IV, chap. 12, 74).

  40: Dorcas ‘dies’ giving birth to Ouen, drowns in lake.

  33: Catherine born?

  30: Journeyman Palaemon exiled from guild over mysterious scandal (IV, chap 12, 89), whips Winnoc on his way out of Nessus (IV, chap. 12, 74). Old Autarch begins reign, or Appian changes his ways (II, chap 24, 188).

  20: (roughly) Thecla born, Severian born, Merryn born, Old Autarch becomes criminal, Catherine in Matachin Tower.

  16: Odilo II begins work. (Odilo I served for over 50 years. This compares nicely with St. Odilo, who served for 54 years.)

  13: Sancha returns in third year of Odilo II’s service.

  9: (roughly) Thecla sees Sancha alive (II, chap. 15, 108).

  6: Sancha dies at age 75.

  1 PS: Events of The Book of the New Sun. Lomer is 95. Jader’s sister is around 10 years old.

  5 SR: Odilo II tells tale of “The Cat.”

  10: Severian embarks on journey to Yesod. Eata returns from Xanthic Lands.

  49: Dux Caesidius dies.

  50: Severian returns. Jader’s sister 60+. Odilo III serving. Valeria around 70 (V, chap. 43, 302); (V, chap. 44, 313).

  (PS = Prior to Severian’s reign)

  (SR = Severian’s Reign)

  Bibliography

  Campbell, Joseph. Primitive Mythology, Viking Penguin, New York, 1987.

  Clute, John. Strokes, Serconia Press, Washington, 1988 (paperback).

  Feeley, Gregory. “The Evidence of Things Not Shown: Family Romance in The Book of the New Sun,” The New York Review of Science Fiction (#31 and #32), Dragon Press, New York, 1991.

  Walker, Barbara G. The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Harper & Row, 1983.

  Wolfe, Gene. The Shadow of the Torturer, SFBC edition, 1983.

  ———. The Claw of the Conciliator, SFBC edition, 1983.

  ———. The Sword of the Lictor, SFBC edition, 1983.

  ———. The Citadel of the Autarch, SFBC edition, 1983.

  �
��——. The Urth of the New Sun, Tor, 1987.

  ———. The Castle of the Otter, SFBC edition, 1983.

  ****

  Afterword for “The Death of Catherine the Weal and Other Stories”

  Again the SFBC editions, as among my other early pieces. I only bought the SFBC editions in order to close out my SFBC account. I had joined the SFBC only to get the enigmatic book The Castle of the Otter. I had learned about Castle in a SFBC ad in a genre magazine. A “Four books for $1” sort of thing.

  Prior to that I had no clue about Castle. A whole book about The Book?

  For that introductory offer I bought four copies of Castle. I gave one copy immediately to the Santa Monica Public Library. I do not know if they put it on their shelf or if they sold it right away, but that is what I did.

  Once I had created my own Lexicon I naively thought SFBC would be interested in publishing it, and it was already keyed to their edition. That did not work out.

  •

  A few words about Catherine. Was she even a real Pelerine? Likely she was a prostitute of the House Azure. That would fit clues “exultant” and “khaibit.” In that case, if she wore a pelerine cape it was only a costume.

  “Perhaps Catherine was not a monial at all, but only a khaibit who escaped the Well of Orchids (or the opening night of the House Azure) while in costume, in the same way that Cyriaca escaped Thrax. An escaped khaibit, impregnated by a commoner, might be enough of a crisis to warrant her stay in the tower” (Lexicon Urthus, Second Edition, “Catherine” entry, last paragraph).

  Note that Ouen says of Catherine, “She’d run off from some order of monials” (IV, ch. 37, 306). The phrase “some order of monials” shows overlap between the virginal nuns of no fixed location, the quasi-concubines serving the autarch at the Well of Orchids, and the prostitutes serving commoners at the House Azure.

  The House Azure is closer to Oldgate, Ouen’s home district, than is the Well of Orchids. If a woman left this brothel on opening night, she need only cross the river by boat or bridge, and that is probably the edge of Oldgate.

  Gene Wolfe’s Novels and The Book of the Long Sun

  Inducted into the Science Fiction Museum’s Hall of Fame in 2007, Gene Wolfe is an acknowledged master of Science Fiction and Fantasy, renowned for melding literary and genre elements together in his work. His twenty-five novels to date have won him awards and acclaim from around the world: two World Fantasy Awards, one Nebula, one British Science Fiction Award, one British Fantasy Award, two Locus Awards, two SF Chronicle Awards, one John W. Campbell Award, and one Apollo Award.

  Gene Wolfe, an only child, was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 7, 1931. His family moved several times during his childhood, to Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Iowa. When he was ten they settled down in Houston, Texas, where he attended Edgar Allan Poe Elementary School, and one cannot help but sense that such a literary and fantastic patron left a lasting impression upon him. In college he wrote a couple of stories for a campus magazine, his first experience of being published, but when he dropped out in 1952 he was quickly drafted for the Korean War, where he served in the infantry and saw combat at the front lines. After he was discharged in 1954 he went back to college to complete his degree in Mechanical Engineering. He converted to Catholicism to marry Rosemary Dietsch, and they set up house in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Wolfe worked for Proctor & Gamble as an engineer. He began writing short stories in 1957 and broke into print in 1965, followed by his first novel in 1970. In 1972 Wolfe became editor of the industrial trade magazine Plant Engineering, moving with his wife and their four children to Barrington, Illinois. In 1984 Wolfe retired from the magazine in order to write full time.

  Early Novels

  His first novel, Operation ARES (1970), is largely forgotten as an uncharacteristic work that seems more like 1950s-era Heinlein than 1970s-era Wolfe. It is as if Wolfe purposefully adjusted his natural literary esthetic for this book, effectively turning that knob down to zero in order to declare his allegiance to genre. Still, despite this, the novel has some interest for the committed Wolfe fan as it shows elements common to his later work.

  Operation ARES gives us a twenty-first century America that has retreated from technology after successfully colonizing Mars. It is a broken welfare state on the verge of collapse. The hero, John Castle, becomes a part of a revolutionary group called “Operation Ares,” which is led and supported by invaders from Mars. Their goal is to reestablish technological democracy, and the revolution that follows shows both ideological and military action with a certitude that is quite different from Wolfe’s later ambiguity in such matters.

  Wolfe’s second novel, Peace (1975), is a mainstream novel perhaps too subtle. This time it seems as though Wolfe turned his “genre knob” down to zero in order to fully express his literary side. Yet, unlike Operation ARES, this novel bears the unmistakable style of Wolfe.

  Peace is a memoir of Alden Dennis Weer, born and raised in a quiet Midwestern town. He is an old man and he seems disoriented as he wanders through a large, vacant mansion. On the surface it reads like Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five applied to William Faulkner’s milieu of dynastic decline: at times Alden appears to be a senile man lost in his own empty house, but at other times he seems to be the last man on Earth. Or perhaps he is a middle-aged man suffering some type of mental breakdown due to loneliness and overwork, a man imagining himself as old and lost.

  The Devil in a Forest (1976) is a young adult historical novel with some of the feel of fantasy but not really any of the substance. It tells of Mark, an orphaned peasant in Medieval Europe, a boy who struggles through a somewhat ambiguous landscape of opposing forces: Good and Evil, Christian and Pagan. It is really a mystery novel. As a character, Mark is refreshingly real and modern, rather than being a simple stereotype of a primitive, superstitious peasant.

  Thus, these three early novels show the roots of Gene Wolfe’s later fiction: the genre conventions of science fiction, fantasy, young adult fiction, and mystery; the techniques of literary fiction; and a deep interest in history, with a belief that people throughout history are equally “modern.”

  The Urth Cycle

  The Book of the New Sun (1980-83) is a masterpiece, that is, a work that shows mastery on the part of the artist. With it, Gene Wolfe suddenly arrived on the scene like a bolt of lightning on a cloudless day. The four volumes of the series collectively won a Nebula Award, a World Fantasy Award, a British Science Fiction Award, two Locus Awards, a British Fantasy Award, an SF Chronicle Award, an Apollo Award, and a John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

  In this science fantasy series, Wolfe reinvents the “dying sun” setting of Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique and Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth by being the first to posit a hero who is willing to meet the gods and win for Earth a new sun to replace the failing one. The Book is a memoir of Severian, supreme ruler of a southern continent of Urth, our Earth in the far future. Severian began life as a torturer, and the strange adventure of how he rose from such a low station to the highest in the land is the main topic of the tale, but along the way there is mystery, ambiguity, and philosophy among the baroque wonder of a fascinating world.

  Severian’s initial problem is that he falls in love with a female prisoner who has been sentenced to a type of torture that will last for several weeks until she dies. After her initial torture, Severian is unwilling to allow her suffering to continue on, so he breaks the law and allows her a quick death. For this he is banished from the guild, the only home he has ever known.

  Winner of an SF Chronicle Award, The Urth of the New Sun (1987) is a sequel to The Book that tells of how Severian makes good on his promise by traveling on a starship to the higher universe in order to face the gods and take their test. This relatively simple premise leads to a mind-bending odyssey through time and space.

  The Soldier Series

  Soldier of the Mist (1986) is a historical fantasy set in ancient Greece around the year 479 B.C. It is the written d
iary of a mercenary named Latro who has been cursed so that his memory fades away every day. Rather than a memoir, it is a necessary tool for him to review every morning when he wakes up, before he can continue his quest to find out why he was cursed and what he might do to remove the curse. Perhaps as compensation for his condition, Latro has the uncanny ability to see the gods and talk with them. Soldier of Arete (1989) finds him traveling north into Macedonia, and the much later, World Fantasy Award winning Soldier of Sidon (2006), shows him traveling up the Nile, where he deals with a whole new mythology.

  Singletons

  Wolfe has written a number of singletons, novels that are not part of a series. He wrote four such works in the late 80s.

  Free Live Free (1984) has a salesman, a private detective, a prostitute, and a witch together searching for their missing benefactor, an old man named Ben Free, in a quirky screwball comedy that blends science fiction, gumshoe detective fiction, and the land of Oz, all in the style of a Frank Capra movie.

  There Are Doors (1988) opens portals between parallel worlds of alternate Americas, across which Mr. Green searches for his true love, a goddess who might be a woman. In one alternate world, men die after inseminating women, a biological fact that dramatically shapes their culture and civilization.

  Castleview (1990) is a strange sort of modern Arthuriana set in the American Midwest. A blend of historical speculation and mythological fantasy in a modern urban setting, a quiet little town named “Castleview” because sometimes a castle mirage appears near the horizon. A new family is moving to town just as phantom knights and other strangeness begin to burst forth.

  Pandora by Holly Hollander (1990) is a mystery along the lines of Nancy Drew, famous girl detective. When tragedy strikes close to Holly Hollander, killing a young man, she becomes convinced it was murder, and dedicates herself to solving the case. Set in contemporary Chicago, this novel is the purest expression of the young adult mystery trend that first appeared with The Devil in a Forest.