It is set on a ship-world whose origins are shrouded in legend, ruled by strange gods who appear infrequently to their worshippers on large screens, and peopled by a human race changed by eons of time, yet familiar.Īt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied. Life on the Whorl, and the struggles and triumphs of Patera Silk to satisfy the demands of the gods, will captivate readers yearning for something new and different in science fiction, for the magic of the future.Įnormous in breadth and scope, Wolfe's ambitious new work opens out into a world of wonders, of gods and humans, aliens and machines, and mysterious adventures far out in space and deep inside the human spirit.

(Apr.Nightside the Long Sun is the beginning of the science fiction masterpiece from Gene Wolfe, Book of the Long Sun If this first taste is any test, Wolfe has embarked on an epic to rival his acclaimed Book of the New Sun. The environment of the long sun-so called because the ship's cylindrical interior is lit by a central tubular ``sun'' extending the length of the ship-comes energetically alive, and readers will be grateful that this book begins a four-volume series. The atmosphere of Wolfe's spacecraft seduces and amazes, details and mystery piling upon each other to yield a sense of palpable otherworldliness. But for all its interest, the plot is hardly the most powerful element. From that point on, Silk is drawn even deeper into the shady world outside his temple walls.

Armed with the conviction of his revelation, Silk enlists the aid of a local but decent-hearted thief, intent upon breaking into the mansion of Blod, the new owner of the manteion, to convince (or even force) him to guarantee its survival. On the same day, however, he learns his manteion had been sold for back taxes and may well be dismantled. Patera Silk, a young priest in one of the city of Viron's poorest temples (``manteions''), receives a mental message from one of his gods, an enlightenment which invests his life with urgent meaning. Wolfe's first novel since Pandora by Holly Hollander (1990) is a vivid and compelling evocation of life inside an interstellar spacecraft so huge that a whole world of cities and wildernesses exists within it, and so old that its origins and purpose are mere legends to its inhabitants.

Nightside the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe