On Blue's Waters

by Gene Wolfe, Jason Culp (Read by)

Overview

On Blue's Waters is the start of a major new work by Gene Wolfe, the first of three volumes that comprise The Book of the Short Sun, which takes place in the years after Wolfe's four-volume Book of the Long Sun.

Horn, the narrator of the earlier work, now tells his own story. Though life is hard on the newly settled planet of Blue, Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves. But Horn is the only one who can locate the great leader Silk and convince him to return to Blue and lead them all to prosperity. So Horn sets sail in a small boat, on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now legendary Patera Silk. The story continues in In Green's Jungles and Return to the Whorl.

"By any standard, Wolfe's beautifully composed, meditative, thrilling, and tricky-beyond-belief 'science fantasy' is a work of the highest art." (The Washington Post Book World)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781978694569
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	07/12/2022
Series:	Book of the Short Sun , #1
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Gene Rodman Wolfe (1931-2019) was a former engineer turned prolific short-story writer and novelist who won multiple science fiction and fantasy literary awards, including the SFWA's prestigious Grand Master award in 2012. He is noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as for the strong influence of his Catholic faith. Wolfe is most famous for The Book of the New Sun (a four-book series), the first part of his eon-spanning Solar Cycle. Other popular works include his Wizard-Knight duology and The Fifth Head of Cerberus.

Editorial Reviews

Launching a three-book series, Wolfe's latest takes place several decades after the close of his acclaimed four-volume the Book of the Long Sun. There, it was revealed that the great artifact called the Whorl, unbeknownst to its millions of inhabitants, was in fact a failing spaceship and that the AI "Gods" that ruled the Whorl wanted its inhabitants to leave and colonize two nearby terrestrial planets, Blue and Green. Now, decades later, Blue has many human cities, but civilization is slowly decaying. Horn, who also narrated the earlier series, has been dispatched to find Patera Silk, the legendary leader responsible for the colonization of Blue. Wolfe's complex, two-part story line follows Horn's initial quest across Blue in search of a vehicle, or lander, capable of returning to the Whorl, while it simultaneously recounts the aging Horn's life as the involuntary ruler of a city far from his home and family. In his initial quest, Horn must battle vampiric shapeshifters and attempt to thwart their plot to divert the lander and its human cargo to Green, their home world, where the humans will be used as cattle. As always, Wolfe's prose is masterful and his main characters are well developed. The novel starts slowly, however, and moves in fits and starts. Horn, who narrated Patera Silk's story in such a self-effacing manner in the earlier series, can't seem to stick to his narrative for more than a page or two without dithering off into inconsequential meditations on his own shortcomings. But Wolfe does establish several tantalizing mysteries that hold readers' attention, and which, presumably, will be explored fully in later volumes. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Bound by an oath to find the legendary Patera Silk and bring him to the new world known as Blue, Horn leaves his job as a papermaker and embarks on a perilous sea voyage to the end of his world and beyond. Continuing the tale begun in his "Book of the Long Sun" series, Wolfe embellishes on the fortunes of many of the characters from his earlier works. The author's deceptively simple style conceals a dense weave of symbols and allegories suggested by his ingenuous protagonist's odyssey across the waters in search of a hero. Most libraries should consider adding this title to their sf collections. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Wolfe's grand tour of his imagined world is literate and witty without sacrificing the attributes of a good story and without the cliches common to the field.
—Science Fiction Chronicle

Don D'Ammassa

On Blue's Waters is easily the best science fiction novel of the year, and the author's most compelling since publication in the early 1980's of the now classic Book of the New Sun.

The Seattle Times

First of a new trilogy and sequel to Wolfe's heavyweight Book of the Long Sun tetralogy (culminating in Exodus from the Long Sun, 1996). Narrator Horn, who previously related the story of a multigeneration starship, the Whorl, and its eventual ruler, Patera Silk, has now settled with his family in the city of New Viron on the planet Blue beneath the Short Sun. But the settlers still need a dynamic, skilled leader—and who better than Silk? So Horn sets sail in a small boat, ready to cross all Blue's oceans to find him. Problem is, Silk was last seen 16 years ago, aboard the Whorl, and by now he might well be dead. You don't have to be acquainted with the Long Sun tetralogy, but it helps considerably, and though Wolfe's teasing list of "Proper Names in the Text" is of small benefit to newcomers, fans of the previous should not be disappointed.

Kirkus Reviews