Wulfsyarn

by Phillip Mann

Overview

The Nightingale was the most advanced craft in the entire fleet of Mercy ships belonging to the Gentle Order of St Francis Dionysos. On its maiden voyage, its life bays packed with refugees, the Nightingale disappeared. Despite strenuous efforts no trace of it could be found.

Then, a year later, a distress signal was heard and the Nightingale reappeared. It was damaged in ways that meant its survival in space was a miracle. But of its previous cargo of life-forms there was no sign. Only one creature remained alive within the ship, and that was its captain, Jon Wilberfoss.

Wulfsyarn is the story of the Nightingale, and of Jon Wilberfoss. It is told by Wulf, an autoscribe who has the task of observing Wilberfoss in the aftermath of his return. For the captain of the Nightingale is a condemned man: condemned by the Gentle Order, and self-condemned by a burden of guilt so intense his mind refuses to acknowledge it. Over the long period of Wilberfoss' tortured convalescence in a peaceful monastery garden on the planet Tallin, Wulf watches and waits, recording the mosaic of Wilberfoss' life: his childhood and adolescence, his entry into the Gentle Order, his marriage (to a native Tallin woman), and the great moment when he was chosen as captain of the Nightingale.

But can Wulf bring Wilberfoss to finally face the truth of what happened on the Nightingale's fatal first and last journey?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780575114913
Publisher:	Orion
Publication date:	09/29/2011
Series:	Gateway Essentials , #102
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	981 KB

About the Author

Phillip Mann (1942 - 2022)
Phillip Mann was born in Yorkshire in 1942. he studied English and Drama at Manchester University and later in California. He worked for the New China News Agency in Beijing for two years, but since 1969 has lived principally in New Zealand, where he held the position of Professor of Drama at Victoria University, Wellington, until he retired in 1998. His first novel, The Eye of the Queen was published in 1982 and was followed by seven others including the 'Story of the Gardener' and 'A Land Fit for Heroes' sequences. He has had many plays and stories broadcast on Radio New Zealand, which also adapted his Gardener novels Master of Paxwax and Fall of the Families. He died in September 2022.

Editorial Reviews

This ambitious novel from the New Zealand-based author of Pioneers offers strong support for the definition of science fiction as a literature of ideas. The story appears to be a biography of a starship captain named John Wilberfoss, as written by an artificial intelligence called Wulf the Autoscribe. But Wilberfoss's life is only one small aspect of this immensely complex book, in which Mann unfolds his conception of the future. Mann envisions a universe where contact with aliens is commonplace, Christianity and paganism have been merged into a new religion, and the monks of St. Francis Dionysos are attempting to restore order to the galaxy after two devastating wars. There is a diverse and well-developed cast of characters--human, alien and artificial--but their main purpose is to serve as mouthpieces and illustrations for Mann's ideas about art, religion, science, war and human nature in general. This makes for occasionally slow reading as Mann interrupts the plot for long, tangential discussions. But the richness of the ideas ensures that the tale never gets boring. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The maiden--and final--voyage of the Nightingale , flagship of the Mercy Fleet of the Gentle Order of St. Francis Dionysos, becomes a journey into nightmare and alien madness for its sole survivor, Captain Jon Wilberfoss. As told in the words of Wulf, a machine autoscribe and analyst of human psychology, this tale of horror and suspense becomes transformed into a languorous drama with overtones of Greek tragedy. This complex and intriguing vision of the far future is appropriate for large sf collections.

Library Journal