Underrating Gene Wolfe

The previous post was written as a reply to a wisecrack I overheard as a Sci-Fi convention, so, for reasons of completeness, let me mention those events and thought which provoked my meditation on HOME FIRES and ‘Fifth Head.’

I was serving on a panel where the topic of discussion was whether God and other divine topics can fit into a naturalistic genre like Science Fiction. As when any science fiction fans gather in amity, the panel was a diverse smattering of opinion on the topic, and including catholic and heretic, pagan and Gnostic and postmodernist, and at least one proselytizing atheist.

The question itself did not provide much amusement, I fear. All and sundry knew too well that there are as many stories touching on Heaven in Outer Space as on Earth, and it would take very shallow view of religion to decree the topic out of bounds of a genre including STARMAKER by Stapledon, THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH by Lewis, DUNE by Herbert, STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Heinlein, or CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ by Miller, LORD OF LIGHT by Zelazny or even GODS OF MARS by Burroughs, and all viewpoints Catholic and heretic, pagan and Gnostic and atheist.

My opinion of the question is not hard to guess: I hold that speculative fiction is a natural vehicle for stories concerning the things that most concern mankind, genesis and escahton, hope and despair, salvation, transcendence, incarnation and reincarnation, the role of man lost in the lonely universe.  One hardly can address deep themes when fettered by the artifice of mainstream lit, which has to pretend the modern worldview is the only view.

The atheist on the panel amused himself and bored the audience (or at least one member thereof) with his blasphemies, pretending to shock the subjects of Queen Victoria who happened not to be in the room. He waxed poetical on his all-consuming hatred of CS Lewis, I assume because Lewis does not bow down the idol the atheist fears and adores, which is called pain. The atheist was bitterly offended that Lewis did not lose his faith while suffering the pain and agony of the loss of Joy his wife, because he considers it dishonest to seek comfort in present pain from the balm of faith in the promises of Christ.  I sympathized with his opinion, having once held somewhat similar myself, and I said worse when I was an atheist— so none of the blasphemies against God shocked me.

I was shocked, however, when he blasphemed Gene Wolfe. He contradicted my statement praising that author as being the finest who wields living pen, both among sciencefictioneers and muggles alike, for he dismissing Mr. Wolfe as overrated.

It is a dangerous business for any author publicly to criticize another, lest his own work come under scrutiny and the contrast be seen. This is why I am always slightly embarrassed or moved to pity, for example, when Michael Moorcock, who writes entertaining and lightweight hack potboilers (but potboilers I rather like) waxes indignant over Professor Tolkien, who like a resplendent demiurge creates a world of enduring beauty and sorrow, sublime almost beyond words, a triumph to last the ages; or when Philip Pullman writes one third of what should have been an exquisite trilogy, then wanders into the wasteland of preaching, stumbled from his path, his plot and his point, and perishes amid the sun-bleached ox skulls of storylessness, but has the effrontery to dismiss the brilliant and well-cobbled tales of CS Lewis as hateful.

Since I myself am a writer not equal either to Mr Moorcock or (when he sticks to his calling of story-telling) Mr Pullman, let me hasten to add I am aware that I invite the pity of others by criticizing giants rightly famed in the field, nor am I unamused by the irony of criticizing critics for being critical. As Walt Whitman says, ‘Do I contradict myself? I am vast; I contain multitudes.’ In my case: vastly pompous, and multitudes of self contradictions.’

Be that as it may, I cannot remain silent when the glory of Gene Wolfe is besmirched! Anyone whom both Neal Gaiman and I both like must be doing something right.

Honestly, is there a writer alive today to address such deep themes as Mr Wolfe, concocts such eerily realistic and well constructed worlds, who has characters so vivid and well drawn, plots so tightly woven and deftly twisted with paradox and cunning reverses, so many layers of meaning, who is such a master of auctorial voice?

Wolfe can fill an entire page of dialog, and not once pause to mention the name of any speaker, but because their methods of expressing themselves are so clear, each voice unique, he need not. Can any other author accomplish this, not in one book, but in all of them? Compare the erudite overcomplexity of expression of Severian the Torturer, who comes from the Fin de Siècle of all ages, with the teenage simplicity and directness of Sir Able of the High Heart.

To pick one trifle out of the treasure house, is anyone else amused that the fencing master in the city of Viron, where all men are named for living things, is called Xiphias? Xiphias is the archaic name for swordfish.  What other fish does one name a fencing master after?

Or does anyone note the self-referential subtlety of this quote: “The great question then, that I pondered […] is that of determining what these symbols mean in and of themselves. We are like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but one, and a sword in the last.”

Nearly every tale by Isaac Asimov, or Robert Heinlein, or Jack Vance contained one theme that was pounded into my head as a child, and only with great effort of intellectual asceticism have I been able to work the spike free and examine it: that is the idea that men are plastic, and are molded entirely by society.

It is, of course, a natural conceit for a science fiction story: the same way whodunits concern murders, SF concerns the changes technology might make to the human condition. Those elements of the human condition that cannot change, that do not change, are less apt materials from which to spin out new worlds.

But some of the false air of sophistry, the lightness of a man who tells a joke, or who argues a position not because he believes it, but because he is skilled at debate, hangs over this conceit.

Does anyone really believe that, as in an Asimov story, a world would go insane at nightfall if it had never seen the stars for generations? or that world with inexpensive teleportation would forget every man jack of them how to walk out of doors? or that the world with inexpensive robots would become neurotically adverse to human contact, or that every man jack living in crowded cities underground would be agoraphobic?

Does anyone really think the members of the Church of All World concocted by Michael Valentine Smith could have wife-swapping orgies without jealousy among the Water Brothers? You would have to be a man born on Mars to know that little about human nature.

Compared to such shallow thought-experiments with conveniently cardboard humanoids, the phantasmagorical worlds of Jack Vance seem like the sober reports of an anthropologist.

The infinite malleability of man is however a theme much of the science fiction I read in youth addressed. It is an interesting theme, as profound as one might encounter in a typical sophomore bull session in college, and certainly one schoolchildren should encounter in their reading. But it is not a deep theme.

If Gene Wolfe were a typical science fiction author of typical skill, he would perhaps address themes no more profound than this.

He is not typical. He is not shallow. He is, however, subtle, and I think he means to lure the unwary sophomore reader into contemplating themes which serve to subvert, or, rather, to supervert, the dominant paradigm of this our present age of darkness in which we live.  I hesitate to discuss them lest that unwary reader be warned and shy away: but my own obscurity acts as a shield.

I myself can only imagine two reasons for dismissing the work of Gene Wolfe:

(1) ideological. Persons who engage in the nameless mental activity, like thought but the opposite of thinking, known as political correctness, are famed for their willingness to sabotage their taste in art on the altar of political messages. Mr Wolfe makes no profession of Politically Correct opinions — indeed, he does not use his story telling as a platform for preaching any ‘messages’ at all, preferring perhaps to use Western Union for that chore — and so the Brahmans and keepers of the Sacred Faith of the deeply thoughtful haters of thought might indeed sneer at him for that reason.

(2) Opaqueness. Mr Wolfe famously cuts the reader absolutely no slack and makes no allowances. He never explains himself, and I suspect he will go to his grave with his secrets. There are perfectly cromulent readers who balk at this most unforgiving of writers, and who cannot be entertained when they do not know what the heck if going on. In Mr Wolfe’s more experimental novels, I feel the same way and cannot work my way through them. I need an interpreter — but no man who can interpret the novels to me will do so, lest he spoil the jest. Any reader who feels likewise with conclude that Mr Wolfe is making a basic mistake in the art of writing, and trying to be needlessly opaque.