/lit/ - Literature

What the FUCK was his problem?

>>19216757
The middle one sounds good otherwise but I'm not exactly rich. I'm a welfare hobo ever teetering on the edge of murder suicide

Do you guys consider it a Catholic work? Urth had me doubt that somehow.

>>13527081
>You should read Waylander by David Gemmell since it's pretty much exactly this.

You're the second anon recomending it to me in this thread, so I guess I have to read it now, thanks anon-kun

For me, is Severian, the chaddest of all chads

Am I doing something wrong? In the novel Im working on, half of the book is told in first person, and that character outright gives off the impression of "telling a story" rather than being purely constrained to explaining exactly what is happening in the present.

What I'm wondering is, is it jarring when the character basically inserts paragraphs with clear (even if cryptic) knowledge of what happens further in the story, but mainly sticks to describing scenes and events in order as if it was happening? Im basically using BOTNS as a point of reference for the method and it seems to be working well enough there

Is the true difference between genre fiction and "literary" fiction that genre fiction uses its fantastical elements itself as the mechanism of the story (see: we must do this because X) rather than as a backdrop to the character?

>>11674480
>There is no beginning, no end, just Teotling. BUT, the sun (the Aztecs understood "our world" in terms of numbered suns) is not immortal; the universe is actually on its fifth sun according to the Aztecs. There were maybe more suns before that, maybe not. Some gods can survive the death and birth of a sun, some can't. Humans certainly cannot except by going to one of the many other realms, but those are quite hostile to human life. So, it's up to the clusters of processes we call "humans" to engage in the regulation of their environment to keep the processes they want to keep going going. Namely, the rising of the sun.
>To do this, Aztec Tlamatinime (philosophers and wise-men) found the best way to do this would be to transfer olin energy to the sun in order to feed it. The heart is a source of olin energy (cyclic motion), so the Aztecs engaged in mass heart-sacrifice to feed the sun. A bunch of other things did this, like the sacrifice of pregnant women (I believe this had something to do with rain and water). This is why the Aztecs setup their empire in such a manner as to harvest the barbarians around them: They were doing exactly that, harvesting them. This works in the long term because Teotling is all there is, so in theory the sun will give back enough olin to keep making hearts to give to the sun. It's a zero sum, but a slippery one. The world is slippery to the Aztecs, you need to stay on the middle of the mountain or you tumble down.

I have seen this before!

>>11620854
I'm not saying that "fuck you this is the cover", but I'm not willing to be fucked over by a committee of autists who have historically been proven to be incapable of designing actually good covers either. I'm willing to compromise and listen to feedback, not to bend over and allow them to sabotage something if I literally have the skillset to make a cover art on my own

>>11110494
>Leaving the planet is kind of easy to imagine but leaving the planet as just a stage in an even bigger struggle might be interesting.

This is the case, but I wouldnt want to spoil too much because I figured tons of people on this board would enjoy my book, at least based on the worship that BOTNS gets around here. The functionality of the reformed society itself here is not at all a main part of the stories playing out but since its the setting and backdrop I obviously need to have some idea of how would it have logically come to existence

So maybe I'm an idiot, but what are the so called "mysteries" of this book. I read through all of it once, and Urth too and I feel like I pretty much understand everything and don't need to read it again

Why does everyone say this deep is so complex and full of question and mystery? Like it's a good book, but come on

He LITERALLY did nothing wrong

So I finished my second reading of Book of the New Sun and my first reading of Urth of the New Sun. I'm really having trouble grappling with the issue of Severian's free will. I know that free will plays heavily into Wolfe's faith and his ideas of Christianity, but to me it looks like Severian was manipulated by the Heirodules and Hierogrammtes the whole time, and his perfect memory meant he could never see the forest for the trees and piece everything together. Can anyone help clear this up for me?

The Book of the New Sun edition.

Mapping a Masterwork: A Critical Review of Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun – Ultan's Library
>http://ultan.org.uk/review-botns/

Sci-Fi’s Difficult Genius - The New Yorker
>http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sci-fis-difficult-genius

Fantasy
Selected:
>https://i.imgur.com/r688cPe.jpg
General:
>https://i.imgur.com/igBYngL.jpg
Flowchart:
>https://i.imgur.com/uykqKJn.jpg

Science Fiction
Selected:
>https://i.imgur.com/A96mTQX.jpg
>https://i.imgur.com/IBs9KE8.jpg
General:
>https://i.imgur.com/r55ODlL.jpg
>https://i.imgur.com/gNTrDmc.jpg

NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books:
>https://i.imgur.com/IJxTQBL.jpg

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