Nebula Award nominee 1993, Mythopoeic Fantasy Award nominee 1997.
It has been nearly a decade since the completion of Gene Wolfe's
four-volume epic The Book of the New Sun, "one of the modern
masterpieces of imaginative literature – an evocation of a world so
far in the future that magic and technology, poetry and science, are
indistinguishable, a world heavy with time but not yet bereft of hope,
a world brought to life by Mr. Wolfe's unique blend of slightly archaic
diction and ever-surprising vocabulary" (The New York Times Book
Review).
In the intervening years his award-winning novels and stories
have solidified his reputation both in fantasy and science fiction with
a cascade of stunning achievements. No sf writer has been more highly
and continually praised.
Now Wolfe returns to science fiction with a
mighty multi-volume mega-novel of mystery, war, and revolution, The
Book of the Long Sun, set on a world, the Whorl, existing inside a
giant starship sent from Urth to colonize a distant planet. Wolfe's
previous work in this future universe has been hailed as a "major
landmark of contemporary American literature" by Booklist, and "a
masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major
works of Tolkien and Lewis" by Publishers Weekly.
Enormous 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. 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.
Nightside the Long Sun is the beginning of a masterpiece of science
fiction for this decade. 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. The Book of the Long Sun is
launched with success.
