The Castle of the Otter

A collection of essays and commentary for The Book of the New Sun.

• The Feast of St. Catherine
• Helioseope
• Sun of Helioscope
• Hands and Feet
• Words Weird and Wonderful
• Onomastics, The Study of Names
• Cavalry in the Age of the Autarch
• These Are the Jokes
• The Rewards of Authorship
• The Castle of the Otter
• Beyond the Castle of the Otter

In April 1981, Locus, the newspaper of the sciene fiction field, reported that Gene Wolfe was working on the fourth novel in his tetralogy The Book of the New Sun. The novel's title, Locus claimed, was The Castle of the Otter. Locus was wrong – but Wolfe liked the title enough to give it a book of its own.

SF fans who have followed Severian's adventures have hailed The Book of the New Sun as one of the most imaginative and mind-stretching series of the decade. Now, in The Castle of the Otter, Wolfe gives us a collection of essays an dinsights on how he came to write the four-part journey through the mysterious lands of Urth.

In this companion volume you'll read Wolfe's own explanation of how he named his characters and what the names mean. He answers the questions that SF readers have asked him for years, and he includes anecdotes that do not appear in any of the four books. Readers will also find a helpful lexicon for the obscure words and expressions that are found throughout the series. Here are more secrets of The New Sun for readers who seek the true meaning of Severian's quest.