Anybody ever read Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series. Its way back from the early eighties. It’s strange far future, twisted history stuff. It starts out with The Shadow of the Torturer; a tale of an apprentice torturer that who is raised in the Torturer’s guild that inhabits an abandonded spacecraft, which appears as a a tower of incomprehensibly strong metal. The whole series consists of four books; The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autaurch. There’s a lot of cool ideas presented. The only reason I bring this up is that I found the old books moldering in a box in the garage. I remember the way that the writing inspired my thoughts when I was younger and allowed me to bend everyday , mundane crap into a Sci Fi perspective. Sitting in High School , while everybody else was pre-occupied with actual class or whatever, I was thinking about other worlds and places far beyond the quadratic equation. Its funny how something lies dormant in your memory and then finding the book brings the whole story back… i think I’ll dust them off and have another go at the old imagination. Oh, and by the way, the Alzabo (which may be similar to an Alpaca, give or take a few attributes) is a fascinating creature…
Thinking about this whole subject reminds me that I came a cross a fifth book in the series at a train station in Amsterdam in the early 90’s. I remember reading it while riding on the train going though Europe. Can’t remember the name, however. (Or the storyline) Damn good time in Holland though!
I’m just at the beginning of the fourth book in this series - absolutely brilliant. Has to be added to those old favourite imaginary worlds of Dune, Lord of the Rings, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy.
The fifth book is called Urth of the New Sun, which dropped through my letterbox the other day. The fourth book was meant to be the last, but Gene Wolf decided to continue the series and apparently did this seamlessly (according to reviews I’ve seen). There is another series set (I think) after the New Sun series, called the Book of the Long Sun, and I think there is also a Book of the Short Sun, so plenty for fans of this universe.