Fifth Head Of Cerberus

If you were expecting space opera, yes, you will be disappointed. The Fifth Head of Cerberus is a novel with some serious literary intentions. Many (most?) fans aren't really keen on that when they pick up an sf novel.But I would like to comment about the many reviews that claim this book is difficult, that it requires repeated readings, that it has many possible interpretations. (BTW, if you want to get someone interested in a book, don't tell him that he has to read it several times to understand it!)Wolfe's narrative style is not opaque or contorted. It is straightforward and elegant throughout. It does switch scenes, sometimes frequently, to tell the reader what the other characters are up to, and it does go back and forth in time, to some extent. These are techniques to which any reader of any genre of fiction in the 21st century is well-accustomed.Be that as it may, The Fifth Head of Cerberus is a mystery novel, in this case a speculative anthropological mystery. Like many mystery novels, it includes a number of riddles whose solutions intertwine. The most fundamental is how the societies of the fictive planets reached their very peculiar current condition. The solutions are not spelled out for the reader in the courtroom denouement of a traditional detective novel, though they are finally revealed by means of a legal evidentiary investigation. There is one solution (the "fourth story" mentioned by some reviewers) that explains the intertwined enigmas. A plethora of alternatives is neither required nor possible. The reader can gradually come to know the fourth story by means of clues scattered liberally on almost every page of the other three. The most important clues are repeated, often several times, and well signalled. Others are cleverly or clumsily dropped by the wayside. Nothing is wasted. Every sentence has significance. An unexplained or puzzling remark or occurrence is a signal of something that will assume importance later.The mystery (or mysteries) can be solved easily on a single reading. One has to be awake to detail, keep in mind obvious clues, and should probably pause now and then to mull over what might solve the riddles currently in play, what explanations might work, what is the evidence pro and con: like reading a detective novel. Still, several reviewers have insightfully pointed out that the "fourth story" of the triad (i.e the various mysteries' explication) is not found on the printed page but is carefully constructed by the author in the alert reader's imagination. By the end, the reader has all the information he needs to share the author's vision of the history of his planets and characters.Though the story and the anthropological speculation behind it make for an enjoyable and moving tale, The Fifth Head of Cerberus contains some philosophic themes that run deeper than the mysterious plot. Every part of the narrative illustrates or exemplifies these more profound themes. Wolfe does not make philosophical statements but ruminates, always employing the narrative and characters, always "showing rather than telling".Other reviewers have discussed most of these themes, but have neglected the most important, that is, the moral character and behavior of the novel's people and animals (and machines). I have been told that always at the forefront of Wolfe's writing is morality, the moral dimension of his subject matter. If so, The Fifth Head of Cerberus is no exception. The foundational characteristic of Wolfe's imagined world is that the physical and mental parts of all its living beings are malleable and transferable. Every character embodies the moral strategies and behaviors called forth by this psychophysical (inter-)changeability. By our standards, all three protagonists are amoral members of amoral societies, yet their lives are undergirded by inescapable ethical infrastructures. Some reviewers have asked what the novel is about. I answer. It is about morality, ethics in an invented world and in our own. Morality in extreme circumstances is what each of the three narratives and the triad as a whole are about. And again, not a sentence is wasted.The Fifth Head of Cerberus was published at the time when genetic engineering and cloning technology had only begun to break down the boundaries of our physical identity. Today, the book should be recommended reading for any seminar in Speculative Ethics. (Or Speculative Anthropology, if there should be such a discipline!)

Gene Wolfe is difficult to praise highly enough without sounding unconvincing. One can urge people to read his work, claim that he's one of the greatest living writers in the English language regardless of genre (indeed, perhaps the greatest), one can ramble on about his virtues for hours to friends and strangers, and in the end, to those who have not read him, the claims start to sound unhinged, even deranged. "Aren't you overselling him just a tad?" they inevitably ask.To this I can only say: read some of his work and see. "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" is perhaps the best place to start, not because it is his easiest work (it is not), but because is both fairly compact and an example of Wolfe at his best. The commitment is smaller than if you launch in to the Latro books, or "The Book of the New Sun", but the joy to be had on reading is no smaller. You will know soon enough if Wolfe is, for you, all that his admirers say he is. I say "for you" because taste in literature is inevitably personal, and perhaps you will find that Wolfe is not what you are seeking. Perhaps, however, you will find that he is, and if so, you have a wonderful treat awaiting you.I suggest that you not read any review of this book that describes the plot. In fact, I suggest that, if you choose to buy the book, you avoid reading overly much about it, looking at the cover image, or reading the back cover copy. None of them will improve your experience of the text. No summary will do you any good, anyway. I could explain the plot of in a couple of moments, and it would in no way convey the pleasure that reading it will bring to you. In fact, knowing anything about the plot at all will explain nothing about why you want to read it, and might, in fact give one precisely the wrong impression about why one would want to read it.Wolfe is said to have claimed "my definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure." "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" is, by that standard, some of the very best literature there is. Immediately after I first read the book, I was driven to read it again. I have since re-read it perhaps five or six times over the course of many years, and each time I find both that understand the book better, and that, like a bottle of incredible wine, aging has only improved the content.I would normally be reluctant to give five stars to any work, but not in this case. Can this book really compete with, say, "Moby Dick", or "Hamlet", or "Lolita", or "Ulysses" in the canon of great literature? I claim yes, it does. See for yourself.I will close with a few remarks to serve someone newly encountering Wolfe's work. He is a master craftsman, and makes few if any mistakes in shaping the intricate puzzle boxes he hands to his readers. Every sentence in a book has been placed there for a reason. No detail of character, setting or action is described thoughtlessly, and no detail will be described to you twice. Wolfe does not telegraph his motives or paint a summary on a billboard -- he expects a thoughtful reader. That said, I discourage you from treating his works as mystery stories or as a game to be solved. They are not. You should not be attempting to commit each line to memory, and should not try to drain every last bit of meaning from them on first reading. You will not succeed, and it will serve no purpose. Instead, dive in, enjoy the elegant prose, hang on to the galloping story as it carries you forward, and marvel at the form of the whole as you reach the end. When you inevitably wonder about something you may have missed, worry not -- you can and will enjoy the work even more on re-reading.

I have read and reread The Fifth Head of Cerberus, as I have read and reread the books of the New Sun and the Long Sun. There is something wrong in thinking of something still so very strange and full of horrors as comfort reading, but Wolfe's mastery of tone and atmosphere is captivating in the full sense, even when he takes us to the slave marts of Port Mimizon, and worse. The cadence of Wolfe's writing, which allows for startling flashes of poetry to glitter like gems on velvet (for instance, from elsewhere, "the rotting jungles at the waist of the world" with its play on waste/rot). Wolfe's pace (which some will find slow, poor them) allows us to take in the grotesque beauty of a stellar colonial society in all its corruption. None of this is overwritten in the least, yet you recognise the essence of Wolfe. All of his tropes and tics are here: the green and blue worlds staring at each other, the repeated inversion of up and down, sickly vampiric child-people, beasts and brutes mimicking humans, masks on masks, the refusal of identity. It's all here, in miniature, and the first time we saw the majesty of the mature Wolfe. In fact, The Fifth Head of Cerberus is the gateway drug for Wolfe world, and they should give it away outside school playgrounds. I couldn't be happier to be hooked, and I've been an addict since I was a teenager. We miss you, Gene.

Regarding the SF Masterworks edition of the book: *Do not read the introduction.* Well, read it but after you read the main texts. It gives away way too much of the plot. The book consists of three interlocking stories. On the plus side, the stories are really weird and darkly twisted affairs and the main theme of identity is an interesting one. Why only three stars? This is completely subjective but for me the sentences were consistently too long and I found myself rereading passages multiple times to make sure I'd understood them. Overall, I'd say that it's by no means a waste of time but more interesting than enjoyable.

This is a masterpiece. As soon as I had finished reading it I had to begin again, always for me the sign of the work of a genius. This is because on reaching the end, instead of feeling that sort of flat feeling of "Oh well, that was fun, now what?" I felt more of a "Wow! I wonder what became of Sandwalker. Did he or Eastwind really survive, or are they of a race of immortals, so they can easily be revived? Is the anthropologist who he says he is or not? What is that mysterious cave really all about? Did Number 5's father kill his father? What to the initials VRT stand for? Whose minds are being controlled and why? Who is really in charge here? Why does there seem to be a time distortion, so it seems as if humans have been here longer than they have?" And so on. So I have to read it again to find the answers, and do so with even more pleasure than first time around. Clues to the answers to my questions are scattered throughout the book, but nothing is directly spelled out.Throughout the book runs the theme of identity, what makes us the person we are. We imagine that we are unique beings, but are we really? What makes me me or you you? Appearance? Personality? Genetics? Environment? Education? Our memories? None of these?

The distance between The Suns is almost unknowable, it cannot be measured in chains or cubits, but rather in the lifespans of men, the waxing and waning of entire species, the parturition and passing of worlds. Such a thing feels as an illusion, that, in fact (when seen from the side) there is no distance at all, distance is not a thing that should be applied or considered a concept. Seeing a parlour magician on stage and marvelling at their escape from an impenetrable pyx, your place in the audience engineered to give the performer the perfect position from which to deceive you and your fellow visitants. After the show you catch a glimpse of the strongbox and see that it has no back. No escape was ever undertaken. No peril, only in the minds of the observants.

This book doesn't give a neatly tied up bundle for an ending, (or does it?) which threw me as, for reasons of tradition I suppose, I thought that was what was coming, at least I had built that expectation myself from the narrative. Several times throughout the reading of it I found myself wondering what was going on, but I'm used to that from sci-fi novels and so stayed with it; easy really as the writing is so good and as the author always did have a way of convincing you the world he put you in was real.This is a book that I need to read again, if only to dismiss that vague suspicion I was left with that perhaps I had missed something.. I read a lot of sci-fi (in fact pretty much exclusively) and have read all Gene Wolfe's other books, so accepting that the reader is sometimes challenged, played with or downright tricked is par for the course, nonetheless this was the only book I was still unsure about after reading it; not in the way we are sometimes left with an acceptable ambiguity, nor in the way we are sometimes just left with a cop out, but more in the way of whether or not I had actually 'got' it at all (this experience may or may not be a good thing, depending on one's mood and expectations at the time). However if I did get it then It takes one of the oldest ideas in sci-fi, retells it in Gene Wolfe style, and extends it, puts a twist on it and leaves you with the possible far-reaching and stunning implications.I certainly had hoped though that the story would somewhere, even if codified, present a concrete explanation for why Cerberus specifically had a fifth head, rather then a fourth, sixth or seventh, but I think (unless a second reading changes my view) that the title is more of a joke than a clue. Or perhaps the title's allusion to the underworld/hades hopes to imply that the narrative is by way of euhemerism, a tongue-in-cheek ploy to reinforce the idea that the story is based on an authentic history.But then I would say that, wouldn't it?;)