(urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

[Larry Miller]

On my next read Im going to read Long, then Short, then New/Urth as
Severians tale seems to begin after Horns ends.  Maybe this will help
puzzle out some connections between the series such as the connection
between Horn and the ghost of Malrubius.

On 12/14/11, António Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Daniel Petersen wrote (14-12-2011 10:34):
>> On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 10:12 PM, Larry Miller <decanus1284 at gmail.com
>> <mailto:decanus1284 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Can you really spoil a Wolfe novel anyway?
>>
>> Ha, good point.  Although, I have to say, I for some reason read On Blue's
>> Waters first and only then went back and read Long Sun before starting
>> over
>> and completing Short Sun.  As much as I/loved/ Long Sun in many ways, a
>> bit
>> of the oomph was taken out by my hazy familiarity with some of the
>> characters and set up.
>
> Is it that different from reading The Silmarillion after tLotR?
>
>> I think if I'd gone into the first volume of Long
>> Sun having NO IDEA what was coming, it would have just blown me away on
>> the
>> conceptual, framework level.  It still did, but without quite as much of
>> the
>> sense of mystery and surprise it probably would have without prior
>> awareness.
>> Then again, my first reading of On Blue's Waters will always remain an
>> intensely magical moment for me as I was plunged into the midst of a
>> richly
>> dense storyworld already well-developed and a narrative far into its
>> themes
>> and trajectories.  The effect was utterly intriguing, delightful, and
>> awe-inspiring.  I can still close my eyes and feel the strange, pleasantly
>> baffled, open-spaced wonder of first contact with Blue's flora and fauna
>> and
>> the glimpses of interstellar back story.  To this day I don't know which
>> is
>> the better way to approach the whole thing.  (John Clute wondered in his
>> review of OBW whether it was the best place to start with Wolfe.  I'm
>> still
>> wondering that.)
>
> I think tIoDDaOSaOS or SftOH would be the best places to start, because you
> have smaller bits to chew before you go into a 12 (500 pages) volume series.
> But the 12 (500 pages) volume series should come next, and I honestly think
> the 'canonical' order is the right one.
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