The Shadow of the Torturer (1980) by Gene Wolfe

The Book Of the New Sun Volume 1: The Shadow of the Torturer (1980) by Gene Wolfe: Nearly 40 years on, The Shadow of the Torturer retains the power to startle with its virtuoso use of language and its detailed world creation. 

The Book Of the New Sun belongs to a relatively small but robust sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy set uncounted millions upon millions of years into the future of Earth, a time so remote that some of the beaches of this Earth are a rainbow of particles, the atomized remnants of the coloured glass bottles of our era. 

Wolfe's possible influences from this sub-genre include William Hope Hodgson's early 20th-century The Night Land, Clark Ashton Smith's 1930's tales of Zothique, and Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories that began in the 1950's. Those who would follow Wolfe into these strange lands would include Michael Shea in his 1980's tales of Nifft the Lean and China Mieville with the far-future Earth of Railsea and even the mysterious, probably non-Terran landscapes of Perdido Street Station and its sequels.

Such stories often nod to Arthur C. Clarke's Law -- any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Hence the tendency to call such stories 'science fantasy.' Are the monsters actually the product of genetic engineering? Are the demons advanced aliens? And so on, and so forth.

This first novel of the tetralogy introduces us to young Severian, a member of the Guild of Torturers on the cusp of his elevation beyond the level of apprentice. We're shown his boyhood in the mostly deserted grounds of the once-thriving complex of the Torturers. All this occurs within the walls of the gigantic capital city of this world, whose walls reach the clouds.

Things change, of course, and a choice made by Severian sends him on his path beyond the Torturers' demesne and into that wider but still enclosed world of the city. He is to pass beyond the city's gates, but the sheer scale of the city will make that passage the odyssey of this first novel.

Wolfe masterfully summons sympathy for Severian, in part by having Severian tell his story from some remote future point, a sort of Great Expectations at the end of time. Severian's world is overflowing with strange and interesting characters, creatures, objects, and events. This is world-building on a massive scale, but world-building that always keeps its eye on the inhabitants of that world.

The Book Of the New Sun isn't an easy read. Wolfe offers a cascade of odd and offbeat and often archaic nouns to name the various oddities of this world at the end of time. It's a bit of a riff on the wild naming practices of Clark Ashton Smith and his stories of Earth's last continent Zothique. Regardless of how big your dictionary is, the names and nouns will soon flow smoothly through your consciousness. Part of Wolfe's magic here is to make the reader comfortably uncomfortable with the world of the far future. Highly recommended.