Given that, the glaring omission from this semester's science fiction survey class is Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, an 800-page experience.
I'd like to recommend it not by describing the work as a whole, but by describing it from a reader's new experience of Wolfe's best book. Most of Wolfe's writing is unsummarizable anyway, and an almost indescribable experience.
The Book of the New Sun takes place millions of years in the future, on Earth, called "Urth" in the book. At the outset of the novel, it appears that human civilization has regressed to a medieval world of swords, guilds and monarchs. The narrator, Severian, is a member of the torturer's guild. He seems to have no scientific knowledge, but possesses a deeply theological worldview. In the early pages, Severian hints that he is writing as the "Autarch," the quasi-monarch of a realm in the Southern hemisphere. This talk of guilds and monarchy, plus torture, swordplay, and theology, makes Wolfe's work seem more like fantasy than science fiction. Perhaps humanity used up Earth's resources at some point, and has ever since been living in a quasi-medieval state?
And then thirty pages in, Severian mentions that the moon is covered with green forests. He wonders what it once looked like, eons ago, when it is said that the moon was once bare rock.
Here the reader (okay, me) is led to consider an important question. If the technology to terraform the moon once existed, then does it exist in Severian's world?
The answer is yes, but Severian is somewhat ignorant of the technological "magic" of generations past and present. He may also be deceiving the reader about what exactly he knows, as he is clearly an unreliable narrator.
What makes Wolfe's work so fantastic is the effortless blend of fantasy tropes and science fiction. At times the work seems like fantasy--indeed to Severian it does--yet a casual reader of sci-fi will recognize all manner of sci-fi elements in the book, coded by Severian's ellusive, ambiguous language. There are spaceships, aliens, androids, time travelers, black holes, telepathy, and much much more in this book. But if you do not read closely, though, you might not know it.
Consequently, about every fifty pages or so, Wolfe reveals some major clue about the setting and/or the history of Earth that greatly affects the plot and forces us readers to reconsider everything we've already read. Severian has a habit of revealing a key moment from a scene pages or chapters after he's already told us seemingly everything about the scene. For example, Severian meets his only friend, Jonas, who appears to have an artificial hand. Only when Jonas exits the book do we discover that Jonas is actually a robot, who had skin and flesh grafted onto his face and chest after his spaceship crash-landed. We are then left, after the fact, to re-evaluate everything we know about Jonas.
Do I need to tell you that there are several major secrets about Severian the narrator? Two are revealed in the book's last seventy pages, and they change everything.
Yet the dozens of deep mysteries in the book -- including the sci-fi elements of the setting, the history of "Urth" -- are actually backdrops to a pretty powerful Bildungsroman as well as a forced meditation on human nature. I say "forced" because, given Wolfe's setting, whatever he says about humanity is what he thinks is permanent about it. After all, if he posits a humanity millions of years in the future, he is constantly comparing his audience in the present to his fictional future humans.
For Christian readers, Wolfe is fairly friendly. He converted to Catholicism while writing the novel, and theologically charged observations pepper the book. Severian is constantly thinking about the prophecy of the "New Sun," a deliberate double entendre, a prophecy that hints about both a renewal of the dying sun (whose light is gradually diminishing as its hydrogen runs out) and the return of the "Conciliator." The Conciliator was a man, some say, a powerful prophet who predicted and taught about the New Sun. Some believe the New Sun will be the Conciliator returned. Severian also meditates often on the workings of the "Increate," something analogous to the Holy Spirit, a being above all beings who indwells in them and in nature. So it's no surprise when Severian, as the plot unfolds, becomes an antitype of Christ in many ways. And Severian himself may have something to do with inaugurating the New Sun.
This book is highly challenging, but incredibly rewarding. It did take 250 pages for me to fully invest in the novel. While that's slow going for most, just know that this may be the greatest science fiction novel yet written.
