If you do not find all you seek within these humble pages, please, look at these other sites!
ultan's Library- Online Gene Wolfe Literary Journal
Cave Canem- Robert Borski's Excellent Website
SFBookcase- More Information on the Wolfe
Templeton Gate - A Gene Wolfe Biography
Fantastic Fiction - A Gene Wolfe Bibliography
Bonjour!
Welcome, gentle reader, to 666 Saltimbanque a website concerning Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Gene Wolfe's breakthrough "novel". Published in 1972, Fifth Head is actually a collection of three novellas: "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", " 'A Story' by John V. Marsch'", and "V.R.T.", all concerning characters and mysteries that are lingering around the decaying French colonies on the planets of St. Anne and St. Croix. In all three novellas, the characters deal with the problems associated with coming of age, most principally, the problem of finding and understanding personal identity, particularly when it isn't your own.
I think it's one of the greatest books I've ever read and a lot of people agree with me.
"...of
course, author Wolfe has scribed a number of additional masterpieces, and his
reputation as sf's most accomplished writer seems guaranteed for some time to
come, but it was in Fifth Head (after a rather unremarkable tyro novel) that Wolfe
first consolidated his literary bones and astonished readers with a novel that
is not only boldly and complexly different, but resonant with many of the themes
and preoccupations that would later come to dominate his work. It was and remains
a must read and should rank high on everyone's favourite Top Ten list of genre
classics; it also has everything it needs to commend itself to lovers of fine
literature in general--so don't be afraid to recommend it to your non-genre friends."
Robert
Borski
"Clones, down-loaded personalities inhabiting robots, aliens that perhaps mimicked humans so successfully that they forgot who they were, a French culture adopted by its ruthless oppressors--there are a lot of ways to lose yourself, and perhaps the worst is to think that freedom consists of owning other people, that identity is won at the expense of others. It is easy to be impressed by the intellectual games of Wolfe's stunning book, and forget that he is, and always has been, the most intensely moral of SF writers."
Roz
Kaveney -- Amazon UK
"A
subtle, ingenious, poetic, and picturesque book; the uncertainty principle embodied
in brilliant fiction...Wolfe is so good he leaves me speechless."
Ursela
K. LeGuin
"You did a lot more than add two novellas. Those three stories interweave, reflect, comment on, illuminate, confuse, and do all manner of things to each other."
-- Neil Gaiman, commenting on Gene Wolfe saying he simply added two novellas to "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" to get it published. Locus September 2002 p. 81
" Wolfe is as fine a writer as Science Fiction has produced." --The New York Times Book Review
" [The Fifth Head of Cerberus] was the first significant demonstration of the great difficultly of reading GW without constant attention to the almost subliminal- but in retrospect or after rereading almost invariably lucid and inevitable- clues laid down in the text to govern its comprehension." John Clute- The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
"A supremely delicate excercise in narrative construction; not easy to follow, but one of the true classics of SF." - Anatomy of Wonder
There are many different places where Wolfe's ideas, particularly Cerberus are examined. Some can be directly linked to over the internet but others have to be sought out in the basement or hovel of your local bibliophile.
So, quickly, a very shoddy works cited:
- Brown, Charles N. et. al. "The Wolfe and Gaiman Show" Locus, September 2002. Excellent Interview, more Wolfe than Gaiman
- Clute,
John, Nicholls, Peter, et. al. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
- Clute, John Strokes. New York: John D. Barry Design, 1988. Haven't actually read this yet but this summer there will be time...for decisions and revisions....and reading!
- Barron, Neil ed. Anatomy of Wonder 4: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction. New Providence, NJ : R.R. Bowker, 1995.
At the bottom of the page you can click on any one of Cerberus' five heads to navigate to a more detailed description of each novella and a page about the author himself, Gene Wolfe.
