The Fifth Head of Cerberus in The Alternative Worlds

Jul 04, 2015 Terry rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

2022 re-read thoughts: Well, I think I grokked this one a bit better this time and re-reading definitely pays dividends with Wolfe. I think I came to like the second story "'A Story,' by John V. Marsch" the best this time around despite finding the beginning a bit slow going. I also enjoyed the way Wolfe played with viewpoints and his use of multiple sources for the final story "V. R. T." and it is probably the one for which I have the most questions and which I hope my next re-read may bring cl 2022 re-read thoughts: Well, I think I grokked this one a bit better this time and re-reading definitely pays dividends with Wolfe. I think I came to like the second story "'A Story,' by John V. Marsch" the best this time around despite finding the beginning a bit slow going. I also enjoyed the way Wolfe played with viewpoints and his use of multiple sources for the final story "V. R. T." and it is probably the one for which I have the most questions and which I hope my next re-read may bring closer to the light. I still wish I was a bit closer to Wolfe's ideal reader such that I was better able to pick up on the (very) subtle nuances and clues that are interspersed amongst the stories on my initial reading of his work, but I have to admit that I keep looking forward to my re-reads of the Wolfe books I have thus far tackled in a way that I would not have expected after my first read of any of them. Kudos Gene!

Original review: Oh Gene Wolfe why can't I quit you?! Constantly frustrated by your boring viewpoint characters (your secondary ones tend to be so much more interesting!), your constant practice of leaving out the 'good bits' of the story (only to refer to them, if at all, obliquely and second-hand later), and your monomaniacal need to make every story a goddamn puzzle! But I keep coming back for more...keep hoping this time it will be different and I'll get the full experience, be completely immersed, not just find a few excellent bits and flounder amongst the rest. I know it's not you, it's me. I'm just not a good enough reader for you...but dammit I can't stop trying!

So here we are with _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_. I will admit right off that even the title of this one confuses me. One thing to note: if you don’t want a bunch of mysteries ruined before you even start and you have the SF Masterworks edition I read then *don’t read the frickin’ introduction!* Damn, I hate it when they write intros to books that spoil key plot and character elements, what’s up with that? Of course, after you finish you might find it helpful in figuring some things out. ‘Fifth Head’ is really a set of three interconnected novellas as opposed to a ‘true’ novel. All of them take place on the binary sister worlds of Ste. Anne and Ste. Croix, apparently initially colonized by French settlers who seem to have wiped out the original aboriginal population and who were themselves supplanted by a succeeding wave of colonization from Earth.

The first section, the eponymous ‘The Fifth Head of Cerberus’, is narrated by a man recalling his strange youth in a brothel on the world of Ste. Croix. He tells us of his early life with his brother David as they matured under the watchful eye of their robot guardian-cum-teacher Mr. Million and the all-pervasive though mysterious presence of their somewhat sinister father. Rest assured not all things are as they appear (it’s a Gene Wolfe story after all), but I won’t spoil the apparent revelations about the man and his family. Of course since it *is* a Gene Wolfe story many of these ‘revelations’ are oblique and circumstantial to say the least…so take your conclusions with a grain of salt. Suffice it to say that Wolfe’s obsessions with identity and memory play a central role in this story and the fact that many of the key events of the tale happen ‘off-screen’ (or are expressed via the unreliable first-hand narration of the main character…damn Mr. Wolfe loves him some unreliable narration) leaves any final conclusion dubious at best. This is primarily a tale of a son coming to the point in his life where he must come to terms with his own identity and challenge his father for supremacy…or is he really challenging himself? Hmmm...

The next tale, ‘”A Story”, by John V. Marsch’, is perhaps both the most straightforward and at the same time the most confusing section of the book. It purports to be a tale written by John Marsch, an anthropologist from Earth who has come to visit the twin system in the hopes of discovering some remnant of the mysterious native ‘Abos’, and who played a minor role in the previous story. The narrative is written as though it were a folktale of the Abos of Ste. Anne and details the adventures of John Sandwalker, his estranged twin brother John Eastwind, and the conflict between their two tribes: the hill dwelling ‘Free People’ and the marsh dwelling cannibals of the meadowmeres. There are also the mysterious ‘Shadow Children’ who may simply be magical creatures of the Otherworld, or perhaps they’re extraterrestrials…then again could they actually be the original natives? Whoever they are, they are a mysterious and protean group that seems to exist in a liminal state between the real world and the dreamworld of the mind and who play the role of both bogey-man and preternatural benefactors simultaneously. Identity and consciousness again play key roles in the story and I must admit that the main character’s habit of apparently passing between the ‘real’ world and the ‘dream world’ without notable cues and the way in which memory and perception of the here-and-now seemed to blend together made this section a bit challenging for me.

The final section, ‘V.R.T.’, veers into the Kafkaesque as our old friend, the apparently earth-born anthropologist John Marsch, travels from Ste. Anne to Ste. Croix where he runs afoul of the local authorities. This section is primarily composed of snippets of text from various sources: Marsch’s journals and scientific papers from his field work on Ste. Anne undertaken in the hopes of finding a living remnant of the original inhabitants of the planet, and his memoirs and interrogation tapes from his time in prison on Ste. Croix. All of these disparate elements are being reviewed (in a haphazard sequence and piecemeal I might add) by a local agent of the police who has been asked to decide on Marsch’s ultimate fate. The overarching fear and paranoia endemic to a police state play a large role in this section as do, once again, the issues of identity and memory. The ennui and total disinterest of the police agent as he reviews the sad facts of the case of Dr. Marsch brings into sharp focus the horror and paranoia that underlies this tale. Our confusion (or mine anyway) is only exacerbated when these ‘facts’ as reported by Marsch become less and less reliable as he obviously becomes more and more unhinged by the events that overtake him. Or does he? Perhaps something mysterious really did happen during his journey to ‘the back of beyond’ on St. Anne in which he had only one local guide (who claimed to be half-Abo) as a companion. What mystery, if any, did he discover out there and what happened to him as a result? I’ll leave it to you to discover this.

Did I mention that legends state the Abos were shapeshifters? And that there are theories not only that they still exist, but may even have subsumed the human population so effectively that they have in essence become the human population? Well, let’s just add that to the pile of mysteries Wolfe brings to his set of tales. This is definitely a ‘Wolfean’ story: many, if not all, of Wolfe’s primary hobby-horses are in evidence, from a fascination with memory and identity, to unreliable narrators and key pieces of the puzzle never being revealed (or only revealed after the fact and behind a curtain as it were). If that’s your bag you’ll like this one and it will definitely bear re-reading and give you plenty of food for thought…I’m still left with an empty feeling inside though. As with nearly every adventure I take with Mr. Wolfe I just wish I was better equipped to parse his lingo, to see between the cracks in that way he so obviously wants me to. Sometimes I think I succeed, if only in small way, but I still end up coming away thinking: ‘that would have been an awesome story if it just came together and maybe made a bit more sense!’ ...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Brad rated it liked it

Shelves: political, sci-fi, philosophical, mieville50, new-novella

I feel a failure now that I've finished The Fifth Head of Cerberus. It is good. Very good. I see that. But I can only muster mild "like" for the thing, and I feel as though I must have missed something along the way in my insomnia reading haze. And I can't really see myself going back to redress the situation because I just don't feel connected to Gene Wolfe's work.

I read what Ursula K. LeGuin says about the book,

A subtle, ingenious, poetic and picturesque book; the uncertaintly principle embodi

...more

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Feb 15, 2012 Nicky rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: speculative-fiction

Read this for a group read -- the first time I've managed to get myself organised to do that in a long time. I have a backlog as long as my arm of books that were picked for discussion in that group! And they always pick interesting ones.

This was my first Gene Wolfe book, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. I don't know whether my brain just doesn't work in quite the right way to fully 'get' the story, or if everyone else is equally at sea. I kind of want to nod wisely and pretend I follow ...more

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Nov 27, 2011 Sarah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: speculative-fiction

Three linked novellas set on the sister planets of Sainte Anne and Sainte Croix, each with a different tone and focus but a common question: what really happened to Sainte Anne's aboriginal inhabitants? Each made me want to go back and reread the previous for clues that I had missed. The intricate balance of the three is fantastic. This is a hard one to discuss without spoiling it, so I'm not going to say much. ...more

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Jan 12, 2012 Simon rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-masterworks, sf

I've learned that when reading Wolfe, one should expect an oblique story, a narrative that makes little sense on the surface, who's meaning must be gleaned by penetrating the layers of the story, picking up on cryptic clues and piecing it altogether upon reflection after finishing the book. This is no exception.

One of the themes at the center of this story is identity. What it is that makes us different when we are physically the same and how can we tell the difference between the real thing and ...more

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Feb 12, 2012 Daniel Roy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf, taw-bookclub, sf-masterworks

In three novellas joined at the heart, Wolfe weaves a cryptic tapestry of identity and loss of self, on a backdrop of post-colonial theory and the echoes of genocide. It's a challenging, puzzling, yet rewarding read, and despite being more than forty year-old, doesn't show its age.

Contrary to The Shadow of the Torturer, which left me exhausted and a bit frustrated, The Fifth Head of Cerberus is a rewarding read, whose mysteries reveal themselves with careful reading. In pure Wolfe tradition, non ...more

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Jan 16, 2012 Maree rated it liked it

It's difficult when reading a series of stories to give a proper rating. There are three novellas packaged in this book, and I very much enjoyed the first one, very much did not enjoy the second one and was okay with the third. I figure that averages out pretty well to a three star read.

I've read that Wolfe is a difficult writer who doesn't slow down for his readers and expects them to be thinking as they read. I'd be okay with that if some parts of his story weren't already so tedious to read. ...more

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Feb 13, 2012 Suz rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, book-club, classic

I think this book is absolutely brilliant, but I don't think I care for Wolfe's writing, which makes this difficult for me to rate. If someone whose style I liked better had written it, I might have given it 5 stars, because I do think it's fantastic.

I can't go too much into the plot, because I do think this book is best read naive.

Basically, two (twin) planets, Sainte Croix and Sainte Ann have been colonized by humans a long, long time ago. There are mysterious aborigines that may or may not ha ...more

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