New Wave Sci-Fi 75 (30)
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April 22, 2018
One in a series of posts about the 75 best science fiction novels published during the genre’s New Wave era (from 1964–1983, according to HILOBROW’s periodization schema). For Josh Glenn’s complete New Wave Sci-Fi 75 list, click here.
Gene Wolfe’s The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972).
Three subtly interlinked stories set on Ste. Anne and Ste. Croix — twin Earth-colony planets circling one another. The first tale is a memoir narrated unreliably by “Number 5,” the son of an insane genius, who recounts how he and his brother were raised in a brothel by a robot teacher, and how he was eventually forced to reckon with his own identity — and challenge his father. The second story, written by a visiting anthropologist from Earth studying the planets’ supposedly extinct race of shapeshifters, is narrated in the style of an aboriginal folktale about estranged brothers; the protagonist embarks on a quest, traveling between real world and dreamworld… though the reader can’t always tell them apart. The third story also concerns the anthropologist, who runs afoul of local authorities and is imprisoned for years — we learn the bizarre details through snippets from his increasingly unhinged (or truthful) journals — and from interrogation tapes being revised by a bored police agent.
Fun fact: The first story, “The Fifth Head of Cerberus,” was included in the 1973 anthology Nebula Award Stories Eight. Though not his first novel, Wolfe considered it his first good one.
NEW WAVE SCI-FI at HILOBROW: 75 Best New Wave (1964–1983) Sci-Fi Novels | Back to Utopia: Fredric Jameson’s theorizing about New Wave sci-fi | Douglas Adams | Poul Anderson | J.G. Ballard | John Brunner | William Burroughs | Octavia E. Butler | Samuel R. Delany | Philip K. Dick | Frank Herbert | Ursula K. Le Guin | Barry N. Malzberg | Moebius (Jean Giraud) | Michael Moorcock | Alan Moore | Gary Panter | Walker Percy | Thomas Pynchon | Joanna Russ | James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon) | Kurt Vonnegut | PLUS: Jack Kirby’s Golden Age and New Wave science fiction comics.
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