Having watched the first-season finale and just about half of the second season of Torchwood (2006–11), I have put the series on hold until I can track down the rest of the first season, because while I am truly spoiler-indifferent and really enjoying the show, I have realized I don't want to replicate my experience of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the Long Sun (1993–96), where I short-circuited at least one major character's arc by reading the second half first.
There are four volumes of The Book of the Long Sun: Nightside the Long Sun (1993), Lake of the Long Sun (1994), Caldé of the Long Sun (1994), and Exodus from the Long Sun (1996). The plot concerns a revolution on a generation starship whose gods are literally ghosts in the machine, except perhaps for the minor god whose revelation to a young augur in the first novel kicks off a quest that starts like the Blues Brothers and ends like Les Mis; unlike Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun (1980–83) with its experimental play of memory and time, The Book of the Long Sun is notable for its dead-ahead structure which does not even incorporate flashbacks, although occasionally its characters dream. In other words, all information not encountered in order in the text must be explicitly filled in or deduced in hindsight, and Wolfe uses this technique to keep the reader reevaluating interactions and motivations in light of later events. It was therefore utterly disastrous for me to read the last two volumes first, which of course I had no way of knowing one late autumn night in my junior year of college when the second-half omnibus was lying around a friend's dorm room and I wanted something to read while five people I liked very much were carrying on a conversation that bored me completely.
The Book of the Long Sun is one of the narratives where I have a favorite character; his name is Patera Remora and he is the coadjutor of the city-state of Viron, which in the classically inflected religion of the Whorl means more or less what it does in the Catholic or the Anglican Church, only with a lot more haruspicy. ( That's the latrine, you putt! )
Anyway, since I have seen character development already in the seven episodes of Torchwood I've watched so far, I figure I should go back for all of it from the start, even knowing that the writing of the first season has some hiccups, to say the least. I hope Gene Wolfe of blessed memory appreciates that I have taken the lesson. Not everyone can make me care, even slightly, about linear narrative.
There are four volumes of The Book of the Long Sun: Nightside the Long Sun (1993), Lake of the Long Sun (1994), Caldé of the Long Sun (1994), and Exodus from the Long Sun (1996). The plot concerns a revolution on a generation starship whose gods are literally ghosts in the machine, except perhaps for the minor god whose revelation to a young augur in the first novel kicks off a quest that starts like the Blues Brothers and ends like Les Mis; unlike Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun (1980–83) with its experimental play of memory and time, The Book of the Long Sun is notable for its dead-ahead structure which does not even incorporate flashbacks, although occasionally its characters dream. In other words, all information not encountered in order in the text must be explicitly filled in or deduced in hindsight, and Wolfe uses this technique to keep the reader reevaluating interactions and motivations in light of later events. It was therefore utterly disastrous for me to read the last two volumes first, which of course I had no way of knowing one late autumn night in my junior year of college when the second-half omnibus was lying around a friend's dorm room and I wanted something to read while five people I liked very much were carrying on a conversation that bored me completely.
The Book of the Long Sun is one of the narratives where I have a favorite character; his name is Patera Remora and he is the coadjutor of the city-state of Viron, which in the classically inflected religion of the Whorl means more or less what it does in the Catholic or the Anglican Church, only with a lot more haruspicy. ( That's the latrine, you putt! )
Anyway, since I have seen character development already in the seven episodes of Torchwood I've watched so far, I figure I should go back for all of it from the start, even knowing that the writing of the first season has some hiccups, to say the least. I hope Gene Wolfe of blessed memory appreciates that I have taken the lesson. Not everyone can make me care, even slightly, about linear narrative.
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