Lexicon Urthus, Second Edition

Michael Andre-Driussi

Aug 2008 · Sirius Fiction

About this ebook

Lexicon Urthus is an alphabetical dictionary for the complete Urth Cycle by Gene Wolfe: The Shadow of the Torturer; The Claw of the Conciliator; The Sword of the Lictor; The Citadel of the Autarch; the sequel Urth of the New Sun; the novella Empires of Foliage and Flower; the short stories "The Cat," "The Map," and "The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun"; and Gene Wolfe's own commentaries in The Castle of the Otter. The first edition was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. This second edition, available for the first time in paperback, includes 300 new entries. When the first edition was published, Science Fiction Age said: "Lexicon Urthus makes a perfect gift for any fan of [Wolfe's] work, and from the way his words sell, it appears that there are many deserving readers out there waiting." Gary K. Wolfe, in Locus, said: "A convenient and well researched glossary of names and terms. . . . It provides enough of a gloss on the novels that it almost evokes Wolfe's distant future all by itself. . . . It can provide both a useful reference and a good deal of fun." Donald Keller said, in the New York Review of Science Fiction: "A fruitful product of obsession, this is a thorough . . . dictionary of the Urth Cycle. . . . Andre-Driussi's research has been exhaustive, and he has discovered many fascinating things . . . [it is] head-spinning to confront a myriad of small and large details, some merely interesting, others jawdropping."

Ratings and reviews

Disappointing. I discovered Lexicon Urthus while reading the Book of the New Sun. Looking up some of the more esoteric words online, occasionally entries from the book would come up in the results. That is when I decided it would be a reference worth having. I'm not sure if the version it was referencing was older, or if the fashion in which I was seeing excerpts misled me, but I was under the impression that entries appeared in the order they came up in the books, making it useful as a side-by-side reference during a reread. This would also make me inclined to just read through it, front to back, as the entries would be following the path of the story, and make sense that way. It is alphabetical, however, which you might think makes more sense, but consider things like the table of measurements, or the calendar, and that they aren't in some organized section of useful references, rather, they are in the midst of all the definitions, by C or M. This would be okay, if there was an extensive table of contents, index, or if the eBook was well formatted with links, notes, etc. But it isn't, and that's the biggest disappointment. For your $, what you are getting here is just an overpriced PDF file. Lacking the text flow and other niceties of an actual ePub. Sure, it's readable, but it's just a picture of each page of the book, rather than actual text that can be styled, move around to fit your screen, etc. It's serviceable, but shouldn't be priced the same as real eBooks, and should be announced upfront that you are being sold a PDF.

I am so grateful to the author for bringing clarity to Gene Wolfe's wonderful creation. I have been reading Book of the New Sun for about 25 years; Lexicon Urthus has helped me continue to discover new meanings and interpretations. It is just plain fun to read as well.

About the author

Gene Wolfe was born in New York City on May 7, 1931. He dropped out of Texas A&M University during his junior year and was drafted into the Army to fight in the Korean War. After the war, he received a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Houston. He worked as an industrial engineer for Procter and Gamble, where he developed the machine that cooks the dough used to make Pringles potato chips. He was an editor of the trade journal Plant Engineering from 1972 to 1984 before retiring to become a full-time writer. He wrote more than 30 books during his lifetime including The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Peace, The Book of the New Sun, and The Land Across. He received the Campbell Memorial Award, the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award, the Locus Award four times, and the Nebula Award and the World Fantasy Award two times each. In 1996, he was given the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2007 and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2012. He died after a long battle with heart disease on April 14, 2019 at the age of 87.