/lit/ - Literature

The SF Masterworks edition of The Fifth Head of Cerberus has a foreword by Adam Roberts (a decent author FWIW) that not only spoils the basic plot, but confidentially and conversationally "solves" some of the most tricky puzzles and deepest layers of the story. The infuriating thing is that Roberts was WRONG on fundamental points, like the nature of the Shadow Children and what happens to Marsh in the final story. We know he's wrong because other people got it right and had it confirmed by Wolfe himself.

So the foreword spoils the plot, fine, pretty much all forewords to classics do these days. But messing up the analysis like that really rustles my jimmies, as they say.

A few months ago I bought a copy of Fifth Head as a gift for a friend. Only the SF Masterworks version is easily available in the UK, so I imported a used (but new condition) older edition from the USA solely to avoid the cancerous foreword.

I want to share an example >>9712170

"My father had his own library, now in my possession; but we were forbidden to go there. I have a dim memory of standing - at how early an age I cannot say - before that huge carved door. Of seeing it swing back, and the crippled monkey on my father's shoulder pressing itself against his hawk face, with the black scarf and scarlet dressing gown beneath and the rows and rows of shabby books and notebooks behind them, and the sick-sweet smell of formaldehyde coming from the laboratory beyond the sliding mirror."

>>6979219
You're the kind of person who would wear a fedora if 4chan didn't tell you not to.

>>6666081
thanks, I appreciate your help