Silk, the hero of Wolfe’s earlier series, has vanished.

The first volume of The Book of the Short Sun, On Blue’s Waters opens with Horn, a baker in a small colonial settlement on the planet Blue. The gods of his town — local AI constructs descended from a long-departed generation ship — ask him to do something simple and impossible...find Silk.

Horn leaves his wife and children behind and sets out across islands and sea routes, into cultures shaped by fragments of old Earth, alien biology, and unreliable memory.

As with most Wolfe, the story operates on two levels. On the surface it's travel narrative, sea voyages, encounters, captivity, politics. Underneath is identity instability, possession, myth layered over technology. Horn’s account begins to blur — who is writing, who is speaking, who is remembering.

It’s a novel about belief and authorship disguised as a quest story. Dense but deceptively straightforward in tone, it rewards slow reading and suspicion. Absolutely gorgeous text, and a pleasure to have on the site, a true collectible.