By my powers of being 9 months late, I resurrect this thread! Interesting discussion guys, I will admit I have had trouble squaring Wolfe's personal views with his writing. I mentioned before that I could see things in there that to me read critical of faith, which was obviously very important to Wolfe. I would also like to add that even if Wolfe believed X and got pretty political about it I think that he was definitely not a writer who preached and prescribed. Did he use the hippies as a boogeyman in this story? Possibly, but it is not something I even really considered before you guys brought it up because that is not what I got from it. Maybe he believed something, but once he has put it on the paper he is letting us engage with it. I think that adhering to the death of the author too faithfully is also a fallacy though, I think it is hard to entirely divorce a work of literature from who wrote it and what was going on in their environment. But forget for a moment what you know about Wolfe, are some of the calls to action (the old man asking the soldier whether they believe in anything) and the martyrs coming from the hippies' side? I know that you guys are actually looking at understanding Wolfe more through this chronological read, I am just bringing up a counter-argument. I would also like to echo the sentiments of China Mieville (a socialist) he says that 1. Wolfe has this tragico-catholic (afaik he coined that phrase? I like it) perspective that gives a very unsanitized view of the world (which I think is why he is so good at describing what are some of the wrongs with it), and 2. that even though there are authors he agrees with more he goes to Wolfe for the quality of the writing. Ultimately I agree with Mieville, I am not necessarily looking to Wolfe to tell me his political opinions because I have my own as well (I think he has some really interesting views though), and I think idolizing someone I really did not know is dangerous, but the quality of his writing speaks for itself. Having said that, one thing that strikes me as interesting is that over on /r/fantasy when people bring up conservative authors Gene Wolfe is quick to be mentioned. For me, this is odd because as I said his writing does not strike me as fundamentally conservative (fundamentally catholic, maybe), but something that both Wolfe and Tolkien find very important is stewardship, which can be seen in their environmentalism. That is a value that the American right has completely abandoned if it ever held them (I am not the most educated to speak on this). In my country, I would say that there are 2 major very Christian parties and one of them is a bit more to the left with environmentalism as a major concern while the other is very much to the right with much less regard for that. What I am getting at is that maybe Wolfe would have described himself in different terms if the culture around him was different, aligning yourself with just 2 viable parties seems very difficult to me. With that out of the way, I will be honest this story didn't connect with me on an emotional level very much. Admittedly I was a bit distracted while reading it, but I just found the characters (other than Tredgold) to be quite dull. Your discussion is what kinda saved it for me on an enjoyment level, the themes, and how prescient the story is I liked on my read through. Honestly, I have no clue what is going on with the immolations or the ending, your readings are ones I can believe. I will vehemently disagree with you guys on one thing though, the epigraph was awesome! Now onto Tracking Song for a more topical discussion since you guys are almost finished covering it. Also, can I just say that I am very much looking forward to sharing my thoughts about the Fifth Head of Cerberus, and starting Peace when you get to it?