Book of the Short Sun

The Book of the Short Sun

First omnibus edition
Author	Gene Wolfe
Cover artist	Jim Burns
Series	Solar Cycle
Publisher	Tor Books Science Fiction Book Club (omnibus)
Publication date	1999–2001 (three vols)
Pages	752 pp (2001 omnibus)
Preceded by	Book of the Long Sun sub-series

The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001) is a series of three science fantasy novels or one three-volume novel by the American author Gene Wolfe. It continues The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996): they share a narrator and Short Sun recounts a search for Silk, the Long Sun hero. The two works are set in the same universe as The Book of the New Sun series that Wolfe inaugurated in 1980 and the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) catalogs all three as sub-series of the "Solar Cycle", along with some other writings.

At least Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field considered the three Short Sun volumes separately for annual "Best Novel" awards.

The "Short Sun" of the title is an ordinary star, in contrast to the "Long Sun" of the Whorl where the narrator grew up. Most of the story takes place in a star system with two habitable planets, Blue and Green, which lend their names to the first two volumes. The Whorl of volume three's title is the generation ship setting of Long Sun.

The Tor hardcover editions (see table) were almost 1200 pages long in sum.

Science Fiction Book Club released a 752-page omnibus edition only two months after the third volume was published.

The story, which is told by a narrator who identifies himself as Horn (the ostensible author of The Book of the Long Sun), is an account of a search "on three worlds" for Silk, the hero of the Long Sun cycle. However, the narrator's adventures continue as he writes, so that the manuscript is both a memoir of his past and a journal of his present. As the story progresses, the narrator's identity becomes increasingly complex and elusive. The writing style changes with each book, and the story is highly nonlinear, with narrative threads from different times told in parallel and story events related out of order as the narrator remembers or confronts them. As with many of Wolfe's novels, the narrator and the circumstances under which the book is being written are essential to understanding the story.