The Fifth Head of Cerberus
First edition
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| Author | Gene Wolfe |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Nicholas Gaetano |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Genre | science fiction |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
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Publication date
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1972 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 244 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 354762 |
| 813/.5/4 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.W85615 Fi PS3573.O52 |
The Fifth Head of Cerberus is the title of both a novella and a single-volume collection of three novellas, written by American science fiction and fantasy author Gene Wolfe, both published in 1972.
The title of this collection of novellas is a play on words which refers to Cerberus a three-headed dog from Greek mythology which guarded the gate to the Greek underworld, Hades. In the first novella the protagonist explains that Cerberus represents his own family, its three heads being his father, aunt and Mr. Million, adding that its "unseen" heads are his brother David as fourth and, by implication, the fifth and final the narrator's own. Following this logic, the title of the novella therefore refers to the narrator himself, whose story we read. Further parallels between the narrator's family and the mythology of Cerberus can be drawn in numerous other ways throughout this novella. For example, a statue of this mythological creature exists at the front, or "gates" of their family home, which is itself located at 666 Saltimbanque, this number having associations with the underworld dating back to the Greek manuscripts of the Book of Revelations. Also, there family home is later referred to at one point as the Maison du Chien, literally "House of The Dog".
The collection is an expansion of the first novella, originally published in the Orbit 10 anthology edited by Damon Knight in 1972. The following novellas, "A Story" by John V. Marsch and V.R.T. expand on the plot and themes of the first.
These works are set on two colony worlds, 20 light-years from Earth, the double planets of Sainte Anne and Sainte Croix, originally settled by French-speaking colonists, but lost by them in a war with an unnamed enemy. Sainte Anne was (perhaps) once home to an indigenous aboriginal culture (at an apparently pre-paleolithic level of technology) of shapeshifters, who may – or may not – have been wiped out by the human incomers.
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