Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

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Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon? by Gene Wolfe

This story is part of the The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction group collection discussion.

★★

Synopsis
A dim-witted but sympathetic strongman searches for the legendary “White Cow Moon” – a satellite with a very low orbit – with his friend, Junie Moon.

Review
Here, the unreliable narrator comes in the form of dumbness, he simply doesn’t understand everything he perceives. I loved the setting with modern Arthurian grail hunters, and the Green Knight popping up. In addition, Greco-Roman mythology jumps around in this story with Hercules as the strongman’s stagename. In the end, I didn’t understand what the story wanted me to say, though it was nicely told.

A few things: the white cow moon is from R. A Lafferty's story "You Can't Go Back Again", and Sam Jr., our narrator, is of course a modern retelling of Samson (breaking the biker's chains, the feds as philistines, etc). Junie Moon is Juno, the goddess of the moon and childbirth, and clearly when she says she might be one of King Thespius's daughters (who all sleep with Hercules to beget powerful children in myth while he hunts a lion), we are meant to assume that perhaps Roy (King) T (hespius?) Laffer might be that father (as well as Merlin and R.A. Lafferty). Juno is especially associated with the state of pregnancy, and it seems that perhaps the child she is bringing into the world might even be Arthur come again, to bring that old magic back into the world (as well as thwarting the feds).

Off topic, my full length study of Gene Wolfe's fiction is out - covering everything he wrote from 1951-1987, with a second volume to follow next year. I won't post a link, to avoid breaking the rules, but you can find it by searching for my name.