| Gene Wolfe |
I became involved with the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame because I believe that Chicago has an important literary legacy deserving of attention. After two induction ceremonies where we celebrated historical writers, it was time to look at the contribution of writers living and working in Chicago.
After some discussion, it was unanimous, and we moved forward to create a new award, the Fuller, to honor a lifetime contribution to Chicago literature.
Why I didn’t write a post about Peace straight after reading it is a mystery to me and now I’m left wondering if I can really do it justice. Despite not enjoying The Fifth Head of Cerberus all that much, I consider myself an enthusiastic fan of the late great Gene Wolfe after enjoying the awesome tetralogy The Book of The New Sun – which Publishers Weekly described as “a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis”.
| Jo Nesbo |
Matthew Haynes
December 14, 2020
This year I read around 40 books – it might have been more if some of them hadn’t been so long! And of course I didn’t get an opportunity to do any reading on holiday, because I had no real holiday this year. Poor me. Anyway, here’s a list of the Top 4 books I’ve read this year with links to longer reviews in some cases (I would’ve done a Top 5 if I’d read fifty – blame Stephen / Owen King and Margaret Atwood):
| Gene Wolfe |
It is perhaps in keeping with the spirit of his elusive prose and plots that the death of acclaimed science fiction and fantasy (SF&F) writer Gene Wolfe should pass with nary a whisper in the media, even in today’s environment where geek culture has gone mainstream.
The Nebraskan and the Nereid
Almost running, he strode to the edge of the little bluff and looked east across the sea. The blue waters of the Saronikos Kolpos showed whitecaps, but nothing else.
Thag
by Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe / Thag (A short story in Spanish)
ONCE upon a time there was a boy named Eric who had a tame raven and a ragged cap and no boots, and lived with his mother in a cottage in the forest. Eric' and his mother were very poor, but nonetheless they possessed a great treasure, a charm ancient and powerful. This was a bear's skull, and hung from the roofbeam of their little house on a chain of iron. Eric's great-grandfather had made it long ago, choking the bear with moonlight and filling his skull with the cottony tales of rabbits, and the urine of shadows, and black feathers snatched at great risk from the left foreleg of an eagle, and many other things. The bear's skull was the home of Thag, as a beehive is the home of bees; and Thag was a powerful spirit though he was often away.
MARCELLA and I were married in April. I lost my position with Ketterly, Bruce & Drake in June, and by August we were desperate. We kept the apartment-I think we both felt that if we lowered our standards there would be no chance to raise them again-but the rent tore at our small savings. All during July I had tried to get a job at another brokerage firm, and by August I was calling fraternity broth- ers I had not seen since graduation, and expressing an entire willingness to work in whatever businesses their fathers owned. One of them, I think, must have mailed us the ad- vertisement. Attractive young couple, well educated and well connected, will receive free housing, generous living allowance for min- imal services. There was a telephone number, which I omit for reasons that will become clear. I showed the clipping to Marcella, who was lying with her cocktail shaker on the chaise longue. She said, "Why not," and I dialed the number. |
| Gene Wolfe |
Gene Wolfe passed away last night, April 14, 2019. He was one of the world’s greatest writers, one of my literary heroes and inspiration, and he was my friend.
Many people have written about his novels and stories, and more will continue to speak about Gene’s incredible talent, his sharp intellect and wit, his brilliant imagination and unforgettable characters. It’s all true and so much more. Gene’s writing bridged literary and genre worlds in a way unlike any other writer. His books and stories will stand the test of time.
When the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame decided to honor a writer for our first lifetime achievement award, the Fuller Award, I had no doubt that it should be Gene Wolfe. Planning that event in 2012 was one of my greatest joys, assembling writers and editors, friends and family, who loved him under one roof. We gathered together in a gilded setting full of mechanical delights (including a giant indoor carousel!) to celebrate the man and his stories. It was a magical evening to honor a remarkable man.
I came to Endangered Species with decades of bias. I've been a Gene Wolfe fanatic since college, when I first read The Book of the New Sun. Since then I've read nearly everything the man has written. I've met him several times, and enjoyed his company immensely. I've actually gone in Wolfe-themed costume to a ball, and spent a while on the Urth email list.
Wolfe, whose tetralogy The Book of the New Sun was the most acclaimed science fiction series of the 1980s, offers his second collection, a hefty volume of over 30 stories in a variety of genres--SF, fantasy, horror, mainstream. Many of them are variations on themes and situations found in folklore and fairy tales; Wolfe's deconstructions/reconstructions are provocative, multilayered, resonant. Occasionally, too, they seem intentionally enigmatic. Two of the stories, ``The Cat'' and ``The Map,'' are set in the universe of his New Sun novels. ``A Cabin on the Coast'' tells of a promising politician who loses his lover to the fey folk living in the sea. He strikes a bargain for her return, promising to undergo 20 years of servitude. When his lover finally returns, he has lost his youth, and with it, we assume, his future. ``In the House of the Gingerbread'' is a variation on ``Hansel and Gretel'' rewritten as a contemporary detective story; and ``The Detective of Dreams'' is an Arabian Nights tale as told by G. K. Chesterton--its spiritual subtext is made explicit in the end. A predominance of excellent stories makes this a rewarding book.
| "Sweet Forest Maid" first appeared in F&SF |
| "Suzanne Delage" first appeared in Le Guin and Kidd's Edges; you can read it for free at Lightspeed, an e-magazine |
| "Kevin Malone" first appeared in Ramsey Campbell's New Terrors, and can be found in The Best of Gene Wolfe |
| Gene Wolfe |
Gene Wolfe has a reputation as being one of those writers whose books & stories you have to read twice. He buries subtle clues in what the Wikipedia article about him calls his “dense, allusive prose”. He uses unreliable narrators. In reviews, people talk about “getting” him, or “not getting” him, making it sound as though there’s a secret to reading Wolfe, a special technique you don’t need for other writers. So, when I came to read him, I found myself asking questions I wouldn’t normally ask. Was I going to have to take notes? Was I going to have to disbelieve everything his narrators said? Was I going to have to buy a new, bigger dictionary? And of course, was it really going to be worth it?
LOOK AT Gene: a genial smile (the one they named for him), pixie-twinkle in his eyes, a reassuring mustache. Listen to that chuckle. Do not be lulled. He holds all the cards: he has five aces in his hand, and several more up his sleeve.
I once read him an account of a baffling murder, committed ninety years ago. "Oh," he said, "well, that's obvious," and proceeded off-handedly to offer a simple and likely explanation for both the murder and the clues the police were at a loss to explain. He has an engineer's mind that takes things apart to see how they work and then puts them back together.
| Gene Wolfe by Murray Ewing |
Neil Gaiman
Friday 13 May 2011
I was 22 when I met Gene Wolfe. The last volume in The Book of the New Sun, The Citadel of the Autarch, had just been published, and I had been reading his fiction since my teens.
I was as impressed and delighted by the Book of the New Sun as I was intimidated by it. Wolfe's use of language, the grand sweep of his story, the way he used science fiction to illuminate ideas and people and to stretch my mind in ways it had never been stretched before, the way he played with memory and gave us a perfectly reliable unreliable narrator – all these things thrilled me. (Years later, Michael Dirda of the Washington Post would call it "The greatest fantasy novel written by an American," and he would be right.)
I was a young journalist, and I asked for and was given an interview with Wolfe. I do not know what I expected, but whatever I imagined the author of those glittering, dangerous stories to have been, I was not expecting the genial gentleman I met. He was a former potato crisp engineer and magazine editor, and he reminded me of a sweeter-natured, rotunder Sergeant Bilko. Oddly, perhaps, given the difference in our ages and temperaments, we became friends. And now, almost 30 years later, we are still friends and I am still a fan.
I've met too many of my heroes, and these days I avoid meeting the few I have left, because the easiest way to stop having heroes is to meet them, or worse, have dinner with them. But Gene Wolfe remains a hero to me. He's just turned 80, looks after his wife Rosemary, and is still writing deep, complex, brilliant fiction that slips between genres. He's my hero because he keeps trying new ways of writing and because he remains as kind and as patient with me as he was when I was almost a boy. He's the finest living male American writer of SF and fantasy – possibly the finest living American writer. Most people haven't heard of him. And that doesn't bother Gene in the slightest. He just gets on with writing the next book.
2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm
2010