I cannot recommend his collections of short stories and novellas enough. I love his novels, but I love his short stories even more.
Some of them are so well done they still haunt me years after reading.
Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87
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Re: Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87
#32I’m about halfway through rereading The Book of the New Sun, so I’m very sad to hear this
I'm rereading it along with the alzabo soup podcast. I can highly recommend it if you want to enjoy it thoroughly.
Re: Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87
#33The book of the new sun is probably my favorite series bar none. Wolfe will be remembered as one of the greats I think. Very sad to see him go.
Re: Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87
#34I cannot recommend enough Latro in the Mist, a combination of two of his novels about a Roman soldier in Greek times given the curse of losing his memory every day. To me this was his most 'approachable' novel by virtue of the fact that I could cross-reference the names with historical resources like Thucydides -- I also highly recommend the Landmark series for their detailed annotations. Fifth Head of Cereberus is,…
This was the first book I read of his, and it blew me away. Gene Wolfe has been my favorite author ever since. His writing was at just the right level of sophistication where it was still accessible to me (I couldn't finish Ulysses) while being thoroughly enjoyable. His attention to detail and casually tying off loose-ends is pretty stunning when examined carefully. And he is one of the few authors whose books make me feel like I'm having a lucid dream.
Re: Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that summary is accurate. The Book of the New Sun is deep, heady, high literature, not an indulgent fantasy adventure. It reads like a bit like a mythological holy book, authored by the supposed prophet - and you kind of have to read it like one, to get anything out of it - as if you're doing a deep textual exegesis. Its not A Game of Thrones. It was definitely an interesting story, though it could be a…
That's fair. Like I said, it was a long time ago, and I didn't finish the series. I just remember it often being a chore to read, with a loathsome main character. Maybe it made a larger point that I missed at the time, but I was a kid reading David Eddings. PS - I'll check out the audiobooks. I hope they're as good as Rob Inglis' reading of The Lord of the Rings. It may not count as "deep, heady, high literature," bu…
It is a bit of a chore to read if you want to get anything out of it; like most good literature it makes demands of you and you only get out what you put in. The main character is loathsome, in a bizarrely innocent kind of way -- he's a torturer, he was raised a torturer, it's a good honest living that makes people say, "oh we need one of those, I didn't know they still existed", like a dishwasher repairman. You're not supposed to like him, and it's crucial to understanding the story that you don't believe everything he says.
It's not for everyone but if you enjoy figuring out all the lies and misdirections and mistakes the narrator makes, it's quite an experience.
Re: Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87
#36Wolfe wrote some incredible masterpieces. The Fifth Head of Cerberus , Peace , and some of his 1970s short stories deserve a place in 20th-century serious literature in general. The Book of the New Sun stunned me as a teenage reader, and I fondly reread the book every few years (that said, Severian’s habit of shagging everyone he meets doesn’t hold up well in this day and age, and I have seen female readers call The…
I recently reread Book of the New Sun for the first time in more than twenty years, and yeah, it makes a different impression at 54 than it did at 17, not least because it was familiar now and new then. The characters, especially Severian, quite often act in ways that are not admirable, and I can be pretty sure that Gene intended that we see some of the not admirable traits as actual flaws. He is not, for instance, s…
He is not, for instance, suggesting that sleeping with your grandmother is a good idea.
Well, that is how Fry was able to save the universe from the Brain Spawn.
Re: Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87
#37It gets lost in his other excellent books, but I really liked Pirate Freedom . A guy from the near future finds himself sent back in time to the golden age of piracy, and Wolfe does a masterful job of tying the plot threads together at the end.
I also loved that, and love that it's something I can recommend without hesitation to readers who aren't ready for his more genre-heavy stuff.
Re: Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87
#38If you want to read a series about a time traveling torturer that becomes king of the planet earth and replaces the dying sun while raising the dead, eating the dead, avoiding death, all while working as a carnifex. Then read the Book of the New Sun and The Urth of the New Sun.
Re: Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87
#39Wolfe wrote some incredible masterpieces. The Fifth Head of Cerberus , Peace , and some of his 1970s short stories deserve a place in 20th-century serious literature in general. The Book of the New Sun stunned me as a teenage reader, and I fondly reread the book every few years (that said, Severian’s habit of shagging everyone he meets doesn’t hold up well in this day and age, and I have seen female readers call The…
This misses the character of Severian as others here note. A character need not be a paragon of modern virtue to be good in his setting.
Re: Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87
#40On Blue's Waters is a masterpiece. The narrative structure is temporally very complex, but coherent, and alternates between wistful contemplation of the past by the protagonist (often times about things that have not yet happened yet), and and an account of that protagonist's search for Silk. On the whole it is a dream like experience.
I found the first-person narration of On Blue’s Waters emotionally devastating. Wolfe endowed that narrator with so much pain, bitterness, regret, and loss. I got On Blue’s Waters as soon as it came out and was eager for the following volumes, but I must admit that the rest of that trilogy really disappointed me, namely: 1) Wolfe’s putting characters’ dialogue in annoying thick dialect of various sorts, 2) mapping th…
I agree that the other two were disappointments.
Also when reading on blues waters, I hadn't yet read the previous series. but the references were made all the more mysterious because of it.