Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe is an author.
Gene Wolfe was an American science fiction and fantasy writer whose books are famous for demanding a second reading. He wrote dense, allusive prose, returned obsessively to memory and its failures, and let a Catholic sensibility inform the architecture of his plots without ever preaching from them. Narrators who cannot quite be trusted are his signature: the story a reader assembles is rarely the one the speaker believes he is telling. Wolfe published as much short fiction as long, collected awards across five decades, and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is the writer other science fiction writers treat as the ceiling.
Books (15)
- A borrowed man (2015)
- Latro in the mist (2003)
- Home fires (2011)
- New Atlantis, The - And Other Novellas of Science Fiction (1975)
- The Mammoth Book of Angels & Demons (2013)
- The Fifth Head Of Cerberus (1999)
- Book of the New Sun (1998)
- The Urth of the new sun (1987)
- Soldier of the Mist (1986)
- The Citadel of the Autarch (1983)
- Isaac Asimov's Wonders of the World (1982)
- The Sword of the Lictor (1981)
- The claw of the conciliator (1981)
- The Shadow of the Torturer (1980)
- Again, Dangerous Visions (1972)
Where to start with Gene Wolfe
Start with The Shadow of the Torturer and keep going: it opens a four-book sequence continued in The claw of the conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autarch, narrated by a torturer with perfect recall who is nonetheless lying to you. The Fifth Head Of Cerberus is the shorter way in and the better test of whether you enjoy the puzzle. Soldier of the Mist inverts it with a narrator who forgets everything nightly.
Gene Wolfe on CrossBinge
- Companion guide: Dying Earth: The Complete Guide to the Last Twilight