BOOK OF THE NEW SUN Author Gene Wolfe Dead at 87
Gene Wolfe is dead, and the world of literature is the worse for it.
Not just science fiction and fantasy literature, but literature in general, because Wolfe was an author who understood the power of the words themselves, and he didn’t make it easy for the reader. I had a hard time getting into his work – a million years ago in my college days – when a friend who knew I liked science fiction recommended Shadow of the Torturer, and at first I admittedly put it down and let it sit for a while. It wasn’t until I was working at a used book store, and actually getting paid to sit in a comfy chair with a book and a cat in my lap, that I picked it up again.
It still wasn’t an easy read, but it isn’t meant to be. How can the first book in a series that is widely considered to be the best Dying Earth story, with a protagonist whose journey from disgraced torturer to – nope, spoilers – was designed by the deeply religious Wolfe to parallel the life of Jesus, and language that is both dense in its arcaneness and its meaning, be easy? Easy wasn’t what he was going for. He was telling a story, and the story was what mattered.
Shadow of the Torturer was the first in what became the eleven novels of “The Solar Cycle”, and along the path of his career Wolfe published more than 25 novels and more than fifty short stories. His work was more often than not “Science Fantasy”, that flavor of the genre that isn’t terribly concerned with scientific accuracy of the harder science fiction, or the sword and sorcery stylings of the fantasy worlds. Not The Expanse nor Game of Thrones, but somewhere in between, what Thomas Disch (The Brave Little Toaster, 334) described as “Imagine a Star Wars–style space opera penned by G. K. Chesterton in the throes of a religious conversion.”
If you haven’t heard of Wolfe, or haven’t read his works, well, he wasn’t a particularly best-selling author. He made enough to write for a living – and that’s a success a lot of us yearn for – but in this era of Rowling and Martin, his was a more modest success, at least in dollar amounts. Where he succeeded over so many other authors was in the praise he received from his peers, often being called one of the best American writers of his time, or as Ursula K. Le Guin put it: “our Melville.”
Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Good Omens): “There are two kinds of clever writer. The ones that point out how clever they are, and the ones who see no need to point out how clever they are. Gene Wolfe is of the second kind, and the intelligence is less important than the tale. He is not smart to make you feel stupid. He is smart to make you smart as well.”
Michael Swanwick (Stations of the Tide, Bones of the Earth): “Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning.”
Harlan Ellison (“I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream”, The City on the Edge of Forever): “Gene Wolfe is engaged in the holy chore of writing every other author under the table. He is no less than one of the finest, most original writers in the world today. His work is singular, hypnotizing, startlingly above comparison. The Shadow of the Torturer breaks new ground in American literature and, as the first novel of a tetralogy, casts a fierce light on what will certainly be a lodestone landmark, his most stunning work to date. It is often said, but never more surely than this time: This book is not to be missed at peril of one’s intellectual enrichment.”
His work earned him six Locus Awards, two Nebulas, four World Fantasy Awards and a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2007, and was named the 29th Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master in 2012. In addition to the awards he won for his writing, he was nominated for the Nebula sixteen additional times, as well as eight times for the Hugo Award.
VIDEO: Gene Wolfe, Isaac Asimov, and Harlan Ellison Discuss Writing Science Fiction
Gene Wolfe died of cardiovascular disease on April 14th, in his home in Peoria, Illinois. He was 87. His wife, Rosemary, died in 2013, after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. In 2015, Wolfe told Peter Bebergal (“Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll.”) of the New Yorker, “There was a time when she did not remember my name or that we were married, but she still remembered that she loved me.” and Bebergal wrote:
His narrators may be prophets, or liars, or merely crazy, but somewhere in their stories they help to reveal what Wolfe most wants his readers to know: that compassion can withstand the most brutal of futures and exist on the most distant planets, and it has been part of us since ages long past.
A fitting epitaph.
