10 ms·

Gene Wolfe, 'magnificent' giant of science fiction, dies aged 87

187 points by acdanger 8y ago

piokoch 8y ago
"Peace" is a true masterpiece. When you reach the end, you start thinking what was this book about. Suddenly you will figure it out and you want to read it again, armed with this knowledge. And you might need a few iterations before you will be finally satisfied.
- hmahncke 8y ago
  Obligatory Neil Gaiman quote: "Peace really was a gentle Midwestern memoir the first time I read it. It only became a horror novel on the second or the third reading."
javajosh 8y ago
This is a great loss. When I was quite young I made the mistake of joining the Science Fiction Bookclub, unaware that it's intent and purpose was to mislead kids into over-buying books they didn't want. At the time, one of the books they sent me was Gene Wolfe's "Urth of the New Sun", and it bewildered me and fascinated me so much that I reread it in college, and realized it was part of a much longer tale. I went on to read virtually everything he ever wrote. Unlike so much science fiction (and fantasy, on occasion), Wolfe's uses tremendous texture and nuance; reading his work feels incredibly dream-like to me, even though there's nothing overtly trippy. As I get older, and recognize so much of what I once enjoyed as the same juvenile power fantasy told over with slightly different mechanics, Wolfe is (was) one of those rare genre authors who was doing something very different. For anyone who wants to try a Wolfe book, the most accessible one is "The Wizard Knight", IMHO. It's still quite good, and has that gauzy, dreamy style and unreliable narrator Wolfe is known for, but is rather more straight-forward than, say, the Torturer series (which is actually part of the series in which Urth of the New Sun played a role). Ironically (to me) this is also the closest he got to "juvenile power fantasy" but ends up deconstructing the bildungsroman in a really beautiful, even loving way. Highly, highly recommended. Also, I remember reading somewhere that he was a working engineer while he wrote some of his first novels; I presume he was writing full-time later. I think that's cool, too.
- RoyTyrell 8y ago
  > Also, I remember reading somewhere that he was a working engineer while he wrote some of his first novels; You are correct - he was an industrial engineer. I'm not sure if he was working on a team, or just by himself, but he helped to design the machinery that creates Pringles (potato chip). He was also the editor for a trade magazine on industrial engineering.
  - colinb 8y ago
    Do you happen to have any references for that? I in no way doubt you, but I hope to use this fact to dazzle a child when I get home; and maybe persuade her to read some top class sci-fi.
    - philk10 8y ago
      See #1 - http://mentalfloss.com/article/67583/12-crispy-facts-about-pringles http://mentalfloss.com/article/67583/12-crispy-facts-about-p...
      - javajosh 8y ago
        And a link in that uses the phrase surreal bildungsroman, which makes me feel like I've been validated by the New Yorker. :) https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sci-fis-difficult-genius https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sci-fis-difficul...
    - pteraspidomorph 8y ago
      It's in this article! You can dig through philk10's link to find the interview, which is in the google books link. There is also an internet archive link on his wikipedia page which contains the same interview. He made the part of the machine that cooks the chips.
    - gwern 8y ago
      He also discusses it in an interview I scanned the other week: https://www.gwern.net/docs/fiction/2002-wolfe-locusinterview.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/fiction/2002-wolfe-locusinterview...
arkades 8y ago
His work, which I came across in my early teenage years, was mind expanding. I am grateful for and to him. Wolfe was also one of the authors that really made genre fiction academically respectable, without hiding in shame about what and who he was (cough Atwood cough). Entire future generations of writers - and students - owe him a thank you.
your-nanny 8y ago
On 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.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  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 the distant planet’s various cultures to silly ethnic stereotypes of our planet’s Italians, Indians, and Dutch, and 3) gratuitously bringing the action back to The Book of the New Sun which didn’t add much to the plot and felt like a cheap commercial tie-in.
  - your-nanny 8y ago
    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.
xbryanx 8y ago
The Fifth Head of Cerberus is such a delight. Made me finally understand the concept of an unreliable narrator. It made me a better reader and expanded my attitudes around colonization. It is a great example of how science fiction can teach us about our modern lives.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  > expanded my attitudes around colonization. It is a remarkable thing that Wolfe, whose views were conservative and who occasionally voiced suspicion of modern academia with its focus on race and gender, wrote decades ago a work that really does mesh with modern post-colonial studies. I keenly recommended The Fifth Head of Cerberus to a friend of mine who is a scholar in that field, but sadly the robot on the cover of the Orb Books edition made him assume it was just goofy sci-fi.
cnasc 8y ago
I’m about halfway through rereading The Book of the New Sun, so I’m very sad to hear this
- himlion 8y ago
  I'm rereading it along with the alzabo soup podcast. I can highly recommend it if you want to enjoy it thoroughly.
ludsan 8y ago
I 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, of course, the best way to start with him, and I re-read it every few years. If you have never read Wolfe before, I would start with Fifth Head. It will give you an early sense for whether Wolfe is your cup of tea.
- jlv2 8y ago
  I second that recommendation of Latro in the Mist!
- craigyk 8y ago
  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.
distantaidenn 8y ago
I can't count the number of times I've re-read The Book of New Sun. Absolute masterpiece. Wolfe's books are truly mind altering and forever change the way you think about science fiction and life in general.
mcphage 8y ago
A tremendous loss, his science fiction and fantasy novels are some of the best out there. Others have mentioned other books of his, but my favorite is still Book of the Long Sun. Patera Silk is a great character, and The Whorl is a marvelous setting.
mhd 8y ago
Terminus Est.
Mediterraneo10 8y ago
Wolfe 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 Book of the New Sun a risible male fantasy). However, there is no doubt that Wolfe’s powers declined over time, and homages to him inevitably focus on the works from decades ago. Besides their intricate plots, those early works had incredible prose, just as rich as Proust, Nabokov, or Faulkner. Once the 1980s came in, suddenly Wolfe’s prose became plainer, more workaday. Then, his novels increasingly started to milk the “unreliable narrator” gimmick but without much else to them. Furthermore, it is not even clear that readers are appropriately given all clues to figure out the real action and themes. I have spoken to multiple Wolfe superfans who worry that A Land Across, for example, ultimately turned out to be turgid and impenetrable, and that Wolfe’s publisher accepted it just on blind faith that readers got earlier Wolfe novels, so surely there was something to this one too. (I know the principle of de mortus nil nisi bonum and I don’t want to be too harsh about the man, but this is probably the only opportunity for a long time that the Hacker News community will get to discuss his work.)
- Finnucane 8y ago
  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, suggesting that sleeping with your grandmother is a good idea. He wasn't going to make it that easy for us. But Peace and Fifth Head of Ceberus, and much of his short fiction remain classic.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    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.
sbmassey 8y ago
He was the first author I read where I couldn't get away with my typical habit at-the-time of skimming the boring bits, rather than paying close attention to the text, and which was interesting enough to warrant reading more carefully. A great writer. I'll have to pick up what I missed of his work.
LgWoodenBadger 8y ago
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.
kej 8y ago
It 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.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  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.
borrowedman 8y ago
Sad to see another of my favorite authors pass away. Those who aren't into fantasy may enjoy his last novel, A Borrowed Man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Borrowed_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Borrowed_Man RIP
sgillen 8y ago
The 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.
stillbourne 8y ago
If 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.
- sgillen 8y ago
  Spoilers!
  - stillbourne 8y ago
    Pretty sure that was a vague enough description.
    - sgillen 7y ago
      >> that becomes king of the planet earth and replaces the dying sun
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
groovy2shoes 7y ago
a woe below woe! the sun into darkness was thrown, over all a dim shadow had flown, and my heart sorrowed deep and alone at the foot of that empty throne. -- nec novitas solis nec figura solis gravitatem tuam lucemque effinget. volumen necesse non est: memoria tua tenemus. pius dominus tibi requiem donet. die post idus aprilis.

187 points by acdanger 8y ago

"Peace" is a true masterpiece. When you reach the end, you start thinking what was this book about. Suddenly you will figure it out and you want to read it again, armed with this knowledge. And you might need a few iterations before you will be finally satisfied.

hmahncke 8y ago
Obligatory Neil Gaiman quote: "Peace really was a gentle Midwestern memoir the first time I read it. It only became a horror novel on the second or the third reading."

javajosh 8y ago

This is a great loss. When I was quite young I made the mistake of joining the Science Fiction Bookclub, unaware that it's intent and purpose was to mislead kids into over-buying books they didn't want. At the time, one of the books they sent me was Gene Wolfe's "Urth of the New Sun", and it bewildered me and fascinated me so much that I reread it in college, and realized it was part of a much longer tale. I went on to read virtually everything he ever wrote. Unlike so much science fiction (and fantasy, on occasion), Wolfe's uses tremendous texture and nuance; reading his work feels incredibly dream-like to me, even though there's nothing overtly trippy. As I get older, and recognize so much of what I once enjoyed as the same juvenile power fantasy told over with slightly different mechanics, Wolfe is (was) one of those rare genre authors who was doing something very different. For anyone who wants to try a Wolfe book, the most accessible one is "The Wizard Knight", IMHO. It's still quite good, and has that gauzy, dreamy style and unreliable narrator Wolfe is known for, but is rather more straight-forward than, say, the Torturer series (which is actually part of the series in which Urth of the New Sun played a role). Ironically (to me) this is also the closest he got to "juvenile power fantasy" but ends up deconstructing the bildungsroman in a really beautiful, even loving way. Highly, highly recommended. Also, I remember reading somewhere that he was a working engineer while he wrote some of his first novels; I presume he was writing full-time later. I think that's cool, too.

RoyTyrell 8y ago
> Also, I remember reading somewhere that he was a working engineer while he wrote some of his first novels; You are correct - he was an industrial engineer. I'm not sure if he was working on a team, or just by himself, but he helped to design the machinery that creates Pringles (potato chip). He was also the editor for a trade magazine on industrial engineering.
- colinb 8y ago
  Do you happen to have any references for that? I in no way doubt you, but I hope to use this fact to dazzle a child when I get home; and maybe persuade her to read some top class sci-fi.
  - philk10 8y ago
    See #1 - http://mentalfloss.com/article/67583/12-crispy-facts-about-pringles http://mentalfloss.com/article/67583/12-crispy-facts-about-p...
    - javajosh 8y ago
      And a link in that uses the phrase surreal bildungsroman, which makes me feel like I've been validated by the New Yorker. :) https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sci-fis-difficult-genius https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sci-fis-difficul...
  - pteraspidomorph 8y ago
    It's in this article! You can dig through philk10's link to find the interview, which is in the google books link. There is also an internet archive link on his wikipedia page which contains the same interview. He made the part of the machine that cooks the chips.
  - gwern 8y ago
    He also discusses it in an interview I scanned the other week: https://www.gwern.net/docs/fiction/2002-wolfe-locusinterview.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/fiction/2002-wolfe-locusinterview...

arkades 8y ago

His work, which I came across in my early teenage years, was mind expanding. I am grateful for and to him. Wolfe was also one of the authors that really made genre fiction academically respectable, without hiding in shame about what and who he was (cough Atwood cough). Entire future generations of writers - and students - owe him a thank you.

your-nanny 8y ago

On 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.

Mediterraneo10 8y ago
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 the distant planet’s various cultures to silly ethnic stereotypes of our planet’s Italians, Indians, and Dutch, and 3) gratuitously bringing the action back to The Book of the New Sun which didn’t add much to the plot and felt like a cheap commercial tie-in.
- your-nanny 8y ago
  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.

xbryanx 8y ago

The Fifth Head of Cerberus is such a delight. Made me finally understand the concept of an unreliable narrator. It made me a better reader and expanded my attitudes around colonization. It is a great example of how science fiction can teach us about our modern lives.

Mediterraneo10 8y ago
> expanded my attitudes around colonization. It is a remarkable thing that Wolfe, whose views were conservative and who occasionally voiced suspicion of modern academia with its focus on race and gender, wrote decades ago a work that really does mesh with modern post-colonial studies. I keenly recommended The Fifth Head of Cerberus to a friend of mine who is a scholar in that field, but sadly the robot on the cover of the Orb Books edition made him assume it was just goofy sci-fi.

cnasc 8y ago

I’m about halfway through rereading The Book of the New Sun, so I’m very sad to hear this

himlion 8y ago
I'm rereading it along with the alzabo soup podcast. I can highly recommend it if you want to enjoy it thoroughly.

ludsan 8y ago

I 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, of course, the best way to start with him, and I re-read it every few years. If you have never read Wolfe before, I would start with Fifth Head. It will give you an early sense for whether Wolfe is your cup of tea.

jlv2 8y ago
I second that recommendation of Latro in the Mist!
craigyk 8y ago
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.

distantaidenn 8y ago

I can't count the number of times I've re-read The Book of New Sun. Absolute masterpiece. Wolfe's books are truly mind altering and forever change the way you think about science fiction and life in general.

mcphage 8y ago

A tremendous loss, his science fiction and fantasy novels are some of the best out there. Others have mentioned other books of his, but my favorite is still Book of the Long Sun. Patera Silk is a great character, and The Whorl is a marvelous setting.

mhd 8y ago

Terminus Est.

Mediterraneo10 8y ago

Wolfe 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 Book of the New Sun a risible male fantasy). However, there is no doubt that Wolfe’s powers declined over time, and homages to him inevitably focus on the works from decades ago. Besides their intricate plots, those early works had incredible prose, just as rich as Proust, Nabokov, or Faulkner. Once the 1980s came in, suddenly Wolfe’s prose became plainer, more workaday. Then, his novels increasingly started to milk the “unreliable narrator” gimmick but without much else to them. Furthermore, it is not even clear that readers are appropriately given all clues to figure out the real action and themes. I have spoken to multiple Wolfe superfans who worry that A Land Across, for example, ultimately turned out to be turgid and impenetrable, and that Wolfe’s publisher accepted it just on blind faith that readers got earlier Wolfe novels, so surely there was something to this one too. (I know the principle of de mortus nil nisi bonum and I don’t want to be too harsh about the man, but this is probably the only opportunity for a long time that the Hacker News community will get to discuss his work.)

Finnucane 8y ago
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, suggesting that sleeping with your grandmother is a good idea. He wasn't going to make it that easy for us. But Peace and Fifth Head of Ceberus, and much of his short fiction remain classic.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  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.

sbmassey 8y ago

He was the first author I read where I couldn't get away with my typical habit at-the-time of skimming the boring bits, rather than paying close attention to the text, and which was interesting enough to warrant reading more carefully. A great writer. I'll have to pick up what I missed of his work.

LgWoodenBadger 8y ago

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.

kej 8y ago

It 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.

jessaustin 8y ago
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.

borrowedman 8y ago

Sad to see another of my favorite authors pass away. Those who aren't into fantasy may enjoy his last novel, A Borrowed Man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Borrowed_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Borrowed_Man RIP

sgillen 8y ago

The 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.

stillbourne 8y ago

If 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.

sgillen 8y ago
Spoilers!
- stillbourne 8y ago
  Pretty sure that was a vague enough description.
  - sgillen 7y ago
    >> that becomes king of the planet earth and replaces the dying sun

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

groovy2shoes 7y ago

a woe below woe! the sun into darkness was thrown, over all a dim shadow had flown, and my heart sorrowed deep and alone at the foot of that empty throne. -- nec novitas solis nec figura solis gravitatem tuam lucemque effinget. volumen necesse non est: memoria tua tenemus. pius dominus tibi requiem donet. die post idus aprilis.