Books by Gene Wolfe
Born: 05/07/1931Gene Wolfe Biography & Notes
Gene Wolfe (born May 7, 1931) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is noted for his dense, allusion-rich prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith, which he adopted in marrying a Catholic. He is a prolific short story writer as well as a novelist, and has been nominated for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and World Fantasy Award multiple times.
Wolfe fought in the Korean War and after returning to the United States became an industrial engineer. For many years he edited the engineering review "Plant Engineering" before retiring to write full-time. (One little known engineering achievement of Wolfe is that he is the co-inventor of the machine used to make Pringles potato chips).
His best-known and best-regarded work is the multi-volume The Book of the New Sun, set in a distant future and detailing the life of Severian, an apprentice torturer, as he ultimately becomes a messiah. The work is composed of the novels The Shadow of the Torturer (1980), The Claw of the Conciliator (1981), The Sword of the Lictor (1982), and Citadel of the Autarch (1983). A subsequent coda, The Urth of the New Sun (1987) wrapped up some loose ends but is generally considered a separate work.
In the 1990s, Wolfe published two more works in the same universe as The Book of the New Sun. The first, The Book of the Long Sun, consists of the novels Nightside the Long Sun (1993), Lake of the Long Sun (1994), Calde of the Long Sun (1994), and Exodus From the Long Sun (1996). These books cover political intrigue and revolution on a generation starship sent from Urth to colonise a distant planet. Wolfe subsequently wrote The Book of the Short Sun, which is composed of On Blue's Waters (1999), In Green's Jungles (2000) and Return to the Whorl (2001), and deals with the colonists who have arrived on the planets Blue and Green. These three works, The Book of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, and The Book of the Short Sun form an oeuvre often called the Solar Cycle.
Although not a best-selling author, Wolfe is extremely highly regarded by critics and fellow writers, and considered by many to be one of the best living science fiction authors. His fans regard him with considerable dedication, and one Internet mailing list dedicated to his works has amassed six years and thousands of pages of discussion and explication; similarly much analysis and exegesis has been published in fanzine and small-press form (e. g. Lexicon Urthus). The writers Neil Gaiman and Patrick O'Leary have both credited Wolfe for inspiration.
One of Wolfe's most common tropes is the unreliable narrator. Sometimes this is a person who isn't particularly smart (There Are Doors) or not particularly observant (Severian of The Book of the New Sun), other times the narrator is damaged (Soldier In The Mist) or naive (Pandora by Holly Hollander, The Knight). While the casual reader won't detect the unreliability of the narrator and may become quite confused, the careful reader can find a deeper layer of the story. Therefore, it might be said that Wolfe does not write for readers, but for re-readers.
Wolfe fought in the Korean War and after returning to the United States became an industrial engineer. For many years he edited the engineering review "Plant Engineering" before retiring to write full-time. (One little known engineering achievement of Wolfe is that he is the co-inventor of the machine used to make Pringles potato chips).
His best-known and best-regarded work is the multi-volume The Book of the New Sun, set in a distant future and detailing the life of Severian, an apprentice torturer, as he ultimately becomes a messiah. The work is composed of the novels The Shadow of the Torturer (1980), The Claw of the Conciliator (1981), The Sword of the Lictor (1982), and Citadel of the Autarch (1983). A subsequent coda, The Urth of the New Sun (1987) wrapped up some loose ends but is generally considered a separate work.
In the 1990s, Wolfe published two more works in the same universe as The Book of the New Sun. The first, The Book of the Long Sun, consists of the novels Nightside the Long Sun (1993), Lake of the Long Sun (1994), Calde of the Long Sun (1994), and Exodus From the Long Sun (1996). These books cover political intrigue and revolution on a generation starship sent from Urth to colonise a distant planet. Wolfe subsequently wrote The Book of the Short Sun, which is composed of On Blue's Waters (1999), In Green's Jungles (2000) and Return to the Whorl (2001), and deals with the colonists who have arrived on the planets Blue and Green. These three works, The Book of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, and The Book of the Short Sun form an oeuvre often called the Solar Cycle.
Although not a best-selling author, Wolfe is extremely highly regarded by critics and fellow writers, and considered by many to be one of the best living science fiction authors. His fans regard him with considerable dedication, and one Internet mailing list dedicated to his works has amassed six years and thousands of pages of discussion and explication; similarly much analysis and exegesis has been published in fanzine and small-press form (e. g. Lexicon Urthus). The writers Neil Gaiman and Patrick O'Leary have both credited Wolfe for inspiration.
One of Wolfe's most common tropes is the unreliable narrator. Sometimes this is a person who isn't particularly smart (There Are Doors) or not particularly observant (Severian of The Book of the New Sun), other times the narrator is damaged (Soldier In The Mist) or naive (Pandora by Holly Hollander, The Knight). While the casual reader won't detect the unreliability of the narrator and may become quite confused, the careful reader can find a deeper layer of the story. Therefore, it might be said that Wolfe does not write for readers, but for re-readers.
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The 5th Head of Cerberus Three Novellas by Gene Wolfe ( 1994)
First published in 1972, this SF masterpiece has been out of print for most of a decade. Now, this "subtle, ingenious, and poetic book" (Ursula Le Guin) entertains a new generation of readers with the story of two far-flung sister planets and a man's quest to find remnants of a lost.
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The Best of Gene Wolfe A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction by Gene Wolfe ( 2009) |
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Brave New Words The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher ( 2009) |
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Brave New Words The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher ( 2007)
The shared language of science fiction is covered in this historical dictionary that shows how science-fiction words and their associated concepts have developed over time and includes more than three thousand terms and an analysis of the influence of science fiction on the English language.
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Calde of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe ( 1994)
In the third volume in the Book of the Long Run series, young Silk, inspired by the gods, fights for survival against the shadowy rulers of the city of Viron, who command the technological wonders of the future.
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Castle of Days by Gene Wolfe ( 1994)
This volume brings together two of Wolfe's most sought-after books, long out of print--Gene Wolfe's Book of Days and The Castle of the Otter--and adds to them 39 essays collected here for the first time.
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Castleview by Gene Wolfe ( 1990)
Castleview, an Illinois town, has a phantom castle that Will Shields sees on his first night there, an experience that involves him in murder and mysterious, life-threatening events, because the castle belongs to Morgan Le Fay.
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The Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe ( 1982)
Severian the Torturer, possessor of the miracle-producing gem, the Claw of the Conciliator, experiences strange adventures as he journeys across the savage land of Urth.
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The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe ( 1981)
Continues the tale of an Earth one million years in the future, following the cross-continent journey of Severian, owner of the Claw of the Conciliator, a miracle-producing gem.
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Confesiones de un pirata/ Confessions of a pirate by Gene Wolfe ( 2009) |
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Dante's Disciples by Harlan Ellison, Michael Bishop, Gene Wolfe, Max Allan Collins ( 1996)
The stories we tell are not limited to monsters and harsh otherworlds. Yet the fiction books in the Borealis imprint certainly belong to a world other than our own. This line encompasses our science fiction, fantasy and horror novels and anthologies.
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The Devil in a Forest by Gene Wolfe ( 1996)
Back in print after two decades, this fantasy tells of a young man who lives in a village deep in the forest in medieval times. Mark finds himself torn between his hero worship for charming highwayman Wat and his growing suspicion of Wat's cold savagery. And Mother Cloot, who may have sorcerous powers, works in equally suspicious ways--perhaps for evil, perhaps for good.
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Empires of Foliage and Flower A Tale from the Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky by Gene Wolfe ( 1987) |
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Endangered Species by Gene Wolfe ( 2004)
A collection of more than thirty short stories from a variety of genres is comprised of tales that follow variations on themes and situations found in folklore and fairy tales. By the author of the Book of the New Sun series.
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Epiphany of the Long Sun Calde of the Long Sun and Exodus from the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe ( 2000)
The companion volume to Litany of the Long Sun presents the final two novels in the series CaldT of the Long Sun and Exodus from the Long Sun, in an omnibus edition.
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Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe ( 2008)
A tale set a century into the future finds an actress confronting ancient and supernatural forces while struggling to choose between her two lovers, a sorcerer private detective who launches her career and a mysterious man of wealth who appears with her in a play. 25,000 first printing.
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Exodus from the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe ( 1996)
In the final volume in the series, the Whorl, the huge generation starship sent out from Urth, is discovered to have already reached its destination, and now Patera Silk and the other inhabitants are confronted by an alien race.
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The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe ( 1972)
The first two volumes of the "Book of the New Sun" series. The second one, "Claw of the Conciliator", won the 1981 Nebula Award for Best Novel.
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Free Live Free by Gene Wolfe ( 1999)
Weird science fiction in a contemporary setting, here is one of Gene Wolfe's major novels--now back in print! Four people in contemporary Chicago become caught up in searching for the lost treasure of Benjamin Free. Jim Stubb, an out-of-work detective; Madame Serpentina, the occultist; Ozzie Barnes, the salesman; and Candy Garth, the generous and overweight prostitute, are brought together for a time to live in Free's house, a house scheduled for demolition. When the demolition occurs and Free disappears, they make a pact to continue the search.
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Fugue State/the Death of Dr. Island by Gene Wolfe, John M. Ford ( 1990)
In two science fiction stories, characters journey through an epic fantasy of alternate worlds in search of reality, and political intrigue meets the personal intrigues of the human mind.
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Gene Wolfe Reads a Solar Labryinth and the Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories by ( 1987)
A collection of Gene Wolfe's best-loved stories.
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Gene Wolfe's Book of Days by Gene Wolfe ( 1981) |
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Gene Wolfe, Interview by Gene Wolfe ( 1987) |
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In Green's Jungles by Gene Wolfe ( 2001)
In the second volume in a trilogy that began with On Blue's Waters, Horn leaves his home on the planet Blue to search for the great hero Patera Silk, but now Horn's own identity has become ambiguous as he begins to recall a number of prior lives and events that seem to have no link to his own.
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In the Wake of Man by Gene Wolfe, R.A. Lafferty, Walter Moudy ( 1975) |
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Innocents Aboard New Fantasy Stories by Gene Wolfe ( 2005)
A collection of twenty-two fantasy and horror stories written during the past ten years includes "The Tree Is My Hat," "The Night Chough," "The Walking Sticks," and "Houston, 1943." By the author of Strange Travelers.
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The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories And Other Stories by Gene Wolfe ( 1997)
A reprint of the now-scarce collection of Wolfe's classic early short stories, this companion volume to "Castle of Days" presents "some of the best American short stories of the decade" (Ursula K. Le Guin). Gene Wolfe is a two-time winner of the Nebula Award and is author of "Peace" and "The Book of the New Sun".
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The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories by Gene Wolfe ( 1981) |
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The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories by Gene Wolfe ( 1983)
Short stories deal with a fictional character who comes to life, a derelict space ship, colonists on an alien world, werewolves, extraterrestrials, and a cryogenically frozen criminal.
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Knight by Gene Wolfe ( 2004)
Drawn from the real world into a magical realm of seven worlds, a teenager finds himself in the body of a mature warrior of heroic proportions and embarks on a perilous quest to find his destined sword and become a knight, encountering romance, danger, magic, and adventure along the way, in the first volume of a new fantasy series.
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Lake of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe ( 1994)
To save his parish buildings, Patera Silk, a young priest, embarks on a quest that takes him on an odyssey into the hidden secrets of his world and into a huge spaceship illuminated by an artificial long sun.
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Latro in the Mist by Gene Wolfe ( 2003)
Latro, a Roman mercenary soldier from the north, has suffered a head wound in battle, develops the ability to see and converse with all of the invisible gods, goddesses, ghosts, demons, and werewolves that inhabit the land, but forgets everything when he sleeps, writing down his experiences in his journal each day, in an omnibus edition containing Soldier of the Mist |
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Letters Home by Gene Wolfe ( 1991) |
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Lexicon Urthus A Dictionary for the Urth Cycle by Gene Wolfe ( 2008) |
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Litany of the Long Sun Nightside the Long Sun and Lake of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe ( 2000)
In the first two books of the series "The Book of the Long Sun," young priest Patera Silk tries to satisfy the gods living within the Whorl, a starship world sent from Urth to colonize a distant planet, while trying to save his own parish.
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The New Atlantis and Other Novellas of Science Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, James Tiptree ( 1975) |
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Nightside the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe ( 1993)
The Whorl, a giant starship world whose origins are shrouded in legend, is ruled by strange gods and peopled by a human race changed by time. By the author of The Book of the New Sun. National ad/promo.
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On Blue's Waters by Gene Wolfe ( 2000)
On Blue's Waters is the start of a major new work by Gene Wolfe, the first of three volumes that comprise The Book of the Short Sun, which takes place in the years after Wolfe's four-volume Book of the Long Sun. Horn, the narrator of the earlier work, now tells his own story. Though life is hard on the newly settled planet of Blue, Horn and his family have made a decent life for themselves. But Horn is the only one who can locate the great leader Silk, and convince him to return to Blue and lead them all to prosperity. So Horn sets sail in a small boat, on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now legendary Patera Silk. The story continues in In Green's Jungles and Return to the Whorl.
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Other Voices, Other Doors by Patrick O'Leary, Gene Wolfe ( 2000) |
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Pandora by Holly Hollander by Gene Wolfe ( 1990)
Mr. Blue, the detective, matches wits with young Holly Hollander, whose family is torn apart by love and money, in a story of murder and fantasy set in a Chicago suburb.
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Peace by Gene Wolfe ( 1975) |
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Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe ( 2007)
A young parish priest fresh out of seminary, Father Christopher finds himself inexplicably swept back in time to the Golden Age of Piracy, where he finds himself caught up in the life of a buccaneer, wooing a beautiful and enigmatic woman, at the helm of his own--possibly cursed--ship, and trolling the waters of the Caribbean in search of Spanish gold. 50,000 first printing.
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Plan(E)t Engineering by Gene Wolfe ( 1984) |
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Reading and Interview by Gene Wolfe ( 1940) |
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Return to the Whorl by Gene Wolfe ( 2002)
In the sequel to On Blue's Waters and In Green's Jungles, Horn continues his epic quest in search of the heroic leader Patera Silk, but his odyssey has become undermined by ambiguity and shifting realities.
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Sailing to Byzantium/Seven American Nights by Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe ( 1989) |
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Salt of the Air by Gene Wolfe, Vera Nazarian ( 2009) |
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Salt of the Air by Gene Wolfe, Vera Nazarian ( 2009) |
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Shadow & Claw The First Half of the Book of the New Sun The Shadow of the Torturer/the Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe ( 1994)
Gene Wolfe's science fiction masterpiece The Book of the New Sun is now available for the first time in this decade. This critically acclaimed work won both the World Fantasy and Nebula Awards. The saga centers around an orphan whose lifelong quest transforms him from ruthless monster to savior of a world.
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Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe ( 1980)
In a thoroughly decadent world of the future, Severian the torturer is cast out from the torturer's guild when he falls in love with one of his victims and allows her to die.
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Shadows of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe by Peter Wright, Gene Wolfe ( 2007) |
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Soldado de Sidon/ Soldier of Sidon by Gene Wolfe ( 2008) |
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Soldier of Arete by Gene Wolfe ( 1989) |
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Soldier of Sidon by Gene Wolfe ( 2006)
A man who forgets everything while he sleeps and is dependent on his journal entries to keep his life together, Latro finds himself in Egypt, where he and his companions become embroiled in a series of fantastical adventures as he searches for a way to rid himself of the curse that causes him to lose his memory. 40,000 first printing.
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Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe ( 1986)
Latro, a mercenary soldier from the north, has suffered a head wound in battle but has developed the ability to see and converse with all of the invisible gods, goddesses, ghosts, demons, and werewolves that inhabit the land.
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Starwater Strains by Gene Wolfe ( 2006)
The author of Innocents Abroad presents a follow-up collection of twenty-five primarily science fiction stories, in a volume that includes such tales as "Viewpoint," "Petting Zoo," and "Empires of Foliage and Flower." Reprint.
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Storeys from the Old Hotel by Gene Wolfe ( 1995)
The World Fantasy Award-winning volume, in its first paperback edition. This brilliant collection of 31 remarkable stories from the past two decades contains many of Wolfe's most appealing and accessible works. "A fine collection that showcases the wide range of Wolfe's weird and wonderful talent".--Kirkus Reviews.
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Strange Travelers by Gene Wolfe ( 2000)
One of the great sci-fi writers of the last twenty years offers a new collection of stories spanning the 1990s, including some of his most controversial work to date, in works that deal with a couple living near hell, an invasion, genetically altered animals, a powerful witch, space travelers, ghouls, and living toys.
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Sword & Citadel The Second Half of the Book of the New Sun The Sword of the Lictor and the Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe ( 1994)
Unanimously acclaimed as one of the finest works of science fiction ever written, the four-volume epic The Book of the New Sun is now available for the first time this decade. This dramatic adventure follows Severian as he transforms from a ruthless monster to a savior of a world. Sword & Citadel contains the concluding two volumes.
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The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe ( 1982)
When Severian, the Torturer, sets a woman free from prison, he is forced to flee and experiences many strange adventures in the distant future of Earth.
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Taps & Sighs Stories of Hauntings Signed Limited #454 by Gene Wolfe, Ray Garton, Michael M. Smith ( 2000)
This collection of 18 ghost stories features traditional stories alongside radical reworkings of what readers have come to expect. Among the contributing authors are Ramsey Campell, Ray Garton, Ian McDonald, and Richard Christian Matheson.
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There Are Doors by Gene Wolfe ( 2001)
When an Earthman falls in love with a woman from another planet in an alternate reality, he must transcend space and time in order to find his way to her through a series of inter-dimensional gateways. Reprint.
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Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe ( 1997)
We return to the world of Severian, now the Autarch or Urth, as he leaves the planet on the huge spaceship of the Heirodules to travel across space and time to face his greatest test, to become the New Sun or be destroyed.
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A Walking Tour of the Shambles by Neil Gaiman, Gahan Wilson, Gene Wolfe, Earl Geier, Randy Broecker ( 2002) |
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Weird Tales 290 Spring 1988 by Ramsey Campbell, Gene Wolfe ( 1988) |
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The Wizard by Gene Wolfe ( 2004)
A sequel to The Knight finds young teen Able, previously transported to a magical world into the body of an adult hero, returning to Mythgarthr in possession of special powers that he has vowed he will not use, in an adventure that requires him to fight giants, gods, and a seductive sorceress in his service to the dragon king Anthor.
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Young Wolfe by Gene Wolfe ( 1992) |
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