Gene Wolfe: Difference between revisions

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'''Gene Wolfe''' is(May 7, 1931 – April 14, 2019) was an American science fiction and fantasy author, best known for his ''[[Book of the New Sun]]'' series. He has won the [[Nebula Award]], Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award multiple times each.

Hallmarks include [[Unreliable Narrator|unreliable]] [[Point of View|first-person]] [[Narrator|narratorsnarrator]]s, and a facility for wordplay that ranges from the dense and clever (every [[Call a Rabbit Aa Smeerp|smeerp]]-like word in a Wolfe story is an obscure but genuine word with an appropriate real meaning) to the amusingly straightforward (one of his short story collections is called ''The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories'', and includes "The Death of Doctor Island" and "The Doctor of Death Island" in addition to the title story, which ''actually is titled'' "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories"). Most of his later books and short stories tend to have Catholic themes, as Wolfe himself is a Roman Catholic.

Fun Fact: During his engineering career, he helped create the machine that makes Pringles. He sayssaid he would have "made them thicker."

* [[Book of the Short Sun (Literature)|Book of the Short Sun]] series

* [[Call a Rabbit Aa Smeerp]]: Subverted, as described above

* [[Call a Smeerp Aa Rabbit]]

* [[Creator Backlash]]: A mild example. He hashad said many times that he doesndidn't understand why people consider ''New Sun'' to be his masterpiece... though he doesdid think it is very good.

** Specifically (since this story is in the very-hard-to-find ''The Castle of the Otter'') {{spoiler|she asks to see the death of the last living creature on Earth. He complies by taking her into the far future after all life has died, and leaving her alone there to die - with a mirror.}}

* [[Old Shame]]: Forbade his first novel, Operation ARES, to be republished since he hashad matured as a writer. It hasn't been in print since the 70s.

* [[Out Withwith a Bang]]: "There are Doors" had an alternate Earth where humans have a very different reproductive cycle; after sex women store men's semen in their body for the rest of their life, and can use it to have as many children as they wish. Men die, as their immune system shuts down.

** [[Winston Churchill|A famous British war correspondent]] is the primary opponent of the German salesman. And, in the final paragraph, we learn that his colleague, our narrator, is an American army officer named "[[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Dwight]]". (Which may count as a [[Genius Bonus]] for those readers who know him only as "Ike".)

* [[Running Gag]] -: Typhon {{spoiler|built up as the [[Ultimate Evil]] in both the ''[[Book of the New Sun]]'' and ''[[Book of the Long Sun]]'' before being offhandedly killed.}}

* [[Sci Fi Ghetto]]: He's was the science-fiction writer most likely to be nominated for a Nobel, according to other writers of the genre. However, because he writeswrote speculative fiction, he's never really broke into the mainstream.

* [[Staying Withwith Friends]]: At the end of ''Pandora By Holly Hollander''

* [[Tomato in Thethe Mirror]]: "The Other Dead Man"

[[Category:{{World Fantasy Award]] Novel}}

[[Category:GeneAmerican WolfeAuthors]]