wolfe, until world's end
Apr. 26th, 2019 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishI have been to Niagara, I have been sick, and Gene Wolfe has died.
I tried to read the Book of the New Sun in the late nineties and bounced off it hard. I don't actually remember this but I remember a conversation in an elevator at I think Balticon 2001, with Eeyore and Dan Efran and others, where I said that and they nodded sympathetically.
(I have very vague memories of Balticon 2001, including of why I went in the first place. I'm fairly certain it was with the Looneys, and I know Emily was there and I'm pretty sure Adam K-- was as well. And there were Pop-tarts.)
Then I tried Wolfe again a few years later, while I was working at Waldenbooks, and it all clicked a lot better. I started with There Are Doors and went on to the Solar Cycle, and enjoyed the New Sun and absolutely adored Long Sun, and on and on.
I met him once, at Balticon 2006, with Neil Gaiman and Peter Beagle. He and Neil signed my copy of their collaboration A Walking Tour Of The Shambles (Gene wrote "Beware of the alligator!"), and when I asked what he was working on after the Egyptian Latro book, he said "a book about pirates!" I half thought he was kidding me but no: Pirate Freedom came out next year.
He wrote brilliantly, dense and multilayered and complex and still fun to read. His last few have been less good, for me, so I don't so much mourn the books we might have had. But still. Maybe.
Some articles: Tor.com's obituary. Sci-Fi's Difficult Genius from 2015. Jeet Heer: Gene Wolf Was the Proust of Science Fiction. Andrushthatspeaks has a remembrance as well.
In pace requiescat.
I tried to read the Book of the New Sun in the late nineties and bounced off it hard. I don't actually remember this but I remember a conversation in an elevator at I think Balticon 2001, with Eeyore and Dan Efran and others, where I said that and they nodded sympathetically.
(I have very vague memories of Balticon 2001, including of why I went in the first place. I'm fairly certain it was with the Looneys, and I know Emily was there and I'm pretty sure Adam K-- was as well. And there were Pop-tarts.)
Then I tried Wolfe again a few years later, while I was working at Waldenbooks, and it all clicked a lot better. I started with There Are Doors and went on to the Solar Cycle, and enjoyed the New Sun and absolutely adored Long Sun, and on and on.
I met him once, at Balticon 2006, with Neil Gaiman and Peter Beagle. He and Neil signed my copy of their collaboration A Walking Tour Of The Shambles (Gene wrote "Beware of the alligator!"), and when I asked what he was working on after the Egyptian Latro book, he said "a book about pirates!" I half thought he was kidding me but no: Pirate Freedom came out next year.
He wrote brilliantly, dense and multilayered and complex and still fun to read. His last few have been less good, for me, so I don't so much mourn the books we might have had. But still. Maybe.
Some articles: Tor.com's obituary. Sci-Fi's Difficult Genius from 2015. Jeet Heer: Gene Wolf Was the Proust of Science Fiction. And
rushthatspeaks has a remembrance as well.In pace requiescat.