Gene Wolfe – författare

An extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, in the time of a dying sun, when our present culture is no longer even a memory. Severian, a torturer's apprentice, is exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his prisoners. Ordered to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est, Severian must make his way across the perilous, ruined landscape of this far-future Urth. But is his finding of the mystical gem, the Claw of the Conciliator, merely an accident, or does Fate have a grander plans for Severian the torturer . . . ?This edition contains the first two volumes of this four volume novel, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator.

An extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, in the time of a dying sun, when our present culture is no longer even a memory. The torturer's apprentice, Severian, exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his prisoners, is now the Lictor of Thrax, a city far distant from his home. But it is not long before Severian must flee this city, too, and journey again into the world. Embattled by friends and enemies alike, pursued by monstrous creatures, the one-time torturer's apprentice must overcome hitherto unimagined perils, as he moves closer to fulfilling his ultimate destiny.This edition contains the concluding two volumes of this four-volume novel, The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autarch.

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 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. Horn sets sail in a small boat, in a small boat, on a long and difficult quest across the planet Blue in search of the now legendary Patera Silk. The story will continue in In Green's Jungles and Return to the Whorl.

Gene Wolfe's IN GREEN'S JUNGLE is the sequel to ON BLUE'S WATERS. It is again narrated by Horn, on a quest from his home on the planet Blue to find the heroic leader Paters Silk. Now Horn's identity has become ambiguous, a complex question embedded in the story, whose telling is itself complex, shifting from place to place, present to past. Horn recalls visiting the Whorl, the enormous spacecraft that brought the settlers from Urth, and going thence to the planet Green, home of the blood-drinking alien Inhumi. He remembers a visit to Nessus, on Urth. And people mistake him for Silk, to whom he now bears a remarkable resemblance. IN GREEN'S JUNGLE is a section of Wolfe's major new fiction, The Book of the Short Sun, building through this volume toward a strange and seductive climax in RETURN TO THE WHORL now in hardcover.

This omnibus of two acclaimed novels is the story of Latro, a Roman mercenary who was fighting in Greece when he received a head injury that deprived him of his short-term memory but gave him in return the ability to see and converse with the supernatural creatures, the gods and goddesses, who invisibly inhabit the classical landscape. Latro forgets everything when he sleeps. Writing down his experiences every day and reading his journal anew each morning gives him a poignantly tenuous hold on himself, but his story's hold on readers is powerful indeed.

This is the story of a man who falls in love with a goddess from an alternative universe. She flees him, but he pursues her through doorways - inter-dimensional gateways - to the other place, determined to sacrifice his life for her love.

Gene Wolfe is producing the most significant body of short fiction of any living writer in the SF genre. It has been ten years since the last major Wolfe collection, so STRANGE TRAVELLERS contains a whole decade of achievement. Some of these stories were award - nominees, some were controversial, but each is unique and beautifully written. This is one of the finest short fiction collections of the 1990s.

Far from Earth two sister planets, Sainte Anne and Sainte Croix, circle each other. It is said that a race of shapeshifting aliens once lived here, only to become extinct when human colonists arrived. But one man believes they still exist, somewhere out in the wilderness.In THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS, Gene Wolfe brilliantly interweaves three tales: a scientist's son gradual discovery of the bizarre secret of his heritage; a young man's mythic dreamquest for his darker half; the mystifying chronicle of an anthropologist's seemingly-arbitrary imprisonment. Gradually, a mesmerising pattern emerges.

This volume gathers fantasy stories from the last decade that have never before been collected. Highlights from the 22 stories include "The Tree is My Hat," adventure and horror in the South Seas; "The Night Chough," a Long Sun story; "The Walking Sticks," a humorous tale of a supernatural inheritance; and the very personal "Houston, 1943," lurid adventures in a dream that has no end. This is fantastic fiction at its best.

Gene Wolfe, whose Book of the New Sun was the most acclaimed science fiction series of the 1980s, offered his second collection of short fiction in 1989 to universal praise. This is a hefty volume of over 30 unforgettable stories in a variety of genres, many of them offering variations on themes and situations found in folklore and fairy tales. Wolfe's de-constructions/reconstructions are provocative, multilayered, and resonant. The literary riches here exemplify the sometimes elusive, occasionally challenging, always rewarding vision of an author whose love of language exceeds the boundaries of genre.

Gene Wolfe follows his acclaimed all-fantasy short story collection, "Innocents Aboard", with a volume devoted primarily to his science fiction. The twenty-five stories here amply demonstrate his range, excellence, and mastery of the form. A few tantalizing samples: "Viewpoint" takes on the unreality of so-called "reality" TV and imagines such a show done for real - with real guns. "Empires of Foliage and Flower" is in the classic Book of the "New Sun" series. "Golden City Far" is about dreams, high school, and finding love, which Wolfe says "is about as good a recipe for a story as I've ever found." You're sure to agree.

Latro forgets everything when he sleeps. Writing down his experiences every day and reading his journal anew each morning gives him a poignantly tenuous hold on himself, but his story's hold on readers is powerful indeed. The two previous novels, combined in "Latro In The Mist" ("Soldier of the Mist" and "Soldier of Arete") are generally considered classics of contemporary fantasy. Latro now finds himself in Egypt, a land of singing girls, of spiteful and conniving deities. Without his memory, he is unsure of everything, except for his desire to be free of the curse that causes him to forget.

It starts with a confession from a priest. His past has reached further back than what many would consider possible. Before he was a priest, he was the pirate Captain Cristofo, and before he was a pirate, he was just Chris, a boy living in a monastery in Cuba the day after tomorrow. One day Chris realizes that he is not meant for the monastery he has grown up in, and leaves. On the streets of Havana everything looks strange and out-of-date, but Chris is too busy trying to find his next meal and a safe place to sleep to contemplate the city's odd lack of modern conveniences. He finds that this world is a much harder one than the one he remembers; it's a place where people steal, lie, and cheat. Where slaves are sold at auction, and the Spanish, French, and English are all battling for supremacy. When Chris is offered the opportunity to work on a ship in exchange for food and a small bit of money, he takes it, and thus begins his life as a pirate. People die, treasures are found, women are taken captive, and crews rebel.Gene Wolfe is a masterful storyteller, and in Pirate Freedom, he uses his customary vision to invite us into the captivating world of pirates, their lives, and their adventures.

In a contemporary town in the American Midwest where he has no connections, an educated man recently released from prison is staying in a motel. He writes letters to his brother and to others, including a friend still in jail. When he meets a real estate agent who tells him he is the heir to a huge old house, long empty, he moves in, though he is too broke to even buy furniture, and is immediately confronted by supernatural and fantastic creatures and events. His life is utterly transformed and we read on, because we must know more. We revise our opinions of him, and of others, with each letter. We learn things about magic, and another world, and about the sorcerer Mr. Black, who originally inhabited the house. And then perhaps we read it again.

Grafton, an American writer of travel guides in need of a new location, chooses to travel to a small, obscure Eastern European country. The moment he crosses the border he is in trouble, much more than he could have imagined. His passport is taken by guards. Then he is detained for not having it. He is released into the custody of a family, but is again detained. It becomes evident that there are supernatural agencies at work, but in some ways they are not as threatening as the brute forces of bureaucracy and corruption in that country. Is our hero in fact a spy for the CIA? Or is he an innocent citizen caught in a Kafkaesque trap? Gene Wolfe keeps us guessing until the very end, and afterword.

In the twenty-second century, our civilization has retained many familiar characteristics, but the population is smaller. Technology has made significant advances, and there are robots - and clones. One such is E. A. Smithe, a borrowed person, a clone who lives on a third-tier shelf in a public library. His personality is an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer. As library property, Smithe is not a legal human. The father of Colette Coldbrook, a wealthy library patron, has disappeared and been proclaimed dead. She decides to check Smithe out of the library because he is the surviving personality of the author of Murder on Mars. A physical copy of that book was the sole item in her father's safe, and it contains an important secret, the key to immense family wealth. Her brother, Conrad, turned up dead in the family home shortly after giving the book to her. Colette has reached the end of her options. She's afraid of the police, and there are others who might want the book's secret. Smithe is her last hope. Borrowing him might help her find the connection between the deaths and Murder on Mars.Together they find something far beyond their expectations - something almost anyone would kill for.