Gene Wolfe - 1931-2019

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Gene Wolfe - 1931-2019

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1AnnieMod
Apr 15, 2019, 3:36 pm

And another of the big authors is now gone: https://locusmag.com/2019/04/gene-wolfe-1931-2019/

RIP!

2ScoLgo
Apr 15, 2019, 3:39 pm

Gene Wolfe is one of my favorite authors of all time. Knowing this day was coming doesn't make it any easier to hear the news.

3lorax
Apr 15, 2019, 4:04 pm

Oh, no.

4Lyndatrue
Apr 15, 2019, 4:29 pm

I saw that he was gone, earlier today. Combined with the fire raging in Paris (Notre Dame), this is a day just filled with sadness. I loved the comment he made about his wife, when in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's: "There was a time when she did not remember my name or that we were married, but she still remembered that she loved me."

RIP Gene Wolfe. You were a remarkable writer, and human being.

5Sylak
Apr 15, 2019, 4:39 pm

“A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.”

- Isaac Watts

6gilroy
Apr 16, 2019, 1:14 pm

Gene Wolfe - For the sake of the touchstone.

7Cecrow
Modificato: Apr 16, 2019, 1:20 pm

Gene Wolfe's legacy is liable to go the way of Melville: underappreciated during his lifetime and then, long after his death, seen as a giant of this era for his genre, if not someone greater still.

8iansales
Apr 16, 2019, 3:27 pm

>7 Cecrow: Not likely. He is highly regarded now, although chiefly for works written during the 1970s and 1980s. And science fiction does like to venerate its stars of half of a century ago. As for whether Wolfe will be appreciated outside the genre... well, no other science fiction writer has been.

9dukedom_enough
Apr 16, 2019, 7:50 pm

10Sylak
Apr 17, 2019, 4:55 am

>9 dukedom_enough: ...William S. Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Margaret Atwood... yes, one could go on; but I take >8 iansales: point.
Science fiction literature has a history of being ignored or at the very least underestimated compared to any other genre. But this is also its greatest strength.
It has the ability to subversively spread ideas, and to dare to speak out politically in an almost subliminal way, by use of allegory which is sometimes necessary in oppressive societies. Although far from unique in that respect, science fiction has often gotten away with it much more. I think that this is partially where the jealousy lies.

If there were a war being fought between different genres, then science fiction would be the resistance. ;)

11RobertDay
Apr 17, 2019, 8:18 am

>10 Sylak: ...Brian Aldiss, J.G. Ballard, Iain (no 'M') Banks... (Banksie in particular used to get a lot of mileage out of the reactions to his double identity.)

And some of Ian McEwan's early short stories were first published in Analog, I believe. The genre might probably have provided the only places that would publish them.

But it is true to say that those outside the genre look at the writers we have spoken of and either dismiss, ignore or trivialise their science fiction, sometimes to the point of denying that it actually is science fiction. This still means that we get novels by those outside the genre that either imitate or "subvert" the genre in ways that we consider gauche or amateurish; and those efforts only serve to retain or reinforce the schism between genre and non-genre literature.

I like Sylak's analogy.

12iansales
Apr 17, 2019, 10:26 am

>10 Sylak: Burroughs, Atwood or Pynchon are not considered genre writers, even though some of what they have written qualifies - to us - as genre.

Science fiction is capable of a lot of things, but the bulk of it is just unsophisticated adventures in invented worlds. Any real world impact individual books might have had are either incidental, or the books in question weren't published as, or considered to be, science fiction.

>11 RobertDay: Ballard is an interesting case. He hit the big time when he stopped writing - or being published as - genre.

13iansales
Modificato: Apr 17, 2019, 11:57 am

>10 Sylak: >11 RobertDay: And then there are all those sf novels by classic writers that are not considered sf and that even the genre never bothers to claim for itself... like A Maggot or Tunc... So it goes both ways...

14paradoxosalpha
Apr 17, 2019, 11:18 am

>13 iansales:

Gravity's Rainbow is one of those, but I've seen it claimed as sf. Good point about Tunc, though.

15lorax
Apr 17, 2019, 1:05 pm

iansales (#12):

Science fiction is capable of a lot of things, but the bulk of it is just unsophisticated adventures in invented worlds. Any real world impact individual books might have had are either incidental, or the books in question weren't published as, or considered to be, science fiction.

Yes, but ninety percent of *everything* is crap. You're coming perilously close to the old "if it's good, then it transcends genre and isn't really SF" argument here, even if it's at one remove (i.e. that if it's good, and has real world impact, readers unfamiliar with the genre will notice it and it will no longer be considered to be SF). Surely that isn't the point you want to be making?

16iansales
Apr 17, 2019, 4:22 pm

>15 lorax: I'm not making that point at all. There are books that are published as science fiction, and there are books that are science fiction, or make use of science fiction tropes, that are not published as science fiction. My argument is that the latter books have had more real world impact than the former, even it's if chiefly because they've been more widely read. And of the authors that have been pretty much exclusively published as science fiction, well, none of them have ever really as literary giants in the way Melville has.

(YA aside, of course, as its genre properties, such as Harry Potter, have very much had an impact, but YA is considered a genre in and of itself.)

17RobertDay
Apr 18, 2019, 7:53 am

YA seems to be something of a special case; many adults retain affection for YA favourites of their own youth (sadly, I'm of an age where the category didn't exist when I was a Young Adult), whilst media producers and directors choose YA properties to make into films and tv which are aimed more generally - though whether that's because of high audience recognition levels or because their selected medium only aims to put over comparatively simplistic messages is probably a topic for a whole separate strand.

18paradoxosalpha
Apr 18, 2019, 11:15 am

I enjoyed Wolfe's non-sf YA outing Pandora by Holly Hollander.

19Shrike58
Apr 26, 2019, 4:22 pm

Interesting piece on Wolfe from a source I wouldn't have expected:

https://www.theringer.com/2019/4/25/18515675/gene-wolfe-science-fiction-author

20Lyndatrue
Apr 26, 2019, 4:56 pm

>19 Shrike58: Thank you for posting that...even though it made me cry, all over again. I'm just so sad that he's gone.

Ah, well. So it goes.

21Shrike58
Apr 26, 2019, 9:33 pm

I thought that it would be appreciated.

I will also mention that the "Joe" that was described as having carved Wolfe's cane was a friend of mine too.

22Sakerfalcon
Apr 29, 2019, 4:58 am

>19 Shrike58: That is a great tribute. Thank you for sharing it.

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