The Rereading Wolfe Podcast | 重读沃尔夫播客

3/ The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun is my favorite of his long stories — I was pleased to learn from his introduction to Innocents Aboard & from later discussions with her that it is also Joan Gordon’s favorite. But he always seemed unaware of why we like it quite so much.

2/ I was often surprised at which of his stories he seemed to underrate. When people praised Tracking Song with a list of other stories he consistently passed over discussing it. And sure enough it’s the one long story in The Island of Dr Death & Other Stories & Other Stories excluded from Best Of.

1/ 7AN is an ingenious story with a wickedly complex presentation. And yes it does address contemporary issues in America in the 70s (narcotics & ecology) that he considered pertinent.

2/ There was a wall between us in that I was not a writer — and that seemed to me to be the only type of person he could strongly connect to. In that way you might well have known him better than I ever could.

1/ My interactions were limited to a few shared meals and various panels. But something Michael Swanwick’s wife said of him resonates with me: “that’s the most emotional man I’ve ever met.” He wasn’t a stereotypical Hemingway character.

"His books are so very long."

I should have answered this right off.
Before The Book of the New Sun, Wolfe typically garnered adulation for his short fiction. Check out The Best of Gene Wolfe -- which are those HE considered his best. They aren't ALL his best by a long shot.

Wolfe did/does have his female fans: Joanna Russ, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ada Palmer, Sunyi Dean. And he was an encourager and mentor to female writers. His agent was the 2nd Wave feminist anthologist Virginia Kidd.

4b People say Wolfe only wrote only female architypes but it's a story about a woman who goes to extremes NOT to be an archetype.
5 So, it irks me when folks say "Wolfe couldn't write women" bcz they are plugging him into archetypical expectations of genre females - which Wolfe was subverting.

4a That said, his women (ingenue, femme fatale, side-kick, whatever) play their roles in the story exactly as he intended.
For an excellent example of a female protagonist of the sort people say Wolfe *couldn't* write, see 'Counting Cats in Zanzibar' in the Strange Travelers collection.

3 Bcz his stories often have male protagonists they are often unaware of how far above them the women are that the encounter in IQ and EQ. His women NPCs could hold their own stories but that's usually not what Wolfe is doing.

That's an excellent question.
1 It is true that most of Wolfe's protagonists - usually close 1st person - are young men. Usually, quite broken young men.
2 But Wolfe is actually committed to the romantic ideal of love. So, he codes "feminine" in that way but not like modern male/female writers.

I should’ve clarified further that I’m weak on modern short fiction by female authors. I love short fiction and I’m a sucker for anthologies.

Not thatI have a problem with its deliberate obtuseness (obviously) but I think it makes The Fifth Head of Cerberus novel look transparent by comparison.

That’s angle. I’m not gonna sneer at it. But…
1 I consider A Momentary Taste of Being to be faraway Tiptree’s best writing.
2 I don’t think the best recc of SF is its applicability to current events. If the Dune universe had a well written short, I’d love to pair it with 7AN despite it’s obtuseness

Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Elder Race"

Going to be a bit basic with these two, as they have very similar vibes, but I give you the wrapround paperback edition of Gene Wolfe's Shadow Of The Torturer and Clive Barker's Weaveworld.

Oh so Gene Wolf can describe Severian as very tall, with a cleft chin, deep set eyes and high cheekbones, but when I, Caleb Hosalla, do it to my ocs I get called a fa-

** I̵ ̵c̵o̵n̵f̵e̵s̵s̵ ̵I̵’̵m̵ ̵w̵e̵a̵k̵ ̵f̵o̵r̵ ̵s̵h̵o̵r̵t̵ ̵f̵i̵c̵t̵i̵o̵n̵
I confess I’m weak for MODERN short fiction

😌

trying to convince all of my friends to read the book of the new sun

It’s there. It’s in the Play <wink>

I’m pleased that you have Gene Wolfe (properly) shelved next to Nabokov.

This is a great anthology and includes Gene Wolfe’s homage to RE Howard “Six From Atlantis”. The cover is an illustration of Wolfe’s story.
It was written for a tribute anthology to Howard by Texas authors. So Wolfe wrote a high noon gunfight in the style of a Conanist saga.

For modern times, try Adrian Tchaikovsky’s award winning CAGE OF SOULS. (Major Gene Wolfe fan)

Too much testosterone?
Golden Age: CL Moore’s NO WOMAN BORN or SHAMBLEAU
New Wave: James Tiptree Jr’s A MOMENTARY TASTE OF BEING /Joanna Russ’ WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO…
I confess I’m weak for short fiction

For Wolfe New Wave I’ll recommend THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS novella bcz then the students have the option of taking on the next two novellas in the fix-up.
For golden age, how about Theodore Sturgeon’s THE MICROCOSMIC GOD, the first SF Wolfe said blew his mind.