Showing posts with label Gene Wolfe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gene Wolfe. Show all posts
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Gene Wolfe named SFWA Grand Master
Gene Wolfe, it was announced today, will be recognized with the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement. The award will be presented next year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America at their annual Nebula Awards banquet.
I’m pleased for Wolfe, of course, although I did wonder why it had taken SFWA this long to recognize one of the giants of science fiction and fantasy.
There are three principal lifetime achievement awards in the field: the SFWA Grand Master Award, the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the World Science Fiction Convention Guest of Honor. Until today only 10 people have been the recipient of all three. Gene Wolfe becomes the eleventh person. He was the Worldcon Guest of Honor at Aussiecon Two in 1985, and he won the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1996.
The triple winners are an interesting group of people. Some that might be expected, such as Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, Fritz Leiber, and Jack Vance. There are only two women on all three lists (Le Guin and Andre Norton), which is sign of where we’ve been but hopefully not a sign of where we are headed on gender issues.
There are some major authors who were overlooked by all three acknowledgements of lifetime achievement: Philip K. Dick, Joanna Russ, and James Tiptree (Alice Bradley Sheldon) for instance.
Friday, January 20, 2012
A Gathering of Links
News item: Connie Willis was named the 2011 recipient SFWA Grand Master Award. (follow here)
News item: Gene Wolfe will be celebrated with the Fuller Award, a new Chicago-area literary award, and an evening of entertainment. (follow here)
Samuel R. Delany: "I think of myself as someone who thinks largely through writing.”
-- From a Paris Review interview. (follow here)
William Gibson: “E. M. Forster’s idea has always stuck with me -- that a writer who’s fully in control of the characters hasn’t even started to do the work. I’ve never had any direct fictional input, that I know of, from dreams, but when I’m working optimally I’m in the equivalent of an ongoing lucid dream.”
-- From a Paris Review interview. (follow here)
"He has handed us a map to his own magic doorways." From the New York Times review by Pagan Kennedy of William Gibson’s new book of essays Distrust That Particular Flavor. (follow here)
"At the core of sf lies the experience of science ... The Mars and stars and digital deserts of our best novels are, finally, to be taken as real, as if to say: life isn’t like this, it is this." Gregory Benford on rereading The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of (1998) by Thomas M. Disch (via SanJuanJon). (follow here)
Soviet-era visions of Mars (via BLDGBLOG). (follow here)
"Extra(ordinary) People is my favorite of Russ’s collections, a forceful, beautiful, astounding book that leaves me low on words to compensate for how I respond to it." Brit Mandelo reads Joanna Russ's Extra(ordinary) People (1984). (follow here: part one and part two)
Elizabeth Hand has two novels forthcoming, Available Dark, due February 2012, and Radiant Days, due April 2012. Hand was recently interviewed on The Coode Street Podcast (follow here). Hand writes about six favorite books (follow here).
Jeff VanderMeer's essay on overlooked books from 2011 convinced me to spend cold hard cash for several books that I had managed to miss (follow here).
VanderMeer gives a rundown of the 2011 nominees for the Philip K. Dick Award, in which he calls Maureen F. McHugh's After the Apocalypse "a brilliant book." I'm reading it right now and couldn't agree more. (follow here)
News item: Gene Wolfe will be celebrated with the Fuller Award, a new Chicago-area literary award, and an evening of entertainment. (follow here)
Samuel R. Delany: "I think of myself as someone who thinks largely through writing.”
-- From a Paris Review interview. (follow here)
William Gibson: “E. M. Forster’s idea has always stuck with me -- that a writer who’s fully in control of the characters hasn’t even started to do the work. I’ve never had any direct fictional input, that I know of, from dreams, but when I’m working optimally I’m in the equivalent of an ongoing lucid dream.”
-- From a Paris Review interview. (follow here)
"He has handed us a map to his own magic doorways." From the New York Times review by Pagan Kennedy of William Gibson’s new book of essays Distrust That Particular Flavor. (follow here)
"At the core of sf lies the experience of science ... The Mars and stars and digital deserts of our best novels are, finally, to be taken as real, as if to say: life isn’t like this, it is this." Gregory Benford on rereading The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of (1998) by Thomas M. Disch (via SanJuanJon). (follow here)
Soviet-era visions of Mars (via BLDGBLOG). (follow here)
"Extra(ordinary) People is my favorite of Russ’s collections, a forceful, beautiful, astounding book that leaves me low on words to compensate for how I respond to it." Brit Mandelo reads Joanna Russ's Extra(ordinary) People (1984). (follow here: part one and part two)
Elizabeth Hand has two novels forthcoming, Available Dark, due February 2012, and Radiant Days, due April 2012. Hand was recently interviewed on The Coode Street Podcast (follow here). Hand writes about six favorite books (follow here).
Jeff VanderMeer's essay on overlooked books from 2011 convinced me to spend cold hard cash for several books that I had managed to miss (follow here).
VanderMeer gives a rundown of the 2011 nominees for the Philip K. Dick Award, in which he calls Maureen F. McHugh's After the Apocalypse "a brilliant book." I'm reading it right now and couldn't agree more. (follow here)
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
12 kinds of Death and the Dead
"Of the nature of Death and the Dead we may enumerate twelve kinds. First there are those who become new gods, for whom new universes are born. Second those who praise. Third those who fight as soldiers in the unending war with evil. Fourth those who amuse themselves among flowers and sweet springs with sports. Fifth those who dwell in gardens of bliss, or are tortured. Sixth those who continue as in life. Seventh those who turn the wheel of the Universe. Eighth those who find in their graves their mothers' wombs and in one life circle forever. Ninth ghosts. Tenth those born again as men in their grandsons' time. Eleventh those who return as beasts or trees. And last those who sleep."
From "Forlesen" by Gene Wolfe, originally published in Orbit 14 (1974), edited by Damon Knight
This quote was brought to my attention by the newly revised and updated Gene Wolfe page at Wikiquote, edited by a friend of the blog.
"Forlesen" is chilling and Kafkaesque. I highly recommend it. Gene Wolfe is one of the great treasures of science fiction and fantasy. His substantial body of first-rate work puts him at or near the top of the list of best authors in the genre.
Related link:
Friday, May 13, 2011
Links to thinks
Neil Gaiman writes about Gene Wolfe
"... Gene Wolfe remains a hero to me. He's just turned 80, looks after his wife Rosemary, and is still writing deep, complex, brilliant fiction that slips between genres. ... He's the finest living male American writer of SF and fantasy – possibly the finest living American writer. Most people haven't heard of him. And that doesn't bother Gene in the slightest." Read the article.
SF Signal Mind Meld: Which challenging SF/F stories are worth the effort to read?
Some wonderful recommendations, including works by Gene Wolfe, Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delany, Neal Stephenson, Cordwainer Smith. As Cat Rambo writes in the comments, add Italo Calvino, Stanislaw Lem, John Crowley, Justina Robson, and Peter Watts. Who would you add? Read the article.
Ursula K. LeGuin reviews Embassytown by China Miéville
"If Miéville has been known to set up a novel on a marvelous metaphor and then not know quite where to take it, he's outgrown that, and his dependence on violence is much diminished. In Embassytown, his metaphor ... works on every level, providing compulsive narrative, splendid intellectual rigor and risk, moral sophistication, fine verbal fireworks and sideshows, and even the old-fashioned satisfaction of watching a protagonist become more of a person than she gave promise of being." Read the article.
Rob Latham on J.G. Ballard
"I believe that, with the possible exception of Philip K. Dick, postwar SF has produced no finer writer, and certainly none more attuned to the perplexities and pitfalls of the modern technoscientific world." Read the article. (Edited: link updated.)
"... Gene Wolfe remains a hero to me. He's just turned 80, looks after his wife Rosemary, and is still writing deep, complex, brilliant fiction that slips between genres. ... He's the finest living male American writer of SF and fantasy – possibly the finest living American writer. Most people haven't heard of him. And that doesn't bother Gene in the slightest." Read the article.
SF Signal Mind Meld: Which challenging SF/F stories are worth the effort to read?
Some wonderful recommendations, including works by Gene Wolfe, Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delany, Neal Stephenson, Cordwainer Smith. As Cat Rambo writes in the comments, add Italo Calvino, Stanislaw Lem, John Crowley, Justina Robson, and Peter Watts. Who would you add? Read the article.
Ursula K. LeGuin reviews Embassytown by China Miéville
"If Miéville has been known to set up a novel on a marvelous metaphor and then not know quite where to take it, he's outgrown that, and his dependence on violence is much diminished. In Embassytown, his metaphor ... works on every level, providing compulsive narrative, splendid intellectual rigor and risk, moral sophistication, fine verbal fireworks and sideshows, and even the old-fashioned satisfaction of watching a protagonist become more of a person than she gave promise of being." Read the article.
Rob Latham on J.G. Ballard
"I believe that, with the possible exception of Philip K. Dick, postwar SF has produced no finer writer, and certainly none more attuned to the perplexities and pitfalls of the modern technoscientific world." Read the article. (Edited: link updated.)
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
New arrivals in today's mail
Two books that were much anticipated (by me) arrived today: Among Others by Jo Walton and Home Fires by Gene Wolfe, one author I have not read at novel length before and the other I have read many books indeed. They already have been much discussed by critics and editors in the field. Both are listed by Amazon.com as being available on 18 January 2011, today. Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe spent a good part of Episode 30 of the Notes from Coode Street Podcast discussing and praising Among Others. Strahan and Wolfe have also mentioned Home Fires over several episodes as one of the major novels of the year. They've even given it the nickname "Home Fries."
Related links:
Gary K. Wolfe reviews Among Others by Jo Walton
Notes from Coode Street Podcast
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