Shadows of the new sun: Wolfe on writing, writers on Wolfe

273 Pages·2007·2.984 MB·English

by  Wolfe, Gene;Wright, Peter Ronald

SHADOWS OF THE NEW SUN
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Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies
Editor
DAVID SEED
University of Liverpool
Editorial Board
MARK BOULD VERONICA HOLLINGER
University of the West of England Trent University
ROB LATHAM ROGER LUCKHURST
University of Iowa Birkbeck College, University of London
PATRICK PARRINDER ANDY SAWYER
University of Reading University of Liverpool
1. Robert Crossley Olaf Stapledon: Speaking for the Future
2. David Seed (ed.) Anticipations: Essays on Early Science Fiction and its Precursors
3. Jane L. Donawerth and Carol A. Kolmerten (eds) Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: Worlds
of Difference
4. Brian W. Aldiss The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy
5. Carol Farley Kessler Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Her Progress Toward Utopia, with Selected Writings
6. Patrick Parrinder Shadows of the Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction and Prophecy
7. I. F. Clarke (ed.) The Tale of the Next Great War, 1871–1914: Fictions of Future Warfare and of
Battles Still-to-come
8. Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford The Inheritors
9. Qingyun Wu Female Rule in Chinese and English Literary Utopias
10. John Clute Look at the Evidence: Essays and Reviews
11. Roger Luckhurst ‘The Angle Between Two Walls’: The Fiction of J. G. Ballard
12. I. F. Clarke (ed.) The Great War with Germany, 1980–1914: Fiction and Fantasies of the
War-to-come
13. Franz Rottensteiner (ed.) View from Another Shore: European Science Fiction
14. Val Gough and Jill Rudd (eds) A Very Different Story: Studies in the Fiction of
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
15. Gary Westfahl The Mechanics of Wonder: The Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction
16. Gwyneth Jones Deconstructing the Starships: Science, Fiction and Reality
17. Patrick Parrinder (ed.) Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition
and the Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia
18. Jeanne Cortiel Demand My Writing: Joanna Russ/Feminism/Science Fiction
19. Chris Ferns Narrating Utopia: Ideology, Gender, Form in Utopian Literature
20. E. J. Smith (ed.) Jules Verne: New Directions
21. Andy Sawyer and David Seed (eds) Speaking Science Fiction: Dialogues and Interpretations
22. Inez van der Spek Alien Plots: Female Subjectivity and the Divine
23. S. T. Joshi Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction
24. Mike Ashley The Time Machines: The Story of the Science-Fiction Pulp Magazines from the
Beginning to 1950
25. Warren G. Rochelle Communities of the Heart: The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of
Ursula K. Le Guin
26. S. T. Joshi A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in his Time
27. Christopher Palmer Philip K. Dick: Exhilaration and Terror of the Postmodern
28. Charles E. Gannon Rumors of War and Infernal Machines: Technomilitary Agenda-Setting in
American and British Speculative Fiction
29. Peter Wright Attending Daedalus: Gene Wolfe, Artifice and the Reader
30. Mike Ashley Transformations: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazine from 1950–1970
31. Joanna Russ The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and Reviews
32. Robert Philmus Visions and Revisions: (Re)constructing Science Fiction
33. Gene Wolfe (edited and introduced by Peter Wright) Shadows of the New Sun: Wolfe on
Writing/Writers on Wolfe
34. Mike Ashley Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazine from 1970–1980
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SHADOWS OF
THE NEW SUN
WOLFE ON WRITING/WRITERS ON WOLFE
edited and introduced by Peter Wright
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS
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First published 2007 by
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool L69 7ZU
Copyright © 2007 Liverpool University Press
The authors’ rights have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A British Library CIP record is available
ISBN 978–1–84631–057–7 cased
978–1–84631–058–4 limp
Edited and typeset by
Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscall, Lancs
Printed and bound in the European Union by
Bell and Bain Ltd, Glasgow
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To Marjorie McGivern, Nan,
who couldn’t stay to see this one finished – PW
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Contents
Notes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
Part I The Trackless Meadows of Old Time
1 Gene Wolfe: An Interview 11
Malcolm Edwards
2 An Interview with Gene Wolfe 24
Joan Gordon
3 An Interview with Gene Wolfe 36
Melissa Mia Hall
4 Interview: Gene Wolfe – ‘The Legerdemain of the Wolfe’ 44
Robert Frazier
5 Riding a Bicycle Backwards: An Interview with Gene 56
Wolfe
Colin Greenland
6 A Conversation with Gene Wolfe 66
Nancy Kress and Calvin Rich
7 An Interview with Gene Wolfe 73
Elliott Swanson
8 On Encompassing the Entire Universe: An Interview with 79
Gene Wolfe
Larry McCaffery
9 Gene Wolfe Interview 101
James B. Jordan
10 Gene Wolfe Interview 132
Brendan Baber
11 Peter and the Wolfe: Gene Wolfe in Conversation 139
Peter Wright
12 Suns New, Long, and Short: An Interview with Gene 167
Wolfe
Lawrence Person
13 A Magus of Many Suns: An Interview with Gene Wolfe 177
Nick Gevers
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viii CONTENTS
14 Some Moments with the Magus: An Interview with 184
Gene Wolfe
Nick Gevers, Michael Andre-Driussi and James Jordan
Part II The Wild Joy of Strumming
15 Books in The Book of the New Sun 193
16 Wolfe’s Rules: What You Must Do to Be a Writer 203
17 Balding, Avuncular Gene’s Quick and Dirty Guide to 204
Creating Memorable Characters
18 Wolfe’s Irreproducible Truths About Novels 206
19 Nor the Summers as Golden: Writing Multivolume Works 208
20 What Do They Mean, SF? 214
21 The Special Problems of Science Fiction 219
22 How to Be a Writer’s Family 224
23 Libraries on the Superhighway – Rest Stop or Roadkill? 228
24 The Handbook of Permissive English 238
25 More Than Half of You Can’t Read This 241
26 Wolfe’s Inalienable* Truths About Reviewing 243
27 A Fantasist Reads the Bible and Its Critics 244
Index 249
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Notes on Contributors
Michael Andre-Driussi gained his BA in English Literature from the
University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for Lexicon Urthus
(1994), a guide to Gene Wolfe’s New Sun series. Following that, he pub-
lished a number of chapbooks on Wolfe’s work, concluding with an origi-
nal Wolfe story, ‘Talk of Mandrakes’ (2003). With Alice K. Turner he co-
edited Snake’s-hands: The Fiction of John Crowley (2003). He is currently
working on a second edition of the Lexicon which will correct many of
the errors as well as adding new ones. He resides near Berkeley.
Malcolm Edwards edited the magazines Vector and Foundation in the
1970s, and was Contributing Editor to the first edition of The Encyclopedia
of Science Fiction. He started working at Gollancz in 1976, and took over
running their sf list in 1982. He is now Publisher and Deputy CEO of the
Orion Publishing Group (which includes Gollancz); in recent years his
main contribution to the sf field has been the SF Masterworks series, whose
first group of titles included Gene Wolfe’s The Fifth Head of Cerberus – the
book which led to the interview with Wolfe reprinted here.
Robert Frazier is the author of eight collections of poetry, and a three-
time winner of the Rhysling Award for poetry from the Science Fiction
Poetry Association. His most recent book is The Daily Chernobyl, winner of
the 1999 Anamnesis Press Chapbook Award, published in August 2000
from Anamnesis Press. His work has appeared recently in The Magazine of
Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Magazine of Specu-
lative Poetry, Dreams & Nightmares, and the anthology The Alchemy of Stars.
An oil painter, Frazier was president of the Artists’ Association of Nan-
tucket, a 600-member non-profit organisation from 1999–2004. In 2005
he curated a museum-level, catalogued exhibit of historical art, The Art
Colony on Nantucket. He lives on Nantucket Island.
Nick Gevers wrote his Masters dissertation on Gene Wolfe (University of
Cape Town, 1991) and subsequently obtained a Ph.D. for his thesis dis-
cussing future and alternate histories in SF and fantasy (UCT, 1997). He
has since worked very widely in the SF field as a critic – publishing nu-
merous reviews and articles in the Washington Post Book World, Foundation,
Locus, Interzone, Nova Express and elsewhere – and as an interviewer and
editor. In the last capacity, he has edited many titles for PS Publishing,
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