The Dead Man and Other Horror Stories

By Gene Wolfe

2023

First Published

4.17

Average Rating

418

Number of Pages

12H45M

Audio Length

Although best known for his world-building Book of the New Sun science-fantasy saga, Gene Wolfe wrote brilliant fiction that resisted encapsulation within rigid genre categories. This volume collects twenty-eight tales spanning nearly a half century—six of them never before collected—and gathered from venues as varied as men's magazines, periodicals devoted to short works of fantasy and science fiction, and tribute anthologies to the works of authors as wildly opposed in their literary visions as Dante and H. P. Lovecraft. Although selected for their overtones of "horror," they frequently defy the conventions that contemporary category label conjures. Take "Talk of Mandrakes," a tale of malignant exo-biology spun from an ancient occult legend steeped in sex magic. Or "The Other Dead Man," a story set aboard an interstellar spacecraft that would distinguish any anthology of zombie fiction it appeared in. "Innocent" is cast in the form of a dramatic monologue whose creepy first-person narrator details increasingly aberrant behavior that defies the formal psychological diagnosis it cries out for. And "In the House of Gingerbread" recasts a classic children's fairy tale as a dark noir whodunit. To be sure, Wolfe willingly embraced horror's classic tropes, but he reworked them into remarkably original signatures through his personal creative ingenuity: There is much lycanthropy, but nary a hairy transformation in his futuristic "The Hero as Werwolf." "The Vampire Kiss" reinterprets its titular monster as a scourge of the poor in Dickensian London. And in "Why I Was Hanged," the disadvantages of accepting advice from the ghosts of the living are made abundantly manifest. Their macabre inflections notwithstanding Wolfe's horror stories abound with affecting character studies that cleave the distance between the horrible and the human: the changeling child adapting to an unfamiliar life as a mortal in "Queen of the Night"; the investigator in "The Detective of Dreams" dedicated by occupation to freeing his clients from their nightmares; the woman in "Uncaged," whose feral persona may be an expression of her true self. Wolfe's tales of horror, like all of his fiction, are stories in which readers—however uneasily—recognize, and relate to, much of themselves.

Avg Rating

4.17

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

40%

4 STARS

44%

3 STARS

10%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Gene Wolfe

Author · 71 books

Gene Wolfe was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He was noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith, to which he converted after marrying a Catholic. He was a prolific short story writer and a novelist, and has won many awards in the field. The Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award is given by SFWA for ‘lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.’ Wolfe joins the Grand Master ranks alongside such legends as Connie Willis, Michael Moorcock, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Silverberg, Ursula K. Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Joe Haldeman. The award will be presented at the 48th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend in San Jose, CA, May 16-19, 2013. While attending Texas A&M University Wolfe published his first speculative fiction in The Commentator, a student literary journal. Wolfe dropped out during his junior year, and was drafted to fight in the Korean War. After returning to the United States he earned a degree from the University of Houston and became an industrial engineer. He edited the journal Plant Engineering for many years before retiring to write full-time, but his most famous professional engineering achievement is a contribution to the machine used to make Pringles potato crisps. He lived in Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. A frequent Hugo nominee without a win, Wolfe has nevertheless picked up several Nebula and Locus Awards, among others, including the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2012 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. He is also a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. http://us.macmillan.com/author/genewolfe