Wolfe Wins World Fantasy Award

I've been mostly lurking here for ages, impressed by the level of erudition and analysis - I'm not a particularly analytical reader at the best of times, and I sometimes wonder whether I'm the sort of person who should be reading Wolfe in the first place. Most of the discussion has been centered on the novels though, and I tend to read his short stories more. Is there any archive of discussion on his shorter works - or do people mind if I just ask "what the hell was that all about" about a particular story? Steve

Gene Wolfe has won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel of 2006 for Soldier of Sidon. The presentation of the award came at the World Fantasy Convention awards banquet today in Sarasota Springs, NY. I find it gratifying that the fantasy community has recognized the importance of this work and, indeed, of Gene's contributions as a whole. If you have put off reading the Soldier books, get to them. The unfolding story of Latro offers insight into how we deal with loss, and the nature of personal identity. In accepting the award, Gene noted that his decision to write the novel was due, in part, to the requests of many readers that he continue the story of Latro. He also hinted that he may heed calls he has received already to continue the story even further.

A big congratulations to Gene. If I reason correctly, this is the most illustrious award he's received for an individual work (in other words: discounting the "Lifetime Achievement" award he received from the same panel a few years back). The Latro books are shaping up to be every bit as significant an aspect of his legacy as the trinity of Sun books. By the way, this is my first contribution to the mailing list. I've been slowly working my way through the archives, reveling in the knowledge that there is a forum on the internet for Wolfe fans to interact. I'm also eagerly awaiting the spike in discussion that will inevitably follow Pirate Freedom's publication next week. Mark Mullis markmullis at gmail.com

He won the same award in 1981 for Shadow of the Torturer. James

If you search the archive on urth.net, you'll find that there have been quite a few discussions of individual stories, most started by someone asking "What the hell was that all about?" I'd recommend looking there first, but obviously feel free to put in your own thoughts. It might also be worth checking the WolfeWiki at http://www.holkar.net/pmwiki/ -Matt

If you search the archive on urth.net, you'll find that there have been

The WolfeWiki is a damn ambitious project, but has a terribly long way to go before it's anything of an authoritative resource; even the pages for most of the major works are incomplete. Of course, the vague authority of a wiki will inevitably be strained further still by attempting to document something as elusive as the works of GW. Do you, or does anyone else here, know who's running it, exactly? mark mullis markmullis at gmail.com

I'm hosting and administering it, but most of the contribution so far has been by Dan'l, Matt and Stone Ox (all of this list). It certainly is very incomplete -- the bibliography, external links etc have come along pretty well, but the only works treated in any great analytical detail so far are Peace and the IoDDaOSaOS collection. But I think that what we have there for those is terrifically interesting, and provides a good model for the rest that will follow. If anyone would like to come along and contribute capsule summaries of the missing works, you'd be very welcome on the wiki! best, Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki http://www.holkar.net/pmwiki/

Welcome, Steve. Ask away. I've had more than one of Wolfe's short stories go from "What was that?" to "Wow, what a great story!" thanks to insight of people on the list. No promises, of course, but people here are generally happy to respond to a "What's going on at the end of this story?" Rostrum