Gene Wolfe - When's the Next Book Due?

P Nielsen Hayden · 05 Feb 1994, 13:33 · from sf-lovers.1994.mbox

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From: pnh at panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe - When's the Next Book Due?
Date: 5 Feb 94 13:33:04 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v19-116-4 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V19 #116
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-19a

marco at email.ncsc.navy.mil writes:
> Does anyone out there know when the next installment in Gene Wolfe's
> _Book of the Long Sun_, entitled _Calde' of the Long Sun_, will be
> published?

This fall; it's been delivered, and he's working on the fourth, EXODUS FROM
THE LONG SUN.

> I have noticed that few bookstores keep [Wolfe's] titles in stock.  Why
> is this so?

Well, it isn't so, although it may be in the particular bookstores you've
been looking at.  Quite the contrary, very few SF authors have as much of
their backlist in print as Gene Wolfe.  (And more backlist coming: this
spring, we bring THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS back in the Orb line, and we
just bought the rights to DEVIL IN A FOREST and PEACE.)

The belief that Gene Wolfe doesn't sell qualifies, I suspect, as one of the
great urban legends of modern SF.  I can't speak for the British market
(another poster, pat at cooky.demon.co.uk, claims that "IMHO he is not widely
stocked because he doesn't sell well", but I note that British publishers
keep bringing Wolfe's work out) but, in the US, Gene Wolfe could serve as
the illustration next to the dictionary entry for "successful midlist
author."

I suppose that as a publisher I should keep quiet about this - why give
Ellen Key Harris ideas?  :) but, I can't stand to see Gene misrepresented
like this.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden
senior editor
Tor Books

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