Gene Wolfe - When's the Next Book Due?

Chun-Wai Chan · 05 Feb 1994, 19:02 · from sf-lovers.1994.mbox

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From: c_chan at hep.uchicago.edu (Chun-Wai Chan)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe - When's the Next Book Due?
Date: 5 Feb 94 19:02:28 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v19-116-6 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V19 #116
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-19a

pnh at panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) writes:
>marco at email.ncsc.navy.mil writes:
>> 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.)

I am very glad that "The Devil In A Forest" and "Peace" will be in print
again. I have the first in an British paper back and the latter in two old
used Berkeleys. I'd like to get Peace in one of limited edition hard
covers - I enjoyed it that much.

I saw Operation Ares in hard back at Stars Our Destination, but since even
Wolfe considered it a so-so first published novel, I wanted to try it in
paperback first. Any chances that Tor will bring it back or has it done so
already?

>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 think Wolfe is an author who sells in decent quantities, not huge, year
after year. It's true that almost all his stuff is still in print.  It's a
credit to the spec. fic. market that authors like Wolfe do sell for three
decades, a slap in the face of the NY Times Rev. Of Books highbrows who
despise all "genre" fiction as worthlessly ephemeral.  A lot of SF authors
(such as Piers Anthony) take up a lot more rack space, but they turn out a
lot more and appeal to an slightly different audience for whom SF is more
casual fun reading.

I suspect that Terry Brooks or David Eddings sell more volumes per year
than LOTR, but LOTR has been going for 5 decades now.

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