I came across the cover art and synopsis of Gene Wolfe’s next novel: The Land Across…

Here’s the synopsis:

A novel of the fantastic set in an imagined country in Europe

An American writer of travel guides in need of a new location chooses to travel to a small and obscure Eastern European country. The moment Grafton crosses the border he is in trouble, much more than he could have imagined. His passport is taken by guards, and then he is detained for not having it. He is released into the custody of a family, but is again detained. It becomes evident that there are supernatural agencies at work, but they are not in some ways as threatening as the brute forces of bureaucracy and corruption in that country. Is our hero in fact a spy for the CIA? Or is he an innocent citizen caught in a Kafkaesque trap?

Gene Wolfe keeps us guessing until the very end, and after.

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Hot on the heels of the news about Gene Wolfe Gene Wolfe being named the newest Damon Knight Grand Master, comes word from Tor.com that 19 of Wolfe’s out-of-print back titles are now available once more as eBooks. And they’re DRM-free!

check out the complete list of titles and descriptions below…

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From the SFWA press release…
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This past weekend, several speculative fiction luminaries gathered for An Evening in Honor of Gene Wolfe, a night to honor the man himself. I wish I could have been there, but since I couldn’t be, this video of the festivities, taken by William Shunn, will have to suffice.

It’s a fun game of Count the Authors!

[via Michael Swanwick, another Merry-go-roundabout! Read his writeup of the event here.]

When I met Allen Steele at a convention two years ago, he told me a great story about when he first met Robert A. Heinlein. At a previous convention, David G. Hartwell talked about the time Barry Malzberg responded with good humor about a less-than-flattering review Hartwell had given him. There are lots of similarly fascinating stories floating around the minds of writers, and this week we aim to set them free. We asked some of the giants of science fiction to share their stories:

Here’s what they said…

My first Worldcon was MAC—I’d never been to a con. So I packed what I’d wear for a very fancy business trip; I never entered a panel late, and because I was wearing heels, I was late to almost everything. So I saw almost no panels at all.

And the announcement was out that Robert Heinlein wanted SFWA members to really dress for the awards, I saw people in tuxes, and I knew for one event I must surely be underdressed. So I decided to go to the coffee shop and get something to eat. Marion Bradley saw me sitting by myself, took the chair next to mine, asked if I was missing the awards. We’d never met, mind. I said I hadn’t brought anything that fancy, she said she hadn’t either, so we both sat there at the counter, ordered a modest dinner, and just sat and talked for the duration of the event. I read her books. She took the trouble to say hello to a new writer, and we ended up talking about life, the universe, and everything and having a great time. Of course I found out later that my business dress would have been overkill—but I wouldn’t trade the awards dinner for the sandwich at the counter if you’d offered me the fanciest gown at the event.

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This is why I love the Internets…

Here’s a video interview with Gene Wolfe recorded at Balticon 40 in November 2006, around the time his Knight/Wizard books were out.

Filmmaker Eric Solstein has uploaded the first two parts of a larger tribute to Science Fiction’s Grand Masters presented at the 2000 SFWA Nebula banquet at the installation of Brian Aldiss. There’s wonderful footage of so many SF legends, including Jack Williamson, Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, James Gunn, William Tenn, Clifford D. Simak, Joe Haldeman, Philip Jos@eacute; Farmer, Norman Spinrad, Damon Knight (for whom the Grand Master Award is now named), Julie Schwartz, Gene Wolfe, Hal Clement, Poul Anderson, Samuel R. Delany, Barry Malzberg and Brian Aldiss.

There’s a longer follow-up video after the break…

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Recent events and discussions once again bring the topic of genre fiction’s mainstream respectability to the forefront. So we thought it’d be timely to ask this week’s panelists:

Read on to see their level-setting responses…

That’s a softball. No. Literary sf and fantasy are not respected by mainstream critics or the mainstream professoriate. Neither needs mainstream approval, which would diminish (and perhaps destroy) both. Just look at what they DO respect. Look at what poetry was as late as the early 20th Century, and what it is now.

Now and then I’m asked at cons why I don’t write fiction of the respected sort. You know, he is a professor and she is a professor and they are having adulterous affairs, and they are almost overcome with guilt and angst, and there is no God, and scientific progress doesn’t enter into it, and just about everybody in the world is upper middle class.

When that happens, I ask the questioner abut Martin du Gard. Have you read him? Have you heard of him? Invariably the answers are no and no. Then I explain that Martin du Gard won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the year H. P. Lovecraft died.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: Awesome collection of short stories from one of the best writers of our generation.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Thirty-one excellent stories from the mind of Gene Wolfe. You’ll find his classic and best regarded works here such as “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” and “The Island of Dr. Death”. But you’ll also find some lesser known but still outstanding works like “The Hero as Werewolf” and “The Marvelous Brass Chess Playing Automaton”.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: From very short works to novella-length efforts, the varied styles are fun to read. Excellent way to get into Gene Wolfe if you are daunted by the size of his novels.

CONS: None.

BOTTOM LINE: Every sci-fi fan needs to have this book in their collection; loaning this book out to non-genre readers will leave them begging for more.

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