Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe
Wolfe during Nebula Awards weekend in Chicago, April 2005 (a 2004 "Nominee")
Born	Gene Rodman Wolfe (1931-05-07) May 7, 1931 (age 85) New York City
Occupation	Novelist, short-story writer
Nationality	American
Period	c. 1966–present
Genre	Fantasy, science fiction
Notable works	Solar Cycle

Gene Rodman Wolfe (born May 7, 1931) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith. He is a prolific short-story writer and novelist and has won many science fiction and fantasy literary awards.

Wolfe is most famous for The Book of the New Sun (four volumes, 1980–83), the first part of his Solar Cycle. In 1998, Locus magazine ranked it third-best fantasy novel before 1990 (after The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) based on a poll of subscribers that considered it and several other series as single entries.

Wolfe was born in New York City, the son of Mary Olivia (née Ayers) and Emerson Leroy Wolfe. He had polio as a small child. While attending Texas A&M University, he published his first speculative fiction in The Commentator, a student literary journal. (ISFDB catalogs two 1951 stories.) Wolfe dropped out during his junior year and subsequently 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 was a senior editor on the staff of 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 chips.

Having previously lived in Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, with his wife Rosemary, Wolfe moved to Peoria, Illinois in 2013. He underwent double bypass surgery on April 24, 2010. Wolfe also underwent cataract surgery on his right eye in early 2013. Wolfe's wife, Rosemary, died on December 14, 2013, after a series of illnesses, including Alzheimer's disease. Wolfe said, "There was a time when she did not remember my name or that we were married, but she still remembered that she loved me."