Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe

I am to write everything that takes place in this article, as concisely as I can. I will try. I must read this every morning, too. Drat and bother! The nice gentleman in black tells me I am Gene Stephens Wolfe, an “award-winning American science fiction writer and one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.” I am not at all sure to what degree this is true.

Words deceive. In my final year of study at Texas A&M University I was drafted into the Korean War. During this time reports filtered back that I had been killed in action. These reports were thrown into question however, when, three years after the event, a young man claiming to be the deceased Mr Wolfe landed up on the doorstep of his old, now abandoned, home.

Early life

When I was a child my clone and I would have to go to bed early whether we were sleepy or not. In summer the oak outside our window would spread its great umber shadow across the bedclothes, recalling to me that June evening in 1966 when I lay buried in the soil of the farmer’s yard. The nights would pass so slowly then, shivering naked beneath the moon, in constant fear of birds and small animals, willing myself to grow so that I may one day be plucked from the soil and brought into the light of the new sun.

Every Sunday my mother and I would travel in Mr Weer’s beat up old Pontiac to the local church, which was at that time located in downtown Logan, Hocking County. We’d pass by an endless series of orchards, whose fruit seemed either too pale or pungent with rottenness. I’d think then of those plump red globes, and the withered old ones, and Father Inire’s quiet laughter as he stroked my baby-fat thighs in the silence of the sacristy.

I was always a fat, shy and ugly child. My flesh-eating habits were of great concern to my mother who, fearing for my soul, put me on a strict diet of fried bread and Pringles™ that I maintain to this day. I was to break this habit only once.

'A Fragment' by <insert name here>

The reader scans quickly over this section in italics, hoping to find some jokes; he is irritated by what he finds. Finally he clicks on a page at random and reads:

...narrators, whose eidetic recollections are colored with a pavonine erudition at odds with their pseudomarturious nature, highlight to us, as a phylactery of sardonyx reveals its shifting colors under strange suns...

He clicks again. Each time he is dismayed by what he finds. He sighs. A popup suddenly appears in the top half of his window-- You Are The 1000000000th Visitor!!! Click Here To Collect Your Prize!!!11! He shoes it away; but alas! it was merely a trick to redirect him to a pornographic site of endlessly replicating windows; windows upon windows, reflecting a single augmented female in poses of voluptuous splendor. Finally he ignores it and turns back to the article he was reading.

...and so too his epopts, quick to bring up his ophicleidic qualities, autochthon of the obscure, demiurge of worlds as labyrinthine as the viscera of a docopsis ravaged by a thylacine. Others think his overuse of obscure words renders him something of an onager...

He shakes his head. He wonders if perhaps this whole site is flooded with nonsense.

V.S.W.

Following my second breakdown I returned to writing full-time. I had gained something of a reputation by now, along with a cadre of loyal fans (the dears!), though mainstream success still eluded me. It was to come at last with the publication of The Book of the Nude Son, an epic four-part fantasy set in far future age when pederasty is no longer practiced in the Catholic Church. It was both a critical and commercial success, propelling me to the forefront of literary SF. I am currently working on a new novel, The Fifth Head of Mrs Dalloway in which a mild-mannered English lady discovers she has an insatiable appetite for obese science fiction authors and their overripe fruit.

Note: Said author also has an "alter ego." His name is "Severian." He's a very nice young man who would like to have a little talk with you about such matters as "Justice" and "Order." Publically. On stage. In front of a LOT of people. . . .

The End

Terminus Est .