Gene Rodman Wolfe (May 7, 1931 – April 14, 2019) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He was noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith. He was a prolific short story writer and novelist, and won many literary awards. Wolfe has been called "the Melville of science fiction", and was honored as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Wolfe is best known for his Book of the New Sun series (four volumes, 1980–1983), the first part of his "Solar Cycle". In 1998, Locus magazine ranked it the third-best fantasy novel published before 1990 based on a poll of subscribers that considered it and several other series as single entries.
![Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Harlan Ellison, Algernon Blackwood, Tanith Lee, M. R. James, Joanna Russ, Ramsey Campbell, John Collier, Lucy Clifford, Russell Kirk, Michael Shea, Karl Edward Wagner, Robert Aickman, Charles L. Grant, Manly Wade Wellman, Robert Hichens, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Dennis Etchison, Walter De la Mare, Ivan Turguenev, Gene Wolfe, Robert W. Chambers, Oliver Onions, Nathaniel Hawthorne, David G. Hartwell, Fitz-James O'Brien, Stephen King, 시어도어 스터전, Richard Matheson, Clive Barker, Ambrose Bierce, Joyce Carol Oates, Disch, Thomas M., Edith Nesbit, Charles Dickens, Philip K. Dick, H. P. Lovecraft, William Faulkner, Shirley Jackson, Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury, Flannery O'Connor, Robert Bloch, D. H. Lawrence, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Wharton: The Dark descent (1987, T. Doherty Associates, [Distributed by St. Martin's Press])](https://lire-media.boitam.eu/images/thumbnails/covers/a2173756-c610-4344-91a8-3ec4b642b16c/4d4dcf7d250c1e83a0b6cdacd0ed3a9d.webp)