SFWA announced on Thursday (hey, I've been busy!) that this year's recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award [1] will be the tremendously worthy Gene Wolfe.
I've groused about some Grand Masters in the past, but I have no complaints this time: Wolfe's work is smart, intricate, extensive, deeply rewarding and contains some of the best novels available in the SFF field. He already was a Grand Master, so it's good of SFWA to officially recognize that.
If you haven't read him, "The Book of the New Sun
" is the canonical place to begin, but The Fifth Head of Cerberus
is another good choice, and I personally always liked the somewhat lighter There Are Doors
.But you do need to know: Wolfe expects his readers to be smart and to attuned to small details; he doesn't make a habit of over-explaining and will only tell you some very important things once. So you need to actually read a Wolfe book, and not just skim over it, looking for the space-battle scenes.
[1] And I'm so happy that it's Wolfe that I'll forgo my usual sniping at the overgrown silly award name, which sounds like a football arena or an endowed university chair.
