I have a passing familiarity with Gene Wolfe, having read The Shadow of the Torturer many years ago. My feelings are exemplified by this review from J.G. Keely: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/96722271

That said, I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. It took me about half of the book to get into a stride but then I found almost every work did something truly interesting. I especially enjoyed “The Magical Animal”, “Leif in the Wind” and “At the Point of Capricorn”. “The Magical Animal” is a surprisingly sweet and charming contribution to Arthuriana.

I just couldn't get into this one. I read the first several chapters, and it seems like it'll be a fun adventure, but it didn't capture me like I hoped it would. I DNFed it at around 13%. Maybe I'll get back around to it sometime, and I'm sure it'll find an audience. I won't post about it or review anywhere or share that I DNFed as I don't like to share things I didn't enjoy, just stuff I can endorse.

Full disclosure: I have been a Gene Wolfe (1931 – 2019) fanboy for more than thirty years. Specifically, I think Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun, which has won numerous World Fantasy, Locus, and British Fantasy awards, as well as a Nebula, is the greatest piece of literature ever written, and I think his Book of the Long Sun, Book of the Short Sun, and Soldier series, winner of a World Fantasy Award and a Locus Award, are almost as good. Wolfe is a SFWA Science Fiction Grand Master, has won the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007, and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. That said, his latest and likely final posthumous short story collection, The Wolfe at the Door (Tor – 31 October 2023) is a bit of a mixed bag.

The Wolfe at the Door covers Wolfe’s entire career, and though it is billed as “an all new collection,” only one of the pieces, “Archangel Gabriel,” a religious poem, has not been released before. The stories range from fantasy and dark fantasy to science fiction and even a couple of very engaging detective stories, which I didn’t expect. One of Wolfe’s few acknowledged influences, Science Fiction Grand Master Jack Vance, also wrote mysteries under different pen names including as Ellery Queen. In its best stories, The Wolfe at the Door captures the genius intellect and visionary imagination of Wolfe at the height of his powers. Some of the other stories are merely interesting and some others are just puzzling. Nevertheless, all the stories contain deep personal conflicts nested in strange and vivid situations.

Perhaps my favorite story in The Wolfe at the Door is the novella “Memorare,” which I first read in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 2007 and which was nominated for the Nebula Award for best novella that year. (Nancy Kress won the award that year as she has several times.) The story follows a filmmaker, March Wildspring, and his reporter girlfriend to the atmosphere of Jupiter, where it has become fashionable for rich people to create floating memorials to themselves after they die. However, his girlfriend has brought a friend with her who is fleeing an abusive relationship. When the friend’s abusive spouse shows up, things get very tense since they must leave her alone in the ship or take her with them into a reportedly very dangerous tomb.

Other engaging science fictions stories include “The Sea of Memory,” in which travelers on a space ship find themselves dying in their pods on the way to their destination, “Leif in the Wind” in which travelers looking for life on a faraway planet become haunted by strange birds, and “Thou Spark of Blood,” in which a murder takes place on a space ship, and an ending twist turns the story on its head.

Although most of the stories are based in science fiction, some grim fantasy, which may be particularly interesting to readers of Grimdark Magazine, include “The Hour of the Sheep” in which a famous swordsman, Tiero, is finagled into a protecting a rich aristocratic woman, “Easter Sunday,” in which a reverend and an exiled aristocrat engage in a conversation about religion and politics that takes a strange twist, and “The Gunner’s Mate,” in which a woman finds herself vacationing and then wanting to stay on a remote island that may be haunted by pirates.

And as I have said above, there are some unexpected and surprisingly good mystery/detective stories in The Wolfe at the Door, including “Volksweapon,” about a murder in the woods, and “The Largest Luger,” a thoroughly engaging and detailed tale about the provenance of a rare pistol that may have been used in a murder.

On the other hand, there are some old clunkers like “The Grave Secret” that I didn’t enjoy as much. Originally published in 1951 and updated for the collection The Young Wolfe in 1992, it tells the story of a man who murders his wife. The story is a short mystery/horror tale, but instead of Wolfe’s more mature style of leaving the reader guessing, Wolfe tells the ‘secret’ in the last line of the otherwise opaque story. Another is “The On-Deck Circle,” a totally befuddling tale about boat baseball. (Yes, you read that right.) But to each their own.

What ties all these diverse stories together is the deep human conflict in all of them, even the ones with robots. Wolfe is a master at pitting characters against one another in ways that put readers on edge. And all the stories packed into this 500+ page tome do that. Wolfe is truly master storyteller, but whether these diverse and often bizarre tales satisfy the casual reader might be a question of taste. However, for Gene Wolfe completists, it is a must have.

I would not, however, recommend this collection to readers who are new to Wolfe. Do yourselves a favor and check out The Book of the New Sun (Shadow & Claw, Sword & Citadel), which has been called “a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis” by Publishers Weekly, and “one of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century” by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. For Wolfe’s best short work, I recommend the collection The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories.
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https://www.grimdarkmagazine.com/review-the-wolfe-at-the-door-by-gene-wolfe/

Meh. Not for me.

I need to stop requesting anthologies before I've actually read the author's work. I used to think it was a great way to sample writing, but now I feel like the craft required to create a really good short story hinges at least slightly on readers being familiar with the way the author writes and already invested in their work ... with only a few exceptions.

A great collection of writings by Gene Wolfe. This collection showcases Wolfe's eclectic writing ability as well as his talent for bringing words alive. What struck me about this title is how well it is constructed. The pieces are put together in such a way that they flow, weaving through his writings to bring readers a really wonderful comprehensive view of the everything together. I also enjoyed Wolfe's ability to bring stories that have so much more beneath the surface. While at first, the writings seem somewhat understated and at times even unfinished, they really stick with the reader. There is a lot more to break apart and examine even if the story was not completely engaging or even met expectations. Overall, it's a really nice collection. I have never read anything else by Wolfe, so for me this was a clean introduction with no expectations or preconceived notions. I think that this collection is a nice introduction especially for new readers of Wolfe's work.

To be honest, I am woefully behind on my classic sci-fi and hadn't heard of Gene Wolfe before--just the marketing email proclaiming him "one of the most important sci-fi and fantasy writers of our time." When I started reading the collection, I wasn't very impressed. He writes with an understated and unfinished quality that, especially in short story format, can feel rather underwhelming. What was interesting, was that I kept finding that even when I hadn't particularly enjoyed the story... I didn't think it was a bad story. There was always something that I kept turning over in my mind in fascination.

In doing research on why he's regarded as "one of the most important," I found a Wired article that described a first experience reading Wolfe as "I think this Wolfe guy is a so-so writer, but he's an amazing creator of worlds." And I think that was the aspect that really shined in this collection. Each time I reached a new story, I found myself anticipating the ways in which the world was going to start out relatively normal and become something new and exciting (or terrifying). All of them were completely satisfying world building, despite the word constraints of short stories.

As to the editing and ordering, I really enjoyed the structure of the stories. Reading it cover to cover, the stories flowed well and built on themes in ways that helped build my understanding of Wolfe and his work. It was very well done. And in terms of favorites, I am lingering on the stories: "Bea and Her Bird Brother," "The Old Woman in the Young Woman," "Volksweapon," "Thou Spark of Blood," "Frostfree," and "The Magic Animal." The Final section (Through the Mists and Out into the Void" was, in my opinion, the strongest and most interesting stories.

I don't even know how to begin to review the experience I had reading this collection, except to say that I had a GREAT time!! Gene Wolfe has been on my radar, but I hadn't yet picked up any of the novels he's famous for. I definitely will now! This collection was a JOURNEY, so varied in almost every way, except that each piece had this particular sparkle of style that tied them all together.

My favorite stories ranged from mystery/thriller/drama in space mausoleums to time-bending Arthuriana to a sorrowful Lucifer on Easter Sunday, by way of baseball played with speedboats and a matchmaking smart fridge from the future. Every single story feels impossible to describe, and yet each one is compelling, surprising, and a little mischievous. Wolfe combines the "highbrow" and the "lowbrow" (for what those terms are worth) in ways that create a fun, often funny tension, like eating caviar with pop rocks mixed in. I hope this is typical of his style, because I will definitely be bumping him up in my TBR priority list.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Tor Publishing Group for an advance copy of this collection of works by one of the most skilled craftsmen in genre history, whose writing skills ran from poetry, to prose to essays and reviews all with a style and even grace that were unique to Gene Wolfe.

If I remember correctly, and right away I sound like a narrator in a Gene Wolfe story, saying one thing, while the truth is far different, I first came across the writer Gene Wolfe while buying books in my library's bag sale. The sales always included Best of Science Fiction collections for the year from the Science Fiction Book Club, always without covers, but with either bright red or blue covers, I remember those, and jam packed with stories. I know Gene Wolfe and I crossed paths a lot in those collections. The first book I remember and still have next to a trade size on my shelf was The Claw of the Conciliator a story I was probably too young to understand fully, but was a fantasy book that was so different from what I knew I had to read more. Wolfe had a way with characters giving them flaws that seemed real, with thoughts about faith, and redemption and truth, even while doing very bad things, or doing bad things to make good things. Sometimes I might not understand, but I was always enthralled. The Wolfe at the Door is a collection of newer works and works never before collected, fiction, nonfiction and more, that hold up well and serve as a fine epitaph for a gifted writer.

The collection offers novellas, short works, poems, essays and biographic bits, and a few thoughts on big issues. Some of these are from this century, or have never been collected, and are probably the last works of the author, who passed away in 2019. Memorare is a novella that was up for a Nebula and is one of the best pieces in here. A story about the future, why people would want to go to space, and be remembered when they go. And also about the deathtraps these space memorials can be. The work is vintage Wolfe, a narrator with ulterior motives, speculation on faith, traps and more. Christmas Inn tells of a bed and breakfast that has seen better days, and the ghosts, four in number that change lives near the holiday, which seemed so familiar that until it started coming together I had no idea where it was going. Method Bit in B is another story that starts one way, goes another and is saved by its humor. In addition there is a section that is devoted to poetry, and some essays.

Gene Wolfe was one of the giants of speculative fiction, writing fantasy that is considered some of the genre's best, and short stories that makes one not only think, but mull over what this could be, and how would one try to deal with it. The stories in some sections might seem dated, some are from the early seventies, some poems I believe from before that. However there is a care to them, a feeling that the stories were given a chance a breathe and live a little before being thrown out into the world. Wolfe had a real job that gave him time to write, and deadlines didn't mean starvation. The book is introduced by Kim Stanley Robinson, an author who is close to Wolfe in style and caring for his characters.

Recommended for fans and for people new to the works of Wolfe, this would serve as a very nice introduction. A very complete collection that has a lot going for it, and a great book to share at the holidays.