In this companion guide, Michael Andre-Driussi illuminates Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun and Book of the Short Sun science fiction series through dictionary-style entries on the characters, gods, locations, themes, and timelines of the novels. Gate of Horn, Book of Silk, is organized in two parts, with the first half covering the Long Sun series (Nightside the Long Sun, Lake of the Long Sun, Calde of the Long Sun, and Exodus from the Long Sun) and the second half covering the Short Sun series (On Blue's Waters, In Green's Jungles, and Return to the Whorl). "Languages of the Whorl," a section between the two parts, covers all the dialect, slang, and foreign terms used in the books--thieves' cant, flier language, Tick's talk, and more. Ten maps and diagrams are included. This is Michael Andre-Driussi's third guidebook to the rich tapestries of Gene Wolfe's worlds. As fans of of Lexicon Urthus and The Wizard Knight Companion have noted, that each book is both a convenient tool for a question while re-reading the novels but also an enjoyable read in its own right, from A to Z.

A guide to Gene Wolfe's series The Book of the New Sun, and the sequel The Urth of the New Sun, as well as four shorter "New Sun" works. Designed for use by first-time readers as well as those returning to the text.

THE WIZARD KNIGHT COMPANION is a brief alphabetical dictionary for Gene Wolfe's two-volume THE WIZARD KNIGHT series. Its entries identify the characters in the novel, dive into the mysteries in the text, and explore the Norse, Celtic, and Arthurian sources for names and words in the novels. It includes a map of the region, a cosmology, and a synopsis of the narrative. Nominated for a World Fantasy Award, THE WIZARD KNIGHT has received high accolades from critics and fans. Many reviews highlight its rich use of European mythology; many also comment on its puzzles and mysteries. In a starred review, Booklist calls the series "a complex, even convoluted tale, with so many characters and subplots that a proper summary would far exceed the limits of a Booklist review. . . . There is hardly a piece of northern European heroic literature from which Wolfe doesn't borrow with his usual scholarly flair and in his exquisitely turned prose. . . . Arising from the same sources as Lord of the Rings, THE WIZARD KNIGHT is one of the few fantasies that can justly be compared with it." Kirkus Reviews mentions that "Wolfe likes to spin spiderwebs of plot and counterplot inside his impressively constructed universe." In The Washington Post, Bill Sheehan calls THE WIZARD "a satisfying, wide-ranging novel that contains enough marvels and mysteries (not all of which are resolved or explained) to populate an entire series." Marvels and mysteries, subplots and spiderwebs? If you love THE WIZARD KNIGHT and wish to enjoy it even more, THE WIZARD KNIGHT COMPANION is your perfect guidebook.

This anthology marks the 29th edition of the award-winning annual compilationof the year's best science fiction stories.

Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda has been hailed as "the best-read person in America" (The Paris Review) and "the best book critic in America" (The New York Observer). His latest volume collects fifty of his witty and wide-ranging reflections on a life in literature. Reaching from the classics to the post-moderns, his allusions dance from Samuel Johnson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and M. F. K. Fisher to Marilynne Robinson, Hunter S. Thompson, and David Foster Wallace. Dirda's topics are equally diverse: literary pets, the lost art of cursive writing, book inscriptions, the pleasures of science fiction conventions, author photographs, novelists in old age, Oberlin College, a year in Marseille, writer's block, and much more. As admirers of his earlier books will expect, there are annotated lists galore—of perfect book titles, great adventure novels, favorite words, books about books, and beloved children's classics, as well as a revealing peek at the titles Michael keeps on his own nightstand.Funny and erudite, Browsings is a celebration of the reading life, a fan's notes, and the perfect gift for any booklover.

At last, _Up Through an Empty House of Stars_ brings together the best of the never before collected SF reviews and articles that helped build David Langford's towering reputation since 1980. Complementing the review columns collected in _The Complete Critical Assembly_ and the knockabout essays and squibs in _The Silence of the Langford_, this volume's 100 glittering selections mix serious critical insight with the inimitable Langford wit. In 2002 David Langford won his sixteenth Hugo award as Best Fan Writer, for critical and humorous commentary on SF. In the same year his occasionally scandalous SF newsletter _Ansible_ won its fifth Hugo. Langford also received the 2001 Hugo for best short story, and the 2002 Skylark Award. Here he shines a unique light on classics like Ernest Bramah, G.K. Chesterton, Robert Heinlein and Jack Vance, and analyses major SF -- and major clunkers, and minor eccentrics -- of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, continuing to the latest by such current stars as Gene Wolfe and China Mi, ville. Plus witty asides on crime fiction and its SF links, gleeful examination of writing so bad it's almost good, and (even at his most serious) turns of phrase to make you laugh aloud

A chapter guide to Gene Wolfe's early novels Operation ARES (1970), The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972), Peace (1975), and The Devil in a Forest (1976).

An extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, in the time of a dying sun, when our present culture is no longer even a memory. Severian, a torturer's apprentice, is exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his prisoners. Ordered to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est, Severian must make his way across the perilous, ruined landscape of this far-future Urth. But is his finding of the mystical gem, the Claw of the Conciliator, merely an accident, or does Fate have a grander plans for Severian the torturer . . . ? This edition contains the first two volumes of this four volume novel, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator.

A dictionary-style guide to the science fiction worlds of Jack Vance. A souvenir of the worlds you have visited in the past! A planning guide for your next excursion off world! A handy survival manual for unexpected occasions! A reference work on the science fiction of award-winning Grand Master Jack Vance! A handbook!

Gene Wolfe's In Green's Jungles is the second volume, after On Blue's Waters, of his ambitious SF trilogy, The Book of the Short Sun. It is again narrated by Horn, who has embarked on a quest from his home on the planet Blue in search of the heroic leader Patera Silk. Now Horn's identity has become ambiguous, a complex question embedded in the story, whose telling is itself complex, shifting from place to place, present to past. Horn recalls visiting the Whorl, the enormous spacecraft in orbit that brought the settlers from Urth, and going thence to the planet Green, home of the blood-drinking alien inhumi. There, he led a band of mercenary soldiers, answered to the name of Rajan, and later became the ruler of a city state. He has also encountered the mysterious aliens, the Neighbors, who once inhabited both Blue and Green. He remembers a visit to Nessus, on Urth. At some point, he died. His personality now seemingly inhabits a different body, so that even his sons do not recognize him. And people mistake him for Silk, to whom he now bears a remarkable resemblance. In Green's Jungles is Wolfe's major new fiction, The Book of the Short Sun, building toward a strange and seductive climax. "Wolfe's narrative glows, rich and seductive as ever."--Kirkus Reviews At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.