The Sorcerer's House is a 2010 epistolary fantasy novel by Gene Wolfe. It was published by Tor Books. [1]
When ex-convict Baxter Dunn squats in an abandoned house in the town of Medicine Man, he discovers numerous strange and supernatural phenomena – not least of which is that he has been retroactively declared the house's legal owner.
Publishers Weekly called House "a complex, spellbinding web", and "a book of wonders" that "speaks eloquently about the nature of responsibility and family", but faulted the "rushed, incoherent ending", and the extent to which many characters were stereotypes; [1] similarly, at io9 , Charlie Jane Anders emphasized that the novel was "really splendid", with "more than enough cleverness and fun", but described House as "pretty much lightweight fluff" when compared to other works by Wolfe, and stated that it "runs out of narrative steam towards the end", [2] while Fantasy Magazine specified that although it was an "excellent novel" which was "quite absorbing", it was also "by Wolfe's standards, fairly simple", and "not great Wolfe, but good Wolfe". [3]
Pop Matters commended Wolfe for the novel's accessibility and readability, deeming it an excellent introduction to Wolfe's writing, and noted that since House is set in the present day, no lexicon is required (unlike with many of Wolfe's other novels). [4] Locus 's Paul Witcover, however, concluded that House would be a disappointment even for Wolfe aficionados, as it has "all of Wolfe's [stylistic] tics (...) on full display", and that despite having a "tangled and complicated" plot with "cunning complexity and (an) intricately woven web of circumstance and identity", the novel is "essentially sterile". [5]
Gene Rodman Wolfe 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.
Ian McDonald is a British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies.
Jonathan Strahan is an editor and publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His family moved to Perth, Western Australia in 1968, and he graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Arts in 1986.
Annalee Newitz is an American journalist, editor, and author of both fiction and nonfiction, who has written for the periodicals Popular Science and Wired. From 1999 to 2008, Newitz wrote a syndicated weekly column called Techsploitation, and from 2000 to 2004 was the culture editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. In 2004, Newitz became a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. With Charlie Jane Anders, they also co-founded Other magazine, a periodical that ran from 2002 to 2007. From 2008 to 2015, Newitz was editor-in-chief of Gawker-owned media venture io9, and subsequently its direct descendant Gizmodo, Gawker's design and technology blog. As of 2019, Newitz is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times.
David Geddes Hartwell was an American critic, publisher, and editor of thousands of science fiction and fantasy novels. He was best known for work with Signet, Pocket, and Tor Books publishers. He was also noted as an award-winning editor of anthologies. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes him as "perhaps the single most influential book editor of the past forty years in the American [science fiction] publishing world".
Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli-born writer, working across multiple genres. He has lived in the United Kingdom and South Africa for long periods of time, as well as Laos and Vanuatu. As of 2013, Tidhar has lived in London. His novel Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, beating Stephen King's 11/22/63 and George R. R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons. His novel A Man Lies Dreaming won the £5000 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, for Best British Fiction, in 2015. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2017, for Central Station.
Charlie Jane Anders is an American writer. She has written several novels as well as shorter fiction, published magazines and websites, and hosted podcasts. In 2005, she received the Lambda Literary Award for work in the transgender category, and in 2009, the Emperor Norton Award. Her 2011 novelette Six Months, Three Days won the 2012 Hugo and was a finalist for the Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. Her 2016 novel All the Birds in the Sky was listed No. 5 on Time magazine's "Top 10 Novels" of 2016, won the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2017 Crawford Award, and the 2017 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel; it was also a finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
"Good Night, Moon" is a science fiction short story by Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker. It was first published in the online magazine Tor.com October 13, 2010.
Adam Nevill is an English writer of supernatural horror, known for his book The Ritual. Prior to becoming a full-time author, Nevill worked as an editor.
Marta Acosta is an American author of young adult, urban fantasy, and chick-lit fiction, known for her Casa Dracula series and for her 2013 book The She-Hulk Diaries. Acosta has also written under the pen name of Grace Coopersmith for her 2010 book Nancy's Theory of Style, which is based on a supporting character from her Casa Dracula series.
The Land Across is a fantasy novel by Gene Wolfe published in 2013 by Tor Books.
All the Birds in the Sky is a 2016 science fantasy novel by American writer and editor Charlie Jane Anders. It is her debut speculative fiction novel and was first published in January 2016 in the United States by Tor Books. The book is about a witch and a techno-geek, their troubled relationship, and their attempts to save the world from disaster. The publisher described the work as "blending literary fantasy and science fiction".
"Seasons of Glass and Iron" is a 2016 fantasy story by Canadian writer Amal El-Mohtar. It was first published in the anthology The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales.
Fonda Lee is a Canadian-American author of speculative fiction. She is best known for writing The Green Bone Saga, the first of which, Jade City, won the 2018 World Fantasy Award and was named one of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time by Time magazine. The Green Bone Saga was also included on NPR's list, "50 Favorite Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the Past Decade".
The Litany of Earth is a 2014 fantasy/horror fiction novella by Ruthanna Emrys that is the beginning of The Innsmouth Legacy series by Emrys. The novella revisits the H. P. Lovecraft story "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and was first published on Tor.com.
Osama is a 2011 alternate history metafictional novel by Lavie Tidhar. It was first published by PS Publishing.
Tamsyn Muir is a New Zealand fantasy, science fiction, and horror author. Muir won the 2020 Locus Award for her first novel, Gideon the Ninth, and has been nominated for several other awards as well.
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is a 2015 LGBT science fantasy novella, the debut novella by Kai Ashante Wilson. It is set in the same fictional universe as his later novella A Taste of Honey, as well as several of his short stories. It won the 2016 Crawford Award.
An Informal History of the Hugos is a 2018 reference work on science fiction and fantasy written by Jo Walton. In it, she asks if the nominees for the Hugo Award for Best Novel were indeed the best five books of the year, using as reference shortlists from other awards in the genre. After looking at the first 48 years of the award and presenting essays on select nominees, Walton concludes that the Hugo has a 69% success rate. The book was well-received and was itself nominated for a Hugo Award in 2019.
Victories Greater Than Death is a 2021 young adult science fiction novel, the first installment in the Unstoppable trilogy by Charlie Jane Anders. The novel focuses on Tina Mains, a teenage girl who is secretly a clone of an alien war hero who is called up for service in galactic war after the beacon implanted in her activates.