A Conversation with Gene Wolfe | 1/4

Larry McCaffery meets with Gene Wolfe at his home in Barrington, Illinois in June of 1985. For the first eleven minutes the discussion ranges around the film version of Dune, David Lynch and fantasy cinema then moves towards Wolfe’s fiction. After the 11 minute mark, the interview moves indoors and Wolfe begins by discussing his theory that science fiction has always been around and will always be around and that it is realistic fiction that is the fad that will fade away. Wolfe notes the fantastical in works such as Homer, Shakespeare and the Greek myths. Wolf explains how he came to be a science fiction writer, starting with reading Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in the comic pages and how he came across the Pocket Book of Science Fiction. Wolfe discusses, his childhood, parents, health issues he had as a kid and the books he read as a child before discussing his time in the Korean War and the influence it had on his fiction.