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The Dead Man and Other Horror Stories
Although best known for his world-building
Book of the New Sun
science-fantasy saga, Gene Wolfe wrote brilliant fiction that resisted encapsulation within rigid genre categories. This volume collects twenty-eight tales spanning nearly a half century—six of them never before collected—and gathered from venues as varied as men’s magazines, periodicals devoted to short works of fantasy and science fiction, and tribute anthologies to the works of authors as wildly opposed in their literary visions as Dante and H. P. Lovecraft. Although selected for their overtones of “horror,” they frequently defy the conventions that contemporary category label conjures.
Take “Talk of Mandrakes,” a tale of malignant exo-biology spun from an ancient occult legend steeped in sex magic. Or “The Other Dead Man,” a story set aboard an interstellar spacecraft that would distinguish any anthology of zombie fiction it appeared in. “Innocent” is cast in the form of a dramatic monologue whose creepy first-person narrator details increasingly aberrant behavior that defies the formal psychological diagnosis it cries out for. And “In the House of Gingerbread” recasts a classic children’s fairy tale as a dark noir whodunit.
To be sure, Wolfe willingly embraced horror’s classic tropes, but he reworked them into remarkably original signatures through his personal creative There is much lycanthropy, but nary a hairy transformation in his futuristic “The Hero as Werwolf.” “The Vampire Kiss” reinterprets its titular monster as a scourge of the poor in Dickensian London. And in “Why I Was Hanged,” the disadvantages of accepting advice from the ghosts of the living are made abundantly manifest.
Their macabre inflections notwithstanding Wolfe’s horror stories abound with affecting character studies that cleave the distance between the horrible and the the changeling child adapting to an unfamiliar life as a mortal in “Queen of the Night”; the investigator in “The Detective of Dreams” dedicated by occupation to freeing his clients from their nightmares; the woman in “Uncaged,” whose feral persona may be an expression of her true self. Wolfe’s tales of horror, like all of his fiction, are stories in which readers—however uneasily—recognize, and relate to, much of themselves.
Take “Talk of Mandrakes,” a tale of malignant exo-biology spun from an ancient occult legend steeped in sex magic. Or “The Other Dead Man,” a story set aboard an interstellar spacecraft that would distinguish any anthology of zombie fiction it appeared in. “Innocent” is cast in the form of a dramatic monologue whose creepy first-person narrator details increasingly aberrant behavior that defies the formal psychological diagnosis it cries out for. And “In the House of Gingerbread” recasts a classic children’s fairy tale as a dark noir whodunit.
To be sure, Wolfe willingly embraced horror’s classic tropes, but he reworked them into remarkably original signatures through his personal creative There is much lycanthropy, but nary a hairy transformation in his futuristic “The Hero as Werwolf.” “The Vampire Kiss” reinterprets its titular monster as a scourge of the poor in Dickensian London. And in “Why I Was Hanged,” the disadvantages of accepting advice from the ghosts of the living are made abundantly manifest.
Their macabre inflections notwithstanding Wolfe’s horror stories abound with affecting character studies that cleave the distance between the horrible and the the changeling child adapting to an unfamiliar life as a mortal in “Queen of the Night”; the investigator in “The Detective of Dreams” dedicated by occupation to freeing his clients from their nightmares; the woman in “Uncaged,” whose feral persona may be an expression of her true self. Wolfe’s tales of horror, like all of his fiction, are stories in which readers—however uneasily—recognize, and relate to, much of themselves.
435 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 26, 2023
31 people are currently reading
168 people want to read
About the author
Gene Wolfe
506 books3,570 followersGene 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, to which he converted after marrying a Catholic. He was a prolific short story writer and a novelist, and has won many awards in the field.
The Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award is given by SFWA for ‘lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.’ Wolfe joins the Grand Master ranks alongside such legends as Connie Willis, Michael Moorcock, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Silverberg, Ursula K. Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Joe Haldeman. The award will be presented at the 48th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend in San Jose, CA, May 16-19, 2013.
While attending Texas A&M University Wolfe published his first speculative fiction in The Commentator, a student literary journal. Wolfe dropped out during his junior year, and was drafted to fight in the Korean War. After returning to the United States he earned a degree from the University of Houston and became an industrial engineer. He edited the journal Plant Engineering for many years before retiring to write full-time, but his most famous professional engineering achievement is a contribution to the machine used to make Pringles potato crisps. He lived in Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
A frequent Hugo nominee without a win, Wolfe has nevertheless picked up several Nebula and Locus Awards, among others, including the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2012 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. He is also a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/genewolfe
The Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award is given by SFWA for ‘lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.’ Wolfe joins the Grand Master ranks alongside such legends as Connie Willis, Michael Moorcock, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Silverberg, Ursula K. Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Joe Haldeman. The award will be presented at the 48th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend in San Jose, CA, May 16-19, 2013.
While attending Texas A&M University Wolfe published his first speculative fiction in The Commentator, a student literary journal. Wolfe dropped out during his junior year, and was drafted to fight in the Korean War. After returning to the United States he earned a degree from the University of Houston and became an industrial engineer. He edited the journal Plant Engineering for many years before retiring to write full-time, but his most famous professional engineering achievement is a contribution to the machine used to make Pringles potato crisps. He lived in Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
A frequent Hugo nominee without a win, Wolfe has nevertheless picked up several Nebula and Locus Awards, among others, including the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2012 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. He is also a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/genewolfe
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
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May 27, 2023I absolutely hate how much Subterranean Press charges for these limited releases and that you pretty much have to pre-order to get them, but where the else am I going to get Gene Wolfe's story about "a tale of malignant exo-biology spun from an ancient occult legend steeped in sex magic?"
November 9, 2023
A great collection of stories, old and new from Wolfe-- including The Dead Man, his first ever published story (a solid debut, to be sure).
Though Wolfe is no stranger to fitting horrific elements into his work, he isn't known for his forays into horror, or at the very least, his more outright/strictly horror stories. So, when Subterranean Press announced this collection, I had to jump on it.
Though Wolfe is no stranger to fitting horrific elements into his work, he isn't known for his forays into horror, or at the very least, his more outright/strictly horror stories. So, when Subterranean Press announced this collection, I had to jump on it.
June 28, 2023
I really enjoyed this book of short horror stories! It had stories with various themes making it a great book for horror lovers. My top three favorite stories were 'The Other Dead Man', 'The Haunted Boardinghouse', and ' Why I Was Hanged'. I would reccomend this book to anyone who enjoys the horror genre.
10/10 Highly recommend
Follow the publisher @subpress on Twitter.
Special Thank You to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for allowing to read a copy of this book before publication.
10/10 Highly recommend
Follow the publisher @subpress on Twitter.
Special Thank You to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for allowing to read a copy of this book before publication.
Read
December 7, 2023managed to luck out to an insane degree and pick up copy number 933 of this 1000-edition printing! a really interesting binding that i was psyched to get my hands on.
sometimes in a horror movie there is a scene where a person just has an uneasy feeling and then later in retrospect they review that moment either through a camera or a photograph and realize that they were within a hands-breadth of some horrific monster creating a completely disturbing perverse feeling of horrific realization.
Wolfe writes fiction that feels like that. even when the ultimate result is a happy one, you don't realize the true themes of the story til a re-read and you have to go "oh shit i was right next to it the whole time!"
the only other analogy i'll make for feelings that he is able to invoke is the scene in The Thing when the team of scientists travel to the ice shelf where the alien first landed and after doing some quick analysis one of them reveals that the landing site is something like 100,000 years old. the ability to create scale and use that scale for apotheotic revelation makes for some fantastic moments of horror.
sometimes in a horror movie there is a scene where a person just has an uneasy feeling and then later in retrospect they review that moment either through a camera or a photograph and realize that they were within a hands-breadth of some horrific monster creating a completely disturbing perverse feeling of horrific realization.
Wolfe writes fiction that feels like that. even when the ultimate result is a happy one, you don't realize the true themes of the story til a re-read and you have to go "oh shit i was right next to it the whole time!"
the only other analogy i'll make for feelings that he is able to invoke is the scene in The Thing when the team of scientists travel to the ice shelf where the alien first landed and after doing some quick analysis one of them reveals that the landing site is something like 100,000 years old. the ability to create scale and use that scale for apotheotic revelation makes for some fantastic moments of horror.
February 17, 2024
You were never safe. An outstanding collection of unsettling tales.
2023's posthumous collection of short stories by master Gene Wolfe is a treasure trove of unease. "Horror" occupies a broad spectrum, and most people equate it with blood and guts ("body horror" is a particularly gross subgenre) or a tentacled-Lovecraftian eldritch beast that drives everyone insane. Personally, the most effective horror tales are those that make you realize, far too late, that the narrator was far more (or, in far more) of a danger than you first realized. Call it the "oh, those were HORNS" approach - it's that realization that the story is tilting just a couple of degree off-center and by the time you finish, you're either blissfully ignorant and go on your way, or find yourself realizing just how far from safe and shallow waters you've gone.
Whether it's a boy raised by ghouls ("Queen of the Night"), a modern retelling of Hansel and Gretel ("In the House of Gingerbread"), a chance encounter at a diner on the road to hell ("Bed and Breakfast"), a grotesque take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ("Monster"), or a truly unsettling prison confession ("Innocent") - these stories exist just outside your peripheral vision. They don't come at you straight on, but dance about wildly around you -- like the high or low tones of a hearing test -- you THINK you hear the tones, but maybe not? So you push the button anyway - just to be safe.
But you were never safe, and there was no tone... maybe.
2023's posthumous collection of short stories by master Gene Wolfe is a treasure trove of unease. "Horror" occupies a broad spectrum, and most people equate it with blood and guts ("body horror" is a particularly gross subgenre) or a tentacled-Lovecraftian eldritch beast that drives everyone insane. Personally, the most effective horror tales are those that make you realize, far too late, that the narrator was far more (or, in far more) of a danger than you first realized. Call it the "oh, those were HORNS" approach - it's that realization that the story is tilting just a couple of degree off-center and by the time you finish, you're either blissfully ignorant and go on your way, or find yourself realizing just how far from safe and shallow waters you've gone.
Whether it's a boy raised by ghouls ("Queen of the Night"), a modern retelling of Hansel and Gretel ("In the House of Gingerbread"), a chance encounter at a diner on the road to hell ("Bed and Breakfast"), a grotesque take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ("Monster"), or a truly unsettling prison confession ("Innocent") - these stories exist just outside your peripheral vision. They don't come at you straight on, but dance about wildly around you -- like the high or low tones of a hearing test -- you THINK you hear the tones, but maybe not? So you push the button anyway - just to be safe.
But you were never safe, and there was no tone... maybe.
August 19, 2023
Just finished Gene Wolfe's The Dead Man and Other Horror Stories. Wow. I've read several books by Gene Wolfe, but not short stories. These were great. Hard to pick a favorite, but I would say "Why I Was Hanged" was my favorite. #TheDeadManandOtherHorrorStories #NetGalley
October 9, 2025
Pretty much all of Gene Wolfe's fiction is, to a greater or lesser extent, horror, even when it looks like science fiction or fantasy. Indeed, in some of these stories, the horror is not really on the surface, or is transitory at best.
Take, for example, "The Detective of Dreams." Our unnamed hero is hired by a representative of a German state (for this takes place before the unification of the Germanies) to investigate a series of nightmares troubling a number of citizens, including a few quite prominent ones. That they are nightmares is pretty much the full extent of the horror; indeed, the solution of the mystery -- which is well telegraphed, at least to someone familiar with the source material -- is quite a good one. Not nice, but good.
On the other hand, "The Hero as Werwolf" is as horrific as you could ask: in a future where the majority of humans have taken a treatment to improve themselves in largely-unspecified ways, the survivors of those who did not, or were unable to, take the treatment have become predators on the seemingly-perfect people. One detail that sticks in the mind as particularly disturbing: after their "perfected" victims are dead, they continue to reason and talk for a time.
There are thirteen stories out of the twenty=eight in this collection that have not been reprinted in any previous Wolfe collection (except for the title story, which was in the limited and very out-of-print Young Wolfe , and was his second published story, nearly fifteen years after the first; this alone makes the book invaluable for Wolfe fans, unless and until someone publishes a uniform and chronological series of his short fiction, as has been done for authors as diverse as Philip K. Dick and Theodore Sturgeon.
We may hope. And, in the meanwhile, we may hope that someone will pick The Dead Man up for a mass-market publication; it was originally published by small-press Subterranean, and was out of print before I even heard it existed. In the meanwhile, there is -- fortunately! -- an eBook edition, available for both Nook and Kindle.
Anyway: some of the previously-uncollected stories, and especially the earlier ones (the stories are conveniently presented in chronological order of publication), are minor at best. "Lord of the Land" and "Queen of the Night" seem to me to stand out in this regard.
Others, however, such as "My Name is Nancy Wood," "Prize Crew," and "Why I Was Hanged," -- all post-2000 stories -- are quite good indeed.
If you like horror, or if you like good fiction and can at least tolerate horror, you could do much worse than to pick up this eBook.
Take, for example, "The Detective of Dreams." Our unnamed hero is hired by a representative of a German state (for this takes place before the unification of the Germanies) to investigate a series of nightmares troubling a number of citizens, including a few quite prominent ones. That they are nightmares is pretty much the full extent of the horror; indeed, the solution of the mystery -- which is well telegraphed, at least to someone familiar with the source material -- is quite a good one. Not nice, but good.
On the other hand, "The Hero as Werwolf" is as horrific as you could ask: in a future where the majority of humans have taken a treatment to improve themselves in largely-unspecified ways, the survivors of those who did not, or were unable to, take the treatment have become predators on the seemingly-perfect people. One detail that sticks in the mind as particularly disturbing: after their "perfected" victims are dead, they continue to reason and talk for a time.
There are thirteen stories out of the twenty=eight in this collection that have not been reprinted in any previous Wolfe collection (except for the title story, which was in the limited and very out-of-print Young Wolfe , and was his second published story, nearly fifteen years after the first; this alone makes the book invaluable for Wolfe fans, unless and until someone publishes a uniform and chronological series of his short fiction, as has been done for authors as diverse as Philip K. Dick and Theodore Sturgeon.
We may hope. And, in the meanwhile, we may hope that someone will pick The Dead Man up for a mass-market publication; it was originally published by small-press Subterranean, and was out of print before I even heard it existed. In the meanwhile, there is -- fortunately! -- an eBook edition, available for both Nook and Kindle.
Anyway: some of the previously-uncollected stories, and especially the earlier ones (the stories are conveniently presented in chronological order of publication), are minor at best. "Lord of the Land" and "Queen of the Night" seem to me to stand out in this regard.
Others, however, such as "My Name is Nancy Wood," "Prize Crew," and "Why I Was Hanged," -- all post-2000 stories -- are quite good indeed.
If you like horror, or if you like good fiction and can at least tolerate horror, you could do much worse than to pick up this eBook.
November 5, 2023
Wolfe's novels worsened in the later years of his career, and his short stories generally did as well. While his science fiction and fantasy stories got a bit worse, I think this collection does a good job of showing that his short horror fiction actually improved. Not all of the stories in here are from the second half of his career ("The Hero as Werwolf" is an incredible early career addition), but most of them are, and some of them are incredibly strong. The fact that "Monster" and "Innocent" were uncollected prior to the publication of this (limited run) book is a tragedy, as they're some of the smartest, most horrifying, and darkest short stories he ever wrote.
The collection isn't perfect - there are a few duds here (as there are in pretty much every short story collection), and there are some very weird omissions that mean that this collection isn't really a comprehensive retrospective of his work in the horror genre. I would have loved to see, for instance, "The Monday Man" in here, as it fits in very well with the tone and is one of my favorite short stories of his. Oh well.
It's great.
The collection isn't perfect - there are a few duds here (as there are in pretty much every short story collection), and there are some very weird omissions that mean that this collection isn't really a comprehensive retrospective of his work in the horror genre. I would have loved to see, for instance, "The Monday Man" in here, as it fits in very well with the tone and is one of my favorite short stories of his. Oh well.
It's great.
September 1, 2024
Let me get this out of the way; Gene Wolfe was a much better novelist than he was a short story writer. A lot of the stories in here contain the germs of what could have been brilliant novels, not that the stories aren't brilliant, but they left me wanting so much more. There's a variety of voices, genres, and twists used in here, so it never gets old, even if it is a slow read at times. Since this contains every horror story Wolfe wrote, there was no curating the weaker stories out. Unfortunately, Subterranean Press only releases their books in very limited editions. A used copy of this is now going for about $1450 on Amazon. I was lucky to snag it for under $120 on eBay. Thankfully, for those of you who can do screenreaders, they have put out a Kindle version.
September 4, 2024
7.5/10. Some really great gems in here - some of my favorites include Queen of the Night, Lord of the Land, In the House of Gingerbread, and Monster. Most of the others, I didn't enjoy quite so much, but obviously Gene Wolfe is one of the greats so I would recommend that everyone check out this collection regardless of my opinion.
July 4, 2023
Wolfe is the king of horror fantasy, hands down. I have been hooked since 'The Book of the New Sun', which is a must read. This collection is amazing and some really good short stories, just can't say enough, read it!
October 21, 2023
This was a great collection of stories! I had not heard many of these before, so it was a treat to dive into the masterful telling of horror and suspense.
If you love horror, you are going to want to read this book! I highly recommend!!!
If you love horror, you are going to want to read this book! I highly recommend!!!
January 25, 2024
Most of the stories have appeared in other collections, but the additions are good and the overall theme of the book works well.
March 23, 2023
Remarkably varied, deep, and subtle collection by the late master, including several stories never before collected. Some stories are genuinely haunting.
If it’s possible to quibble with the selections, it’s only because even more could have been included.
If it’s possible to quibble with the selections, it’s only because even more could have been included.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews