As Thomas D. Clareson said in his
Dictionary of Literary Biography essay, Severian's account is "a rich tapestry rivaling any imaginary world portrayed in contemporary science fiction"; he called the series of books "one of the high accomplishments of modern science fiction."
Critics have particularly admired the realism with which Wolfe presents his imaginary society. London Tribune contributor Martin Hillman, for example, declared that "in the evocation of the world, and the unsettling technologies, creatures, and behavioural rules within it," Wolfe's tetralogy "is streets ahead of most tales featuring sword-bearing heroes." "Wolfe is not only deft at creating a whole and strange new world," Tom Hutchinson of the London Times claimed, "he also, disturbingly, makes us understand a different way of thinking."
A Love of Books
Wolfe was born in Brooklyn, New York, and his family moved from town to town during the Great Depression: Logan, Ohio; Des Moines, Iowa; and Dallas and Houston, Texas. (His short story "Houston, 1943" is partly autobiographical.) Wolfe first fell in love with reading while at Poe School, a Houston elementary school named for writer Edgar Allan Poe. His mother read a variety of material to him, from crime novels to classics like Alice in Wonderland, and he enjoyed comics such as Famous Funnies and Captain Marvel.
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