An Evil Guest - by Gene Wolfe (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Lovecraft meets Blade Runner in a stand-alone supernatural horror novel. Gene Wolfe can write in whatever genre he wants--and always with superb style and profound depth. Now following his World Fantasy Award winner, Soldier of Sidon, and his stunning Pirate Freedom, Wolfe turns to the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft and the weird science tale of supernatural horror.
Set a hundred years in the future, An Evil Guest is the story of an actress who becomes the lover of both a mysterious private detective and an even more mysterious and powerful rich man, a man who has been to the human colony on an alien planet and learned strange things there. Her loyalties are divided--perhaps she loves them both. The detective helps her to release her inner beauty and become a star overnight. The rich man is the angel of a play she stars in. But something is very wrong. Money can be an evil guest, but there are other evils. As Lovecraft said, "That is not dead which can eternal lie."

Review Quotes

"[An] enticing mix of mystery, wordplay, and ethical inquiry." --The Washington Post Book World

"Succeeds by tumbling from unexpected world to unexpected world, from one grand absurdity to another, from one choreographed dance scene to the next, without ever missing a beat." --Publishers Weekly (Starred Signature Review by Caitlin R. Kiernan)

"It's a pulp thriller--and that's a compliment, because Wolfe knows from pulp thrillers . . . and because here he's creating a strange sort of genre meltdown, a twenty-first century pulp adventure thriller with SF and horror elements that nobody else could possibly have written." --Neil Gaiman

About the Author

Gene Wolfe (1931-2019) was the Nebula Award-winning author of The Book of the New Sun tetralogy in the Solar Cycle, as well as the World Fantasy Award winners The Shadow of the Torturer and Soldier of Sidon. He was also a prolific writer of distinguished short fiction, which has been collected in such award-winning volumes as Storeys from the Old Hotel and The Best of Gene Wolfe.

A recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award, and six Locus Awards, among many other honors, Wolfe was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2007, and named Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2012.