Oh, Gene Wolfe has left us. If you don't know, just understand that, when you bounce from one of his stories, that's ok. I've been back and forth on whether I enjoy, as opposed to respect and admire, his stories, pretty much every single time I read or re-read them. I've bounced from pretty much every one of his longer works, sometimes more than once. So I'm not one to tell you what to read first, Neil Gaiman's reading guide is one attempt at it, though. Personally, I'd tackle Gene's short fiction first.

I've always put him into my Bob Silverberg mental folder; certainly, there's some stylistic overlap, but mostly it's because Silverberg and Wolfe were happy to project essentially human futures, but so far away from the present as to be unrecognizable in structure and form. Other than that essential humanity. Moorcock ventured in this territory, as well; they none of them reason to the same conclusions, but they all tangle with the far future, and whether we'd ever be able to communicate with those who reside there. Herbert led us all gently to this place, where god-emperors may or may not await.

Wolfe carried something that those of us who came up Catholic resonated to. Collapsed Catholic I may be, but that's not to say I don't still have those touchstones present, some shoals, some markers. Seeing someone else pass those waters, mark them, return to them, struggle and triumph and drown in them... has a weight. Meaning. Of such things are dreams aborning. I wonder what never was and might have been and the world that could be created thus look like now.