travel and self-redemption, but as is the case with al-
most everything Wolfe writes, the treatment is
unique, the prose distinctive, and the plot intricate
and subtle.
Wolfe next wrote a fantasy duo that is simi-
larly unconventional, Soldier of the Mist(1986) and
Soldier of Arete(1989), published together as Latro
in the Mist(2003). The setting is ancient Greece.
Latro is a soldier, but in the opening volume he has
lost all of his memory earlier than the previous day.
He has a number of adventures spread across the
Mediterranean world, during which he has authen-
tic visions of gods and ghosts and proves himself to
be a genuine hero, although Wolfe rarely dwells on
the physical heroics. There Are Doors(1988) is
closer to mainstream fantasy. The protagonist en-
counters and falls in love with a goddess from an-
other reality and pursues her, having various
adventures. Castleview(1990) is a contemporary
fantasy in which the world of the fairies is some-
times accessible to humans. The strength of these
last two in particular is in the prose and the au-
thor’s gift for creating exotic images and unusual
characters. Wolfe’s most recent book-length fan-
tasy is another duo, The Knight(2004) and The
Wizard(2004), actually a single novel in two vol-
umes. A young boy wakens to find himself in the
body of a mature warrior in a fantasy world. The
dichotomy is resolved through a series of almost
lyrical encounters and adventures.
Wolfe has moved significantly away from sci-
ence fiction and toward fantasy during the past
decade in short fiction as well as novels. Innocents
Aboard(2004) brought together much of his short
fantasy, including fine tales such as “A Traveler in
Desert Lands” (1999) and “A Pocket Full of Dia-
monds” (2000), but many more excellent stories
remain uncollected. His prose is often difficult for
casual readers, although a careful reading is almost
always suitably rewarded. He is certainly one of the
most distinctive stylists working in fantasy today,
and if he is not frequently imitated it is because the
bar is set dauntingly high.
WolfenWhitley Strieber(1978)
Whitley STRIEBER’s debut horror novel relied in
part on misdirection, because the title and some of
the early events strongly suggest that the danger
comes from one or more werewolves living in a
rundown section of a major city. When two people
are viciously attacked and killed and their bodies
mutilated, a massive police investigation is
launched, but from the outset we know that this is
not going to be a smooth operation, that there are
internal conflicts and departmental rivalries and
intrigues that are going to hamper progress.
As if the situation is not bad enough, the de-
tective George Wilson is distracted by his relation-
ship with a younger woman, Becky Neff, also a
detective, who is married to another police officer
currently suspended because of a suspicion of cor-
ruption. Wilson eventually begins to believe that
there is something extraordinary going on, some-
thing less prosaic than an insane killer, and his in-
vestigation eventually leads to the revelation that
the wolfen—wolves with an intelligence equal or
superior to humans and the ability to move with
blinding speed—have secretly been living in small
colonies since prehistory, hidden from humans be-
cause of their almost supernatural abilities and their
resemblance to wolves. They seek prey among the
homeless, mentally ill, and unwary, killing and eat-
ing their victims and hiding the bodies. Since the
ones they choose are rarely missed, they avoid the
kind of attention that would have been generated
by killing others, a choice that recent events appear
to contradict. They have also moved into the cities
because, paradoxically, they are better able to sur-
vive there, where many potential victims exist,
than in the countryside, where their appearance
might otherwise put them at a disadvantage.
The tension begins to build when the detec-
tives discover the truth, because now they are the
hunted rather than the hunters. Naturally, they are
unable to convince anyone else that they are right.
The wolfen are determined to protect the secret of
their existence, but their pursuit ends with a sur-
prising twist. The movie version in 1981 was only
intermittently loyal to the original book, although
it contains several very evocative scenes that cap-
ture some of the sense of awe that Strieber meant
the reader to feel for the wolfen. Although he
would become more technically able as his career
progressed, Strieber was never able to duplicate
the impact of his first novel.388 Wolfen