In 1993 and 1997, I had the privilege of staying with Gene and Rosemary Wolfe as their houseguest. During my second visit, Gene agreed to be interviewed. The following is a transcript of the conversation we had in the basement of his home, a red brick bungalow set, like some latterday gingerbread cottage, beneath a canopy of arching trees on a quiet suburban street in Barrington, Illinois. We sat opposite one another beneath a ceiling papered with promotional posters for a variety of science fiction and fantasy works. The air was saturated with the scent and sense of books. We took the opportunity to reflect back on Wolfe's writing to date.

PW: With a professional writing career that now spans over thirty years, what have been the high points for you as a writer? Which stories or novels do you find particularly pleasing or satisfying to you as a creative artist?

GW: That's really very difficult to say, very difficult. The obvious one, and it was a very high point, was last November 3rd [1996] when I got the Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. It's a high point, but also sort of a low point because you know they are telling you to lie down and let the dirt be shovelled into your face. I have no intention of lying down and letting the dirt be shovelled anywhere. The more people tell me to shut up, the more I talk is what it comes down to. But I'm sure that they meant well, and so that was a high point. The publication of my first book, Operation Ares, was an enormous high point, and I think that it is greatly inferior to most of my work. I try to keep it from being reprinted, actually.

PW: But it was published several years after it was written, wasn't it?

GW: Three or four years after it was written, something like that.

PW: And only two years before The Fifth Head of Cerberus. It seems to me that it looks worse in your canon because it should have been published much earlier. Your style and techniques developed very quickly between the writing of Operation Aresand The Fifth Head of Cerberusso it appeared at a time when you were writing far better fiction.