WOLFE, Gary K(ent)

(1946-)

   US academic and writer, long associated with Roosevelt University in Chicago, since 1991 as its Professor of Humanities at its School of Continuing Education. Some of his earlier essays, like "The Known and the Unknown: Structure and Image in Science Fiction" (1977), prefigured the typology of sf he presented in full in his most significant work, The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction (1979), in which sf texts and their essential icons are defined accordingto their relationship to the permeable membrane separating us from the unknown, which GKW feels all sf attempts - or pretends to attempt - to pierce. The discussion is arranged around a lucid disposition of icons - the SPACESHIP, the city, the wasteland, the ROBOT and the MONSTER - and the book has served as an admirable mapping of its thesis (CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH). In Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy: AGlossary and Guide to Scholarship (1986) GKW made a first attempt - a revised edn would be welcome - to describe the critical vocabulary used by scholars in their attempts to encompass this protean genre.

   JC

   Other works: Science Fiction Dialogues (anth 1982); David Lindsay (1982 chap.

   See also: CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DEFINITIONS OF SF; GENRE SF; PILGRIM AWARD; PLANETARY ROMANCE; SPECULATIVE FICTION.