The Fifth Head of Cerberus The Fifth Head of Cerberus The Fifth Head of Cerberus is the title of both a novella and a single-volume collection of three novellas, written by American science fiction and fantasy author Gene Wolfe, both published in 1972. The novella was included in the anthology "Nebula Award Stories Eight". The title of this collection of novellas is a play on words which refers to Cerberus a three-headed dog from Greek mythology which guarded the gate to the Greek underworld, Hades. In the first novella the protagonist explains that Cerberus represents his own family, its three heads being his father, aunt
The Gates of Thorbardin are of a different race than I am, very much to life to make them as much as possible three-dimensional people and show them as being the best of what they are, and not necessarily the best of what they would be if they were human." Parkinson says that the book is essentially "the story of Chane, a Thorbardin dwarf, and his quest to find the Helm of Grallen and to seal the secret entrance of Thorbardin against incursion by magic". The major plotline of The Gates of Thorbardin is that there once existed a hidden entrance to the Dwarven