Did he hold a candle to Jack Vance? If so, I may have to have a look.
Gene Wolfe, Jack Vance, Harlan Ellison, Edgar Pangborn, and Alfred Bester are all considered great writers who happened to write in the SF/F field.
Wolfe and Vance are my two favorites. The one I like more is always the author of the last book of theirs I’ve read. No one writes like Jack Vance. No one writes like Gene Wolfe. Vance is much more of a stylist, at least with the actual prose. Gene Wolfe generally uses the unreliable narrator combined with mysteries and unexplained passages that the reader has to parse and then piece together as well as they can. I don’t get it all the first time. It’s harder to read Wolfe, Vance flows. Wolfe’s characters are more realistic in some ways. Wolfe was a huge fan of Vance. Vance probably didn’t know who Wolfe was.
Freegards