Gene Wolfe, a towering figure in science fiction whose magnum opus The Book of the New Sun was hailed as a masterpiece by Ursula K Le Guin, has died at the age of 87.

Wolfe’s publisher Tor, when announcing the news on Monday, described him as a “beloved icon”. “He leaves behind an impressive body of work, but nonetheless, he will be dearly missed,” said the publisher, pointing to The Book of the New Sun’s ranking in third place in a Locus magazine poll of fantasy novels – behind only The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Narrated by Severian, an apprentice in a guild of torturers on a dying world called Urth – a far-future version of Earth – it runs to four volumes, and was an achievement that led the late Le Guin to call Wolfe “our Melville”. For Neil Gaiman, Wolfe was “the finest living male American writer of SF and fantasy – possibly the finest living American writer”; for Martin, he was “a magnificent writer … one of the best our genre has ever produced”, whose books “will be read as long as SF endures”.

Born in New York in 1931, Wolfe fought in the Korean war before working as an engineer. He was instrumental in developing the machine that cooks Pringles crisps, while also editing the professional journal Plant Engineering; he once said that his greatest influences were “GK Chesterton and Marks’ [Standard] Handbook for [Mechanical] Engineers”.

When he was named a grand master of science fiction and fantasy by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) in 2012, Wolfe recalled living “paycheck to paycheck” with his wife Rosemary and children, and getting three “not terribly good” stories published in a college magazine.

“Then it was time for school to start again, and Rosemary began badgering me for money for school clothes,” he said. “Another story, Car Sinister, sold, and instead of depositing the check I got the manager of the hardware store to cash it for me. I took it to Rosemary: ‘Here’s every dime I got for that story. That’s how much you have for school clothes.’ A few days passed, and I was sitting on the kitchen floor trying to mend a chair. Rosemary came up behind me and said, ‘Shouldn’t you be writing?’ That’s when I knew I was a writer.”

Wolfe published the novella The Fifth Head of Cerberus in 1972, going on to write more than 30 novels, with The Book of the New Sun published between 1980 and 1983. His most recent work, A Borrowed Man, was a slice of SF noir published in 2015. Winner of awards including the Nebula, World Fantasy and Locus, the SFWA recalled how in 1971, he was mistakenly announced by Isaac Asimov as winner of the Nebula award for his short story The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories. When it was revealed that in fact, “no award” won the category, Asimov joked that Wolfe should write a story called The Death of Doctor Island; he did – and won his first Nebula award for it, in 1974.

SF novelist Cory Doctorow said: “I met him on a few occasions and shared a meal or two and found him to be the proverbial jolly old elf, full of wit and charm and mischief, the kind of person who looked and acted exactly as you’d expect he would, based on his marvellous body of work. I’m so sad to hear that he’s gone. Although he lived a long and wonderful and varied life … and left behind a staggering and brilliant literary corpus, the world was a better place with him in it.”