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5.0 out of 5 stars
Wolfe is Wolfe, Jun 14 2004
Everything that needs to be said about Gene Wolfe has already been said, and said often. He's the best writer we have, and his work will endure. *Innocents Aboard: new fantasy stories* is his sixth collection. I'd like to comment on two of the twenty-two stories herein. "Houston, 1943" is the oldest, from 1988; "The Lost Pilgrim" is the newest, from 2004. For me, these are the highlights of a memorable collection. I read "Houston, 1943" when it was first published in an anthology called *Tropical Chills*, then I promptly lost the paperback. In the intervening years I've never forgotten it. Rereading it last week was like reliving a particularly memorable nightmare. Roddy, a boy, wakes in the middle of a sweltering night; a voice beckons from beyond the window: "Come." Roddy, who might still be dreaming, climbs out of bed. Out on the lawn stands another boy, one he's never seen before, who tells him his name is Jim. Roddy climbs out. The boy, silent, grips him by the arm and points toward the crawlspace under the house. "His grasp was cold and damp," Wolfe writes, "as if he had been groping after something lost in water." The boy points again, this time to a tarantula on the lawn. On five legs it runs swiftly toward Roddy, and climbs his pajama bottoms to his chest. "He grasped it, felt its stiff hair and gouging nails, and knew he held a human hand." Shaking it off, Roddy returns indoors. But he finds another figure -- himself -- asleep in the bed. He decides to follow Jim out onto the dark, silent streets. "They saw a single car on Old Spanish Trail, a black de Soto that hummed past them meditating upon secrets." Such period detail strengthens the many strangenesses of the horrific, surreal night-journey that follows; one that, with its vivid evocation of childhood, seems part of an informal series of stories Wolfe has written throughout his career, including "The Island of Doctor Death and other stories," "And When They Appear," "Fifth Head of Cerberus," "The Death of Doctor Island," "The Man in the Paper Mill," and others, all of which feature a boy protagonist, and (apparently) elements of autobiography. Perhaps not by accident, these stories also happen also to be some of Wolfe's greatest. "The Lost Pilgrim" shows Wolfe at the top of his game. Though included in a collection subtitled 'new fantasy stories', it's the best sort of science fiction. A time traveler intending to land in early America arrives instead on the shore of ancient Greece. His adversary, it seems, is Chronos. The traveler is equipped with an internal diary, and an internal camera which captures images (pukz). The narrative, and accompanying pukz (implied yet not seen), are therefore his report to posterity. A boat soon arrives by sea -- not the Mayflower, as he had expected, but the Argos. He doesn't recognize Jason (Eeasawn, in the text), or Hercules (Hahraklahs), though soon joins their voyage. He is equally confused about his own mission, and himself; and the confusion grows: it seems the mind cannot hold onto memories that do not yet exist. All of which sets us up for a masterfully enigmatic and yet entirely precise narrative, a hallmark of Wolfe's style. Here, as in his Soldier novels, he presents the ancient world in a way that is surely closer to the truth of things; it's a wonderful corrective to most historical fiction or cinema. *Innocents Aboard* is worth your money.
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