The Best of Gene Wolfe

Source of book: Borrowed from my brother

Books have always been a huge part of my life. My parents read stuff to us - crazy advanced stuff - from our elementary school years. As in, we ranged from ages five through nine when my mom read us David Copperfield. Then The Scarlet Letter. We had bookshelves in every room, and saved our money for more. 

All this to say that my brother and I both have extensive collections as adults, and read voraciously in our spare time. Our tastes overlap a lot, but there are some differences. While I have read some science fiction (and still do from time to time), he has been a huge fan since his teens. I have a bit of Asimov and Bradbury and a few others in my collection, but he has literally hundreds of books in that genre. His taste is (other than Clive Cussler) rather good, so if he recommends or lends me a book, I know it will be worthwhile. 

Prior to reading this book, I was not particularly familiar with Gene Wolfe. Which, I suppose, shows that my knowledge of modern SciFi is rudimentary at best. He is, it turns out, considered one of the best of all time - and indeed, one of the best modern American authors in any genre. He recently passed at the age of 87, leaving behind a large number of books. 

The Best of Gene Wolfe is a 2010 collection of short stories. I started it back in January, but finally made it through the nearly 500 pages of smallish print. It is a long book, containing 32 stories, several of which are really novellas, not short stories. In addition to the length, there is the fact that Wolfe’s writing is dense, full of allusions (some of which required research for me), and often filled with puzzles to be solved. Depending on your perspective, this is either great fun, or a bit annoying. I can’t decide myself. 

A bit about Wolfe. He was a devout Catholic, and this definitely shows in his writing. In many cases, specifics of Catholic theology and ethics are apparent, and the biblical allusions are everywhere. I wouldn’t say he is preachy, though. More that if you came to his writing without a solid foundation in the bible and in historical Catholic/Christian ethics, you might miss some important things and come away even more puzzled. 

Some of this is due to the fact that he loved to use unreliable narrators. What they say cannot always (or often) be taken for truth - or even their truth in some cases. This is both good and bad, in my view. Wolfe tells interesting stories, and the narrators are important to the effect. But sometimes, if you can’t believe anyone or anything, it is difficult to figure out the point. 

Wolfe didn’t start out as an author. He got his degree in engineering, and worked as an industrial engineer for years. His most known contribution to that field was contributing work on the design of the machine which makes Pringles potato chips. This background is evident in his writing as well, both in the places where machines are described (his accuracy and detail is admirable) and in the stories which touch on corporate bureaucracy. 

The stories themselves are “Science Fiction” in genre, but that is an oversimplification. Some even seem to me to be Magical Realism or even just regular realistic short stories. A number seem particularly concerned with post-colonialism, owing a debt to Conrad and Michener among others. There is a lot of variety, and Wolfe writes well in all of them. 

There are a few standouts that I thought I would mention. There is a trio of stories related to each other in the titles and themes (although not in the characters or even worlds those characters inhabit.) The collection kicks off with “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories,” a rather dark twist on the Walter Mitty idea. A boy survives an abusive and drug-saturated household by withdrawing into a fantasy world, which owes a lot to The Island of Doctor Moreau. Next in the “series” is “The Death of Dr. Island,” which takes a rather different look at abuse. Two young mental patients are essentially tortured by a sentient “island” in an attempt to cure a third patient. It is a rather horrifying story, honestly, but it sticks with you - which is probably the point. The third in the series, “Death of the Island Doctor,” is likewise completely different from the others. An ancient professor teaches a last class - on islands - and tries to pass on his love for them to a pair of students. The connections are loose, but definitely there. I loved a line in the third story. 

And there came a time, not in fall, but rather in that dreary tag end of summer when it is ninety degrees on the sidewalk and the stores have Halloween cards and the first subtly threatening Christmas ornaments are on display... 

Ah yes, Christmas Creep - when August heat combines with the first appearance of the Christmas Industrial Complex. 

Another notable was “The Fifth Head of Cerberus,” which is somewhere between a story and a novella in length, looks at cloning, among other issues. It shares the idea of a robot schoolmaster with a number of other stories - I think Wolfe was fascinated by the idea. This story was one of those that required a good bit of work to puzzle out and understand just what was happening. 

My brother particularly mentioned “Forlesen” as notable, and I have to agree. It contains its own version of horror - existential horror. By reducing a life as a cog in corporate meaninglessness and as a provider for a rarely-seen family, it taps into that fear that has haunted humanity ever since we evolved self awareness: that our lives might indeed just be meaningless. There is a particularly great line at the end, when the protagonist is about to experience death. He is being fitted for his coffin, in essence. 

“Now have you decided about the explainer?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Didn’t you read your orientation? Everyone’s entitled to an Explainer - in whatever form he chooses - at the end of his life. He-”

“It seems to me,” Forlesen interrupted, “that it would be more useful at the beginning.”

“---may be a novelist, aged loremaster, National Hero, warlock, or actor.”

“None of those sounds quite right for me,” Forlesen said.

“Or a theologian, philosopher, priest, or doctor.”

“I don’t think I like those either.”

“Well, that’s the end of the menu as far as I know…”

And then, there is the ending.

“I want to know if it’s meant anything,” Forelsen said. “If what I suffered - if it’s been worth it.”

“No,” the little man said. “Yes. No. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Maybe.”

Well, damn.  

On the more positive side, I should mention the very brief “Westwind.” In his comment after the story, Wolfe notes that he realized years after he wrote it that The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton was kind of like a longer version of the story. (Not exactly, but there are definite similarities.) Wolfe was a huge Chesterton fan, apparently, and considered that an influence on his writing. I agree. While Wolfe is an order of magnitude darker than Chesterton, the same use of paradox and unorthodox thinking shows through. And also, a general good-naturedness that pervades Chesterton’s works. The darkness of subject matter can’t hide that about Wolfe. 

Speaking of dark, some of the stories are really more horror than SciFi. One of those is “And When They Appear,” which combines a crumbling society with a christmas gone wrong. Or, “The Tree is my Hat,” which is a bit of a supernatural horror story. 

If I had to pick a favorite, though, it might be “Bed and Breakfast,” about an incident in such an establishment just outside the gates of Hell. I liked the ambiguity about who is human and who is demon, who is living, and who is dead, and the mystery about just who the narrator is. (Assuming you can believe anything he says.) I snickered at this line, about the demons who stay at the lodging. 

“I see.” She picked up another piece of chicken. “Nice demons.”

“Not really. But the old man tells me that they usually overpay and are, well, businesslike in their dealings. Those are the best things about evil. It generally has ready money, and doesn’t expect to be trusted.” 

So, there were definitely a lot of things I enjoyed about the stories. The writing quality is high, and the ideas often intriguing. There were a few sour notes, however. 

Probably the most annoying was that Wolfe is a bit retrograde on gender. The stories were written from 1970 to 1999 - not exactly a pre-feminist era. And yet, he indulges in lazy gender stereotypes on occasion. Perhaps worse, the stories are all very male-centric. I do not recall a single female protagonist - the women are foils for the men, rather than equal participants. I realize this is an endemic problem in SciFi, notwithstanding the accomplishments of luminaries such as Ursula Le Guin (who praised Wolfe, for what that is worth.) Still, I was surprised to see that the stories were as modern as they were - I honestly expected something more like the 1950s given the way they were written. 

My second complaint is less serious, and is a matter of taste. While I don’t mind having to pay attention while reading, some of the puzzles were a bit too involved and obtuse for me. I am thinking in particular of “Seven American Nights,” wherein a Middle Eastern man visits a post-collapse United States. The premise was great. The first few chapters (it is novella length) were fascinating and drew me in. But then, after all the setup, it fizzled out into an ending that answered nothing, and left the questions unanswered. I tried to look back and find the clues, but didn’t really figure it out. I then used the power of the internet. Fortunately, Wolfe has a huge fan base who loves to discuss the stories, and I did find a thread on this one. The best I can be sure of is that Wolfe intended that the original narrator be replaced by a machine trying to throw the person (in the framing story) off the track of what really happened. This makes sense in light of a few clues, and also in the “mistakes” the machine makes. So far, so good. But Wolfe’s fans can’t agree on when this occurred, and even less on what the “real” story actually is. The more I read the discussion, the less confident I felt about any of the theories. And, I also realized that there were even more loose ends that I hadn’t noticed. Things that were (I presume) intended to be clues, but were so unclear that there were a dozen theories about why they were there, or what they meant. My beef with all of this is that the story started out so good and compelling and then...fizzle. A puzzle that made sense only to Wolfe, and remains opaque to everyone else. 

There were a few stories like this, and, depending on how good they were to start, I either tried to figure them out or didn’t bother. 

All that said, I still found the book enjoyable, and several of the stories are ones that will stick in my head. Wolfe’s writing qualifies as literary fiction, not mere genre fiction. Whether or not you like SciFi for its own sake, these stories will appeal for their literary merit, their thoughtful exploration of universal ideas, and for their creativity.