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Overview
Gene Wolfe may be the single best writer in fantasy and SF today. His quotes and reviews certainly support that contention, and so does his impressive short fiction oeuvre. Innocents Aboard gathers fantasy and horror stories from the last decade that have never before been in a Wolfe collection. Highlights from the twenty-two stories include "The Tree is my Hat," adventure and horror in the South Seas, "The Night Chough," a Long Sun story, "The Walking Sticks," a darkly humorous tale of a supernatural inheritance, and "Houston, 1943," lurid adventures in a dream that has no end. This is fantastic fiction at its best.
Synopsis
Gene Wolfe may be the single best writer in fantasy and SF today. His quotes and reviews certainly support that contention, and so does his impressive short fiction oeuvre. Innocents Aboard gathers fantasy and horror stories from the last decade that have never before been in a Wolfe collection. Highlights from the twenty-two stories include "The Tree is my Hat," adventure and horror in the South Seas, "The Night Chough," a Long Sun story, "The Walking Sticks," a darkly humorous tale of a supernatural inheritance, and "Houston, 1943," lurid adventures in a dream that has no end. This is fantastic fiction at its best.
The Washington Post - Gregory Feeley
Perhaps the book's finest story is "The Old Women Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun," one of its shortest. A compact and seemingly limpid oral tale, it manages to be several things at once, including a "Just So" story whose Best Beloved is not Kipling's daughter but the author's granddaughter. Wolfe's willingness to invite such a comparison is testimony to his enormous (notwithstanding his introduction's genial show of modesty) artistic self-confidence; the story's success shows how well it is warranted.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewInnocents Aboard is a collection of fantasy and horror stories by Gene Wolfe, described by The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as "neither the most popular nor the most influential author in the sf field, [he] is today quite possibly the most important."
Noteworthy fantasy entries include "Under Hill," an Arthurian tale with a twist about a knight on a quest to save a princess from her prison atop an impossibly smooth mountain of glass; "The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun," a fable about a seaman and a monkey who covet one another's existence; and "The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun," an endearing bedtime story written for Wolfe's granddaughter.
As strong as the fantasy stories are, however, the tales of horror steal the show. "The Tree Is My Hat" pits a sickly government employee stationed on an idyllic Pacific island against ancient supernatural forces, and "The Monday Man" chronicles the story of a policeman who tries to prevent a petty criminal from stealing neighbors' clothes hanging out to dry. When the policeman finally corners the crook in the top story of a tenement building, he realizes he is the prey.
The 22 short stories included in Innocents Aboard are fantastic fiction at its very best. Fans of Wolfe's past Hugo and Nebula Award–nominated science fiction masterworks (the Book of the New Sun saga, the Book of the Short Sun trilogy, et al.) will be absolutely blown away by these haunting and evocative tales, which are reminiscent of short fiction works by iconic storytellers such as Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. Paul Goat Allen
Booklist
Short fiction doesn't often get better than this in the English language.The stories featured are marvelously crafted, balancing formal ingenuity with keen enlightenment, homily with horror, fear with fantastic rhapsody. They are Gene Wolfe at his most captivating.
"It is easy . . . to appreciate Wolfe's versatility in choice of subjects, the depth of the knowledge he brings to bear on developing them, and the magisterial excellence of his prose. Short fiction doesn't often get better than this in the English language."-Booklist on Innocents Aboard
"Wolfe, who has been publishing excellent stories since the 1960s, is the Old Master . . . still very much in his prime. . . . The stories featured are marvelously crafted, balancing formal ingenuity with keen enlightenment, homily with horror, fear with fantastic rhapsody. They are Gene Wolfe at his most captivating and probing, entertainer and inquisitor at once."-Locus on Innocents Aboard
"Veteran Wolfe doesn't just write stories. He tells wondrously imaginative tales that weave reality with dream and fit so comfortably, or with intentional discomfort, within the psyche that they surely must have dwelt there all along with the other great fables and folk tales, lore and legends that are part of our collective cultural unconscious. The 22 short works of horror and fantasy (and "magic realism" if one disdains genre labels) collected here are further proof that Wolfe ranks with the finest writers of this or any other day. [Starred Review]-Publisher's Weekly on Innocents Aboard
Perhaps the book's finest story is "The Old Women Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun," one of its shortest. A compact and seemingly limpid oral tale, it manages to be several things at once, including a "Just So" story whose Best Beloved is not Kipling's daughter but the author's granddaughter. Wolfe's willingness to invite such a comparison is testimony to his enormous (notwithstanding his introduction's genial show of modesty) artistic self-confidence; the story's success shows how well it is warranted.
— The Washington Post
Veteran Wolfe (The Knight) doesn't just write stories. He tells wondrously imaginative tales that weave reality with dream and fit so comfortably, or with intentional discomfort, within the psyche that they surely must have dwelt there all along with the other great fables and folk tales, lore and legends that are part of our collective cultural unconscious. The 22 short works of horror and fantasy (and "magic realism" if one disdains genre labels) collected here are further proof that Wolfe ranks with the finest writers of this or any other day. Age has neither dulled nor withered the septuagenarian author: fully half these stories are from the last five years. "The Tree Is My Hat" is a haunting ghost story set on a Pacific Island replete with shark-gods and lost temples. The chilling "The Friendship Light" combines the Lovecraftian with the psychopathological. An ill child finds endless adventure and inescapable nightmare in "Houston, 1943." In "The Lost Pilgrim," a time-traveler intent on sailing with the Pilgrims finds himself on a voyage into Greek myth. Wolfe's magic is so potent that even when his highly unreliable narrators warn us we will never believe them, that they are mad or illogical, we still find it all, no matter how outlandish or surreal the premise, perfectly plausible. Wolfe is a literary treasure, as shown in these short stories as lucid as diamonds of the first water. Agent, Vaughne Lee Hansen at the Virginia Kidd Literary Agency. (July 1) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.