s the dust jacket of this collection informs us, this book is meant to tide avid Wolfe fans over during the wait between the two parts of his ongoing duology, The Knight and The Wizard. It serves this function well, and in fact would be a standout volume no matter when it appeared. Out of nearly two dozen stories, here are some highlights:
Legends and fables are the form of certain tales here, such as "The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun" (a child is soothed by some myths that prove to have eerie relevance to her) "The Legend of Xi Cygnus" (a giant is beset by the dwarves he rules) and "How the Bishop Sailed to Inniskeen" (a visitor to Ireland hears about an odd island). Finally, what could be a lost fragment of the Arabian Nights concerning ghouls and their victims surfaces in "A Traveler in Desert Lands."
Spectral murder and mayhem arrive in contemporary settings as supernatural forces erupt. In "The Tree Is My Hat," a sickly social worker in the South Seas befriends an uncanny native who turns out to have dangerous connections to a local deity. "The Friendship Light" chronicles the way a vengeful man dismantles the selfish life of his brother-in-law, who has betrayed the first man's sister. Can a simple candy wrapper reveal new dimensions of time and space? Absolutely, in "The Wrapper." And a gift of possessed canes ruins a man's life in "The Walking Sticks."
Despite Wolfe's assertion that all of these stories are fantasy or horror, several play with the tropes of science fiction. In "Copperhead," the president of the United States faces danger from the gift found in a crashed UFO. A time traveler employs a captured maiden in Arthurian times to lure his victims in "Under Hill," while another chrononaut voyages with the Argonauts in "The Lost Pilgrim." A kind of extrahuman "fisher of men" is depicted in "The Monday Man." And "The Waif" unfolds in a post-apocalyptic setting where mankind has been put down by "the flying people."
Lastly come tales so surreal that they begin to lose all attachment to the fields we know. "Slow Children at Play" features a protagonist named Gene and his odd neighbors in a desolate city. Part of The Crow franchise, "The Night Chough" tells of bloody murder and bloodier revenge. "Houston, 1943" recounts the epochal, disturbing dream journey of a young sleeper. And "Pocketsful of Diamonds" is the allied tale of one night's adventures experienced by an orphaned brother and sister.
Compact, expansive, complex
Gene Wolfe has a way in his meticulous prose of blurring all the borders between reality and fantasy, between waking and sleeping, between sanity and madness, all the while conjuring up vivid scenes and sensations that are almost palpable. His skills are such that, while the reader feels his feet to be planted in solid reality, his body meanwhile has been stretched a million miles long, putting his head in the twilight zone. For instance, the grim orphanage in "Pocketsful of Diamonds" possesses the concrete weight of a Dickens novel, which contrasts with the Bradburyian carnival that the child protagonists attend. Likewise, the harsh realities of semi-barbaric daily life in "The Waif" are intimately linked to the depiction of the flying people, who can hide under the bedcovers without making a lump. And in "The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun," the mechanics of Victorian whaling operations ground the impossible adventures of a simian sailor.
Part of Wolfe's magic lies in his first-person narratives. The bulk of these tales employ such a point of view, and Wolfe uses the immediacy of this voice to beguile us into his scenarios. Because almost all the narrators are average folks, confused and apprehensive, their stories flick back and forth across events in intriguing ways that demand close attention on the part of the reader. But such narrative sleights-of-hand are like a magician's distracting patter, adding immeasurably to the awe produced by the eventual trick.
Wolfe conjures up comparisons to a number of fine writers, other than the aforementioned Bradbury. Manly Wade Wellman comes to mind, as do T.E.D. Klein, Robert Aickman, George MacDonald, R.A. Lafferty, Russell Kirk and M.R. James. But perhaps the writer with the most affinity to Wolfe is Avram Davidson. Although Wolfe's simple yet deep sentences are the antithesis of Davidson's sometimes tortured prose, both men share levels of erudition in the more arcane histories of this world, and a desire to tell their tales slantwise.
It's interesting to see certain of Wolfe's perennial themes crop up in these stories. The simultaneous innocence and corruption of children; the fey allure of aliens; Christian ideals of sacrifice; the way that humans of past historical eras thought differently from us. As intended, these stories do form an ideal bridge between Wolfe's novels, while delivering plenty of entertainment, mystification and food for thought in their own right.
