The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories

by Gene Wolfe

A superb collection of science fiction and fantasy stories, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories is a book that transcends all genre definitions. The stories within are mined with depth charges, explosions of meaning and illumination that will keep you thinking and feeling long after you have finished reading.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction Fantasy, Collections

394 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 1980

About the author

Gene Wolfe was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He was noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith, to which he converted after marrying a Catholic. He was a prolific short story writer and a novelist, and has won many awards in the field.

The Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award is given by SFWA for ‘lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.’ Wolfe joins the Grand Master ranks alongside such legends as Connie Willis, Michael Moorcock, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Silverberg, Ursula K. Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Joe Haldeman. The award will be presented at the 48th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend in San Jose, CA, May 16-19, 2013.

While attending Texas A&M University Wolfe published his first speculative fiction in The Commentator, a student literary journal. Wolfe dropped out during his junior year, and was drafted to fight in the Korean War. After returning to the United States he earned a degree from the University of Houston and became an industrial engineer. He edited the journal Plant Engineering for many years before retiring to write full-time, but his most famous professional engineering achievement is a contribution to the machine used to make Pringles potato crisps. He lived in Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

A frequent Hugo nominee without a win, Wolfe has nevertheless picked up several Nebula and Locus Awards, among others, including the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2012 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. He is also a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/genewolfe

Reviews

[A. Dawes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read many of Wolfe's longer works. I admire his novels, but they also really grate on me. The women are all hot and desirable sex objects, which the protagonist usually has his way with, yet his other ideas are modern and interesting.

Wolfe tends to utilise unreliable narrators to great effect. He also creates a very cold atmosphere at times.

But here, at the novella/novelette length, Wolfe really won me over. The cold atmosphere works a treat, his exploration of theme is also tighter. Funnily enough his short-short works here tend to be his lesser works. So maybe Wolfe is better off in the novella format? His long works are loose and meander, his short-shorts clichéd.

I'd recommend this to readers who enjoy intelligent fiction but don't feel a great need to connect to character. Sounds odd yet I enjoyed the majority of tales - some are really fabulous.

You'll notice a penchant of Wolfe titling stories here with 'death' or 'island' or 'doctor' here - don't ask me why - went well above my head...But they are all great stories.

4 "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories" A child's love of pulp magazines helps him escape from the world's challenges. But is the boy also part of a larger dark fantasy tale? A great story to open with.

3.5 "Alien Stones" a dated spaceship story with technology we've surpassed, but that's expected with older sci-fi stories. Solid.

2.5*"La Befana" Not Wolfe at his best. In fact very average.

4"The Hero As Werewolf" Nice story of survival, reminiscent of I am Legend type stories. Liked it.

3* "Three Fingers" A humorous and very droll short story.

2.5* "Feather Tigers" One of the weaker stories in the collection

5*"The Death of Dr. Island" - A wonderful story. Cold with the ever present threat of violence. This is one of the all time classics. A psychological exploration of violence, relationships and survival. A must read, but not one for the faint hearted - brutal characters in a psychotic sense.

4 *"The Hour of Trust" Even though this was written in the 70s, it's all the more relevant now. Companies are becoming nations in this world - sound familiar doesn't it? The concept is compelling and makes this a strong work, although it may lack the final touch for those after a strong human narrative.

5*"Tracking Song" Excellent story. Combines the primitive with the futuristic. An ice landscape in which humans have evolved in a variety of ways. A story celebrating our survival.

3*"The Toy Theater" Twist at the end a bit like thousands of other short stories. Wolfe seems to fall into the clichéd at the shorter lengths...

5"The Doctor of Death Island" Cold and clinical characters. You can't connect with anyone, but still, works a treat. Loved it.

2*"Cues" Well below Wolfe's usual high standard. Shouldn't have made the collection.

4"The Eyeflash Miracles" Weird story from the perspective of a blind child. Thought it worked and showcased Wolfe's style.

5* "Seven American Nights" Post-disaster US with unreliable narration, one of Wolfe's hallmark narrative techniques. Superb story to end on. Also a play on Arabian nights stories. An Iranian boy visits a backwards US so he can ingratiate himself with its traditional culture. Loved it!

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chess problem composers do this thing they call "tasks", where the challenge is to create a problem which has some unusual formal property. The most famous one is the so-called "Babson Task". You have to compose a problem in which White plays and forces mate in a certain number of moves. Black can defend by promoting a pawn, after which White will also promote a pawn, and it must be the case that if Black chooses to promote to a Queen, White can only win by promoting to a Queen; if Black promotes to a Rook, White can only win by promoting to a Rook; if Black promotes to a Bishop, White can only win by promoting to a Bishop; and if Black promotes to a Knight, White can only win by promoting to a Knight. The best chess problem composers in the world tried fruitlessly to solve the Babson Task for over 50 years, and it was widely believed impossible; then, to everyone's surprise, an unknown Russian soccer coach called Leonid Yarosh succeeded in 1983. If you're interested in the details, there's a very nice account here.

I think similar thoughts were going through Gene Wolfe's head when he put together this collection. Can you write three short stories called, respectively, The Island Of Doctor Death And Other Stories, The Death of Doctor Island and The Doctor of Death Island, have them all be appropriately titled, and do a good enough job that all three are clearly worth reading? It's not quite as difficult as the Babson Task. None the less, I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that it was also possible.

[L.S. Popovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has to be one of the best collections of stories ever. It's one masterpiece after another after another. "Tracking Song" was my favorite. Nearly all of them were mesmerizing, magisterial, and memorable. Many of them deal heavily with liminal spaces, with the island not found on maps, roads terminating in the sea, barren wastelands and demon-haunted caves. There are always hints toward the fact that things are not what they seem, along with elegiac, fascinating details, dreamlike imagery and enigmatic, well-fleshed characters. Stories within stories, illusory isles, the responsibility of the story-master, the captain of a ship and what mortality he holds in his hands, the living of a second home-life, phantasmal existences, childhood nostalgia, a fluctuating sense of reality - the monsterfied humans of Dr. Death, human-animal hybrids, the implantation of stories into life and life into stories, a merging of fantasy with our waking consciousness. Drug use, escapism, trauma, the futile search for extraterrestrials, man's evolution by proxy through machinery, prolific human colonization, the logistics of space travel, self-contained micro-verses, automatic spaceship crews, self-sufficient and immortal suits, the deciphering of alien notation, the behavior of sentient creatures in a post-human era as we slip down the food chain into the future, a unique adventure into settings so alluring and unforgettable that a horripilating sense of prophecy often descended upon me, as if Wolfe had traversed layers of nightmare and surreality unknown to ordinary people, bringing back the primordial ideas of lost civilizations and tapping a vein of limitless mako within the earth's epicenter of creation and destruction. There is all this and much much much much much more.

With extravagant, beautiful mythologies of his own invention, Gene Wolfe manages to pull off countless literary miracles, having produced over a hundred gem-like stories and dozens of full-fledged gold mines of fictive pleasure to be painstakingly excavated by any insatiable and imaginative reader willing to put in the work.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Tracking Song" is one of the best stories ever..presages Jeffrey Ford's The Beyond and Jeff Vandermeer's Veniss Underground or Michael Cisco..truly surreal and disturbing.."Death of Doctor Island" does the same for Stepan Chapman's The Troika, and "Seven American Nights" is endless disturbing and witty(a weird Wolfe trait), terrific mindblowing fiction..note I used the adjective disturbing twice in this review...I could also have used chilling, intriguing,mystifing,bizarre,funny, and anything that implies anything evocative of thought and emotion.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had originally given this 4 stars, just because some of the stories here didn't do that much for me (relatively speaking), but based on the amount of thought I've devoted to "Tracking Song" since reading it, I'm bumping it to 5 for that story alone.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grew up living next door to this author and am only now reading his work. I'm new to the genre, but really loved these stories. They're difficult and thought provoking, and almost better the second read. I'm hoping I run into Mr Wolfe around town and tell him how much I loved them!

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The great turning wheel that is my reading list (a hideous and chimerical patchwork monstrosity years in the making, fed by three major currents/sources and currently being revised into a form that can be utilized for the the remainder of my life) has now landed on the "genre short fiction 'to be read'" slot and so I consult my carefully curated lists and, sure enough, there is my list of genre short fiction stories that I have not yet read but have noted, over the years, as being worth my time (on a whim, when I initiated the project, I chose to start at the alphabetical bottom and work my way up. Yes, the fairly recent examination of Cornell Woolrich's short work was part of this process). This section covers "Wo- through Wh-" and so I find myself using interlibrary loan to track down various anthologies and comps.

Gene Wolfe's "Island Trilogy" of short stories is something I've long been intrigued by so I was happy to have the excuse to get them read - to put it another way, this is in service of noting that I didn't read anything else in this collection but the three stories (Wolfe's main output is science fiction, not one of my great loves, so while I'm sure those stories are great and worth your time, they're outside my purview of interest).

What we have here are three short stories, two of which were Nebula award winners (although as the afterward notes, the first of these was a mistake and actually there should have been "no winner" in the category) and all of which have titular variations on the word "Island", "Death" and "Doctor". The stories are not linked in any way beyond that, except perhaps spiritually.

"Death Of The Island Doctor", the shortest here and last written, involves an aging Professor (of what discipline, History or Literature, is unclear) who spontaneously decides to teach a non-credit class on "Islands" near the end of his life. No one attends for years until a male and female student show up. It's a short, fable-like rumination on the symbolism of islands in history and literature and is quite nice, if a bit ephemeral.

"The Death of Dr. Island", the longest piece here and written second, is a science fiction tale of the future of mental health treatment involving an orbital satellite near Jupiter (a transparent globe filled with water and an artificial, self-regulating island) where patients are isolated or their interactions limited, all in service of healing - or is it? That may sound more sinister than it should - this isn't some sci-fi version of THE PRISONER, more an examination of how society's treatment of and responsibility for those suffering mental and physical disabilities will be both advanced and hindered by science, automation and the usual cultural limitations and flaws (an advanced society of space travel and artificial intelligences does not automatically imply an advanced and enlightened people, and neurological/psychological problems may be the hardest to "solve" in any larger sense). The characters here are well-drawn (Wolfe neither demonizes nor lionizes mental illness, instead he's bluntly honest about it) and I especially liked the characterization of the artificial intelligence/therapist "Dr. Island", who neither cares for nor doesn't care for his patients, because he's only a machine.

In the end, I'm sure this is a great story (it won a Nebula, there's the subtle and assured writing of a talented and thoughtful author on display, there's a breathtaking description of deep-water diving in a transparent globe hanging in orbit over Jupiter) but, as I've said, most science fiction (even good science fiction) isn't much of my thing and while the human-level, emotional details are much appreciated, I find myself strangely unmoved or merely puzzled by the technical/scientific extrapolations.

Finally, there's the first (and best - to me at least) of these three tales, the not-sci-fi-at-all, kinda-Nebula award winning "The Island Of Dr. Death And Other Stories" from 1970. It tells the simple but heartbreaking story of a young boy living in reduced circumstances at a lonely, rundown seaside hotel with his addict mom, her sketchy boyfriend and occasional interactions with both dubious familial hanger-ons (in search of money or matrimony) and the characters from the cheap pulp adventure paperback he's reading.

Nowadays, we get a lot of (*big watery eyes, hands clasped*) "oh, the wonders of reading!" type effulgence, which is understandable for an awesome and important medium possibly in its cultural death-throes, but these often have a feeling of twee escapist desperation about them ("I only really enjoyed 3 but I read all 31 volumes of fill-in-the-blank-fantasy-series because...wonder of reading!"). And we also get a lot of stabs at meta-textuality and fiction overlapping with the purported real-world, as the popular culture absorbs inventive moves from the avant-garde and experimental fictions of decades past (and don't get me wrong, I love me some good fictional overlap, done well, but it's become an easy trick in lazy hands). It is to Wolfe's credit that he falls into neither of these traps in a story written almost 40 years ago. The hero and villain (and extraneous characters) of the pulp novel don't exist in the real world (although one party goer tripping on acid can vaguely sense them) and there's no question if they do - they are obviously part of Tackman's coping mechanism. And while the story is obviously underlining how important escapist fiction can be to a child who is in desperate need of escape (especially resonant with those of whose childhoods occurred in the 1970s), there's some sharp wisdom in how it presents the proffered, bittersweet condolences of pulp, because even that method of escape is fraught with simplifying perils (as Dr. Death implies).

An excellent, emotional and sadly human story, well-worth your time. Wolfe has the wonderful ability to tell you just enough to make the story sing, but never overwrites. You can listen to/download a great reading of it for free over at the Podcastle podcast!

[Perry Whitford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout the 1970's Gene Wolfe was a more committed writer of short stories than he was a novelist. This collection features many of his best from that time, from very short yet puzzling pieces like 'La Befana' to, long, dazzling pieces such as 'Seven American Nights'.

I prefer Wolfe's longer short pieces, which could be considered novellas. He leaves so much out, even in his novels, that the shorter the story the less room he has to say enough to point you towards the stuff he leaves unsaid.

The majority of the stories here are 30-60 pages long, which is plenty enough time to give more than just a flash of meaning. I know that Wolfe's too smart for me half, so I need all the hints I can get!

The writing is, as usual, excellent throughout, familiar in places to the dense prose of The Book of the New Sun, which was a nostalgic pleasure for me after reading so many of Wolfe's more recent stuff, written in his sparser style.

'Tracking Song' was the highlight for me, a haunting, alien landscape populated by either animal-like humans or human-like animals, I couldn't decide which.

If you have just discovered Gene Wolfe through one of his classic novels and wondered how his short fiction compares, this is the best place to start in my opinion.

[Andrew Horton · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a popular blurb that says that Philip K. Dick was our Borges or Calvino, but that people don't know that because he mostly wrote Science Fiction. I think it's safe to put Gene Wolfe in that category - what he's doing, especially in his short stories, easily joins the ranks of Calvino, Borges, Barthleme, Nabokov, and even Joyce, and in many cases surpasses them. Since Wolfe is primarily thought of as a science fiction author, he isn't a household name in the way that the aforementioned are, and that's a shame. These stories are every bit as nuanced, intricate, and meta-everything.

[Andreas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update Nov 2021: Some of the stories still linger in my mind and the rating has been updated to 5 of 5 stars. "Seven American Nights" is awesome and "Tracking Song" as well once you understand what's happening.

=##==##==##==##==##==##==##==##==##==##=

Some stories in this collection are outstanding and I tend to rate the book higher but 4 stars is a fair rating. I haven't read "The Doctor of Death Island" yet but want to provide the following (spoiler free) review while the memories are still fresh.

When you open the book, slow down and take your time. The stories are not fast-paced. Instead you will find an almost overwhelming love for details that contribute a great deal to the atmosphere and, well, weirdness of the stories. If you need help to understand what's going on I suggest to have a look at the Wolfe Wiki. You won't regret it.

Let's start!

I didn't like the title story "The Island of Doctor Death" very much. It's well written but didn't grab me and the final conclusion was somehow disappointing. 3/5 stars.

"Alien Stone" is the first highlight. It starts like a normal space adventure but quickly twists in a way I didn't expect. I really enjoyed the ending, it made me lean back and simply say "wow!" 5/5

"La Befana" made no impression on me. 2/5

"The Hero as Werewolf" has a lot of atmosphere and provides a look at a weird society. Very intensive and well done. 4/5

"Three Fingers" made no impression on me. Simply too weird. 1/5

"The Death of Dr. Island" is the next highlight. A tremendous story with excellent characters and the only story in the whole collection that not only caught me in an intellectual way but also emotionally. I especially liked the way how the island responses to the feelings of the protagonists and how it helps to ease their mood. This is great stuff. 5/5

"Feather Tigers" is nice, reminded me a little bit of Ray Bradbury. The mix of horror and sf is not my cup of tea though. 3/5

"Hour of Trust" is a disturbing look at modern warfare - and how the current elite is about to loose. As usual it contains many clues and hints that must be put together first and the high amount of details demand a second read. 4/5

"Tracking Song" comes close to being the next highlight but I think I have to read it at least one more time to understand it better. The atmosphere is great but what is going on there? 4/5

"The Toy Theater" is a wonderful short story and although everything looks clear there are some hidden details left for the reader to discover. 4/5

"Cues" is a strange story and slowly reveals its quality the more you think about it. 4/5

"Eyeflash Miracles" is a story with many references to The Wizard of Oz. It's well written and the characters are great, however, the plot didn't satisfy me. 3/5

"Seven American Nights" is the final highlight in this collection. It provides a look at a destroyed, post-war America, where a rich Iranian tourist has disappeared after one week of travelling. From his diary the reader can reconstruct what has happened, but many things are only hinted at and clues are well hidden... After the surprising end I had to read the story immediately again and discovered many things I didn't notice the first time. This is a marvelous and very, very clever story! 5/5

In summary I can highly recommend the collection. It's a little bit funny that everyone seems to have other favourites among the stories so you have to read all of them.

One word about the book itself: my Orb edition has a rather poor quality. I don't know what kind of ink has been used, it's irritating reflective if the book is read in bright light. In addition, the typesetting in the lower part of a page contains one line that looks uneven. It's hard to describe, maybe it's only an issue with my edition...

[Micah Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gene Wolfe does it again with puzzle box storytelling while maintaining a great surface level read. Some of these shorts are among the best I've read with plenty of thematic depth to delve into. The 'Death' stories in particular were stellar.

[Fergus Nm · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best stories here (specifically the title story, "The Death of Dr. Island", "Tracking Song", and "Seven American Nights") are incredible, begging to be read and re-read. If every piece was at this level this would be one of the all-time short fiction collections. The remaining pieces range from great to good - there's nothing bad here - but it's the jewels of the collection that are worth your undivided and repeated attention.

[Shozo Hirono · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm rereading this book for the fourth time maybe (I've lost track), going back to when I was in junior high, and I'm finding that my opinions of certain stories have changed over the years. I liked the title story a lot more than I remember, but I was shocked at how weak "Alien Stones" seems to me now. "The Death of Dr. Island" was originally my favorite story in the collection, but it didn't seem quite as good this time, even though I understood it better now than ever. That might be a case of something being more enjoyable when it's veiled in a little mystery. But the biggest surprise so far has been "Tracking Song." That was always one of my three favorite stories in this book (along with "The Death of Dr. Island" and "Seven American Nights"). And usually for me, the earlier pleasures of youth are more intense, so if I really loved something when young, like this story, it would be impossible for me to reproduce that experience decades later. But last night, I enjoyed this story even more than I ever did, and I felt like a kid reading with a flashlight under the covers. It seems perfectly written to me; I wouldn't change a single sentence. I love the way he evokes deep emotions and mind-blowing or deeply disturbing ideas in a few economic, master brush strokes. And my recent reading of Lovecraft adds more depth and richness to the sequences in the dead, underground city (I'm also reminded of Borges' "The Immortal," another one of my favorite stories). Today, as paleontologists discover more new hominid remains and posit a prehistoric world in which an increasing multitude of different human species were living simultaneously and possibly eating each other to extinction, this story seems even more prescient. Right now, I have to say that "Tracking Song" is definitely my favorite sci fi or fantasy genre short story, and one of my very favorite short stories period. I haven't gotten to "Eyeflash Miracles" or "Seven American Nights" yet, but I just had to write this review now while I'm still glowing from the euphoria of reading "Tracking Song." My biggest question is why Gene didn't select it for his recent "Best of" collection.
------------------
Both "Eyeflash Miracles" and "Seven American Nights" were just as good as ever.

[Hans Otterson]

It's a cliché that good writers don't waste words, but Wolfe makes every one work in about six different ways. This is the second time I've read this collection, and of course it's better than the first time I read it. If you love literature at all, read Wolfe. Just read Wolfe. This collection is an excellent introduction to his work, probably better for that even than The Fifth Head of Cerberus.

2P

[Kurt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yeah, I can quantify... qualify these one if yuo would like...

1 Seven American Nights
2 The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories
3 The Doctor of Death Island
4 Feather Tigers
5 Alien Stones
6 The Toy Theater
7 The Hero as Werwolf
8 Tracking Song
9 The Eyeflash Miracles (warning if reading: jumpscare)
10 Three Fingers
11 The Death of Dr. Island
12 Hour of Trust
13 Cues
15 La Befana

Another great set of short stories -- overall, I would argue less Punch-Per-Page than Poe or Borges, but similar to Lovecraft.

[Alice Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of short stories is my introduction to Gene Wolfe, and boy was it an immersive read. This is exactly the kind of writing that can stand the test of time; every story deserves to be read, re-read, and then read again, each reading shedding new light in ways that give the story an wholly different dimension in which to be appreciated. For example, after reading Seven American Nights (my favorite story from this collection), I spent hours poring over online discussions pertaining this story, constructing my own theories, flipping through the pages again and again looking for clues that is either consistent or inconsistent with each theory, and subsequently attempting to refine my theories. I finally have something interesting enough to occupy my brain during my walks to and from school.

Now, of course if you don't have the patience for this kind of (arguably obsessive) analysis, don't dismiss Wolfe altogether yet; many of his stories are wonderful and engaging reads on their own. However if you prefer to have your author lay out every detail and leave no question answered, or prefer not to dwell on a story after the last page, then perhaps Wolfe may leave you unsatisfied. His stories can be appreciated at face value for entertainment purposes, and then they can be as deep as you are willing to dig. Gene Wolfe is not the kind of author that sits down with a martini (or after a joint) and writes whatever comes to his mind for 500 pages. You can tell that his stories are tightly planned out and constructed, with each sentence, each word pulling its own weight.

The title story and its two "inverse theme" stories (The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories; The Death of Doctor Island; Doctor of Death Island) are all excellent, beautiful mood pieces with the usual cerebral depth Wolfe brings. Another notable piece is Tracking Song - a story he is particularly proud of if I'm not mistaken.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

[from my book lover's journal; presumably written a couple months after reading]
The brilliance of Wolfe's work inspired me to attempt The Book of the New Sun a 2nd time [i finished it—heavy lifting!]. Like Delany and Rushdie and others before them (Faulkner, Woolf, Poe, Le Guin), i fall in love with the author while reading. Maybe it's just the familiarity i feel toward the isolato (as one critic calls Wolfe's lonely, isolated characters) that draws me this strongly toward his work, but i also sway to the movement of his prose and feel the catharsis in his tragedies and the euphoria of their too-well-phrased denouements.

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just read through most of this for a third time. It's an odd collection in some ways, since it's mostly made up of novellas--and almost all of them represent some of Wolfe's best work. In particular, the best stories here are full of moments so strange the're basically surrealism, except tied to this very meticulous storytelling and great prose. Some standouts for me are The Death of Doctor Island (which has a really interesting, slippery use of dialogue, and so many brilliant scenes), Tracking Song (a sort of post-apocalyptic barbarian story, probably the pulpiest thing Wolfe has ever written, except it's set on a planet where the entire ecosystem seems to made up of strangely evolved post-humans), and Seven American Nights (which imagines future-tourism to a destroyed America, but is also probably the most focused example of Wolfe's unreliable narration in a novella). One thing is none is them are quite as good as the first novella in the Fifth Head of Cerberus, which I think is probably the best thing I've ever read at that length--and it's some of the most literary and self-conscious work of Wolfe's career, which means even the best stories can be a bit cold. But I think this collection has a lot of his best work, and the novellas I mentioned had a lot of surprises in them even on a third read.

[Aaron Singleton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best place to begin if you are new to Wolfe. A sampling of (some of) his very best short fiction. The highlights (IMO) are "The Death of Doctor Island", "The Toy Theater", "The Hero as Werwolf", and "Seven American Nights". If you like this collection, chances are you'll enjoy his longer works, too. Most highly recommended.

[Sam Maszkiewicz]

Such a great collection of stories. All the good aspects of Gene Wolfe’s writing (ambiguous action, unreliable narration, strange worlds, etc.) without the frustration that can come from reading and interpreting his novel-length works. Although there were a few forgettable stories, the memorable ones were so good that they definitely made it a worthwhile read. The Death of Dr. Island, Tracking Song, and The Hero as Werwolf were definitely the highlights for me.

[Sus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This profoundly strange book is... What is it? The strongest things in the strongest long stories here are the same things I've found so frustrating in his shorter, later works (as in Innocents Aboard): resonance and implication without resolution. The open structure of these stories can work (at least, for a reader like me), but they need to be long enough and move slowly enough for the depth itself to work: to create patterns that don't demand neat tying-up, to make echoes that will themselves be sufficient to satisfy. Because neat tying-up is not something Gene Wolfe seems to like to do.

The longer pieces in this book are much more satisfying than the shorter ones; among the latter, I'm annoyed by "Three Fingers," which seems to be a sort of concept blurted out into a story whose structure has been almost entirely neglected; and I seriously have no idea what's going on in "Cues"; it's the sort of thing that makes me wonder if you have to have been there in 1974 to get it. In "The Hero as Werwolf," as well as "La Befana" (to a lesser extent) and "Feather Tigers" (to a greater), Wolfe's craftsmanship and characterization and dark resonance is there but I feel as if we've been set up with and for too much for the stories to end as briefly or as abruptly as they do; I don't like the feeling of being dropped off a ledge -- it seems too easy an out.

Of the longer stories, I find "The Doctor of Death Island" surprisingly forgettable (perhaps because this point in the triptych of title-linked stories, the generation of the titular image feels a little forced). "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories" is beautifully written (I like the minds of Wolfe's creepy boy children) but leaves me uncertain of the situation and wanting more. By contrast, I find "The Death of Doctor Island" very creepy and satisfying, if possibly overlong in portions.

"Alien Stones," which is sort of a beautifully Wolfey story set in space! and in a spaceship!, like "The Death of Doctor Island," left me haunted and fascinated; and that is wonderful. "Tracking Song" is this extremely weird piece that is set and structured like a primitive-planet pulp adventure, only its central concepts are surreal, haunting, and premissed on a brilliantly sketched and understated moral dilemma (if you live in a glaciated world in which most large species are humanoid, what are the ethics of hunting)? In both "Hour of Trust" and "Seven American Nights," I thought the story itself was brilliantly done and had several astonishing scenes -- in the former, too, the ending is dazzlingly magnificent, and in the latter the shopworn framing device-cum-narratorial conceit is executed with beauty and grace -- but both also let me down by seeming to pull out an unexplained and inexplicable deus ex machina at the end, hard to understand in terms of the stories' respective retrospective logics.

"The Eyeflash Miracles," to wrap up, is one of those strange narratives I can't stop thinking about. It dwells in equal referentiality to New Testament Christian iconography and to Oz. Which you wouldn't think would work. But it works blindingly well. It is open-ended, but completely successful. It is one of the creepiest stories I have ever seen.

I am not sure yet what it is I have to learn from Gene Wolfe in this volume, but it's there. For me, in my personal perspective: this is probably one of the most important books I have read this year.

[Nathan Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories a couple years ago, I believe, at the same bookstore where I found The Fifth Head of Cerberus. It’s been sitting on my shelf, unread, ever since. I don’t read short story collections terribly often, but I definitely want to get into them more.

This collection showcases a slew of stories that were all, at first, published separately, in magazines mostly. They all have either a sci-fi or fantasy bent to them, some more pronounced in their genres than others, but there seems to be a theme of “survival” running throughout a good portion of the collection— a topic explored in various ways and with different meanings attached to the word, some being more literal about this than others. I thought I’d highlight a couple of favorites:

The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories:
This is the one the collection opens with... it tells the story of a young boy that lives a troubling, stressful life— his mother is a drug-abuser, her suitors are dubious people that enable this habit and the world is a confusing place to him. He survives his woes by jumping in and out of the escapist, pulpy heroic stories found in cheap paperback novels/comics. The last exchange in this story, despite it being so short, almost had me in tears. A powerful little ode to how escapism in its various forms (intellectual or otherwise) can grant us happiness and help us survive in the process.

Three Fingers:
A very short narrative involving our protagonist (whose name is an obfuscation of Mickey Mouse—Michael Moss) who sells bootleg Disney merchandise, with similar tactics as those of a drug dealer. However, the M.M (the Mickey Mafia) is after him for his transgressions against the company. There’s some meta-commentary about how Disney’s image has only gotten more sickeningly sweet over the years, in how the M.M. deals with Michael and where the title gets its meaning. It's really darkly funny and just oozes with cynicism aimed at Walt Disney, which makes for a very entertaining read that of course, highlights clever wordplay, as is expected of Wolfe.

The Death of Doctor Island:
One of the longer stories in the collection, this one deals with a simulated island environment, sentient and capable of speaking to the other characters, called Dr. Island. The conflict mostly has to do with a young boy and young woman surviving within this environment, and calls to themes of the loss of childhood innocence as a third person is found on the island. There’s a haunting and detached quality to this one that I really loved, and it’s one of the best short stories I’ve read in years.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

My future's not so bright, I gotta wear shades. Intensely challenging and multilayered SF collection.

The Island of Dr Death (IDD) is probably Wolfe's most famous/well-regarded collection of short stories/novellas and it's easy to see why. From the titular story and its cleverly worded siblings ("The Death of Dr. Island" and "The Doctor of Death Island"), this collection is consistently inventive while sometimes being thoroughly bleak.

Unlike most of his other collections of short-fiction that sprinkle in magical realism, fantasy, horror, or weird fiction, the stories in IDD are almost uniformly SF or near-future. And unlike a lot of SF where humanity reaching the stars brings hope and promise, Wolfe takes a very pessimistic approach. Across multiple stories is the sense that if humans are shitty on Earth, they'll continue to be shitty on other planets -- call it the anti-Star Trek view of the future.

Given that this is Wolfe during the 70s, prior to publishing his masterpiece Book of the New Sun, a reader will quickly spot elements form that work here as well as other themes that routinely pop up in Wolfe's fiction -- everything from unreliable narrators, Christian/Catholic references and imagery, and even musings on authorial voice.

As with everything Wolfe writes, there's what you see when you read it and what you didn't read when you saw it.

While all of the stories are readable the first time around, scratching below the surface reveals layers upon layers of subtext and meaning -- including a near future neo-fascistic Wizard of Oz jaunt ("The Eyeflash Miracles"), a Passion play featuring an Iranian tourist as Christ-like figure in a dilapidated Washington DC filled with mutants ("Seven American Nights"), sentient orbital landmasses ("The Death of Dr. Island"), and Jack London frozen tundra pulp adventure goodness ("Tracking Song").

Definitely worth a re-read or three.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection, wide-ranging in tone and content. I wouldn't consider these works particularly accessible, for the most part, but they are rewarding. I will readily admit to not understanding them all, but they are almost all engrossing, some hypnotically so. Still, as with any collection, there are highs and lows.
Highs: Both "Tracking Song" and "Seven American Nights" are austere, hypnotic stories involving very different quests. These are repetitive, but in such a way as to be trance-inducing and disturbing.
All three "Doctor, Island, Death" stories are quite good, for different reasons, though I'd give the edge to the title story, as the meditations on the need for escapism were among the most relateable things, to me, in this whole book.
"Feather Tigers" is the greatest horror story involving four-foot-tall talking alienrabbits I have ever read. Funny, frightening, and very strange.
Lows: "Alien Stones" is a hard-ish SF exercise that never quite gels into a real story. Interesting, but not quite realized.
"Three Fingers" is a deeply weird look at the corporatization of our fantasies, I think. Either way, the use of Disney as an ever-present bogeyman is both disturbing and prescient, but the story itself is not on the same level.
"Hour of Trust" just didn't work for me.
As a whole this collection is disturbing and thought-provoking, perhaps too obscure for many, but rewarding for those willing to work at it. Again, many of the tales within went over my tiny head, but a second reading at some point may clarify things. Either way, I would recommend this to readers of more experimental sf/f of its era.

[Zuby]

I was recommended Gene Wolfe by a friend, and just picked this specific book up because the library didn't have the actual book I wanted to get from him. I'm so glad I did because this was truly amazing and I will be checking out a lot more of his works.

Wolfe has such an interesting way of writing. In his stories he often characterizes people and settings indirectly, usually through non-emphasized dialogue or points of narration which makes it easy to miss key parts. I had to really focus when reading this and his stories almost felt like a puzzle. There were multiple stories where I reread large chunks or straight up just reread the entire thing because I knew I would appreciate it better on a second go. There is also so much depth to his writing and its packed with symbolism. I would often find myself contemplating certain stories days after I had read them. The plots themselves are super interesting as well, I feel like he takes science fiction to levels I've never seen before. As far as short story writers I am easily putting him up there with Jorge Luis Borges and Guy de Maupassant.

If I had to list stories I loved it would just end up being like 90% of the book so I will list my absolute favorite stories and resist the urge to just list every single one
- Seven American Nights
- The Toy Theater
- The Eyeflash Miracles
- The Death of Dr. Island
- Tracking Song

[Slawkenbergius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting collection. I'm a big fan of Gene's novels and I was very excited to read some of his short fiction. After all, much of his long-form work is just a bunch of short stories strung together. I was very pleased with the result. My favorite stories were "The Hero as a Werwolf", a kind of take off on the "I am Legend" concept, and "Tracking Song", a delightful survival story. As is common in Gene Wolfe works, I felt compelled to re-read the whole thing once I was done. I haven't done that yet, but the stories I want to pay particular attention to are "The Island of Doctor Death" and "Seven American Nights". I recognize that there was some more things going on that I did not quite understand, and I will relish dissecting with a bit more familiarity.

[Samee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gene Wolfe. He writes finely crafted scifi. He's a Korean War vet. And he is one of the men who helped bring you PRINGLES. What's not to like? This collection of some of his best short fiction displays his strengths as a writer of 'literary' and conceptual scifi. I personally enjoy Wolfe because he manages to do homage to the genre while also paying attention to issues of craft, creativity, and construction. Notable stories: "The Island of Doctor Death..." linked trilogy, "The Hero as Werwolf," and "Tracking Song." "Feather Tigers" tickled my funnybone and reminded me for some reason of Asimov.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredible collection from Gene Wolfe! These stories show how Wolfe writes not just science fiction but literature. Filled to the brim with religious allusion, Gene's unique style pushes the reader to think further and read deeper than most science fiction.

The best stories in the collection are probably the title namesake and its two other permutations, with Seven American Nights and The Hero as Werwolf closely following.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gene Wolfe is one of those authors where I couldn't help acquiring as many of his books as I could after reading just one series (the Book of the New Sun quartet), but didn't actually get around to reading those other books until recently. I didn't much care for Home Fires and stopped reading about halfway through; this collection of short stories is another matter.

Whereas Home Fires was fairly boring and straightforward (at least in the part I read), all the stories in The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories are much more like the New Sun (and, from what I've read about Wolfe, his fiction generally): twisty, stylized, ambiguous. This of course makes them very hard to rate, and basically Your Mileage May Vary depending on how much patience you have for not knowing on first pass what a particular story is supposed to be about. But unlike, say, Roger Zelazny's "Corrida," Wolfe manages to make his stories tantalizing enough that you want to know more.

The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories ★★★★★ | Melancholy and evocative story about a young boy reading a pulp novel while his mother prepares for a Sixties style debauch. Thematic similarity to Stephen King in a lot of ways, actually. I liked the atmosphere and style enough to forgive the second-person narration (which I think does fit with the meta narrative).

Alien Stones ★★ | This reads as a fairly straightforward space adventure story about first(?) contact with an alien(?) spaceship by human space marines. But it's also more of a collection of interesting ideas than a satisfying plot. Given that this didn't make it into The Best of Gene Wolfe collection, I suppose that's probably about it.

La Befana ★★ | Short, weird story about... er, there really isn't a "story" as much as a single scene of dialogue between a man, his wife, his child, and his alien monster friend. And then a Jesus reference. On the other hand, this did make it into the best-of collection, so maybe there's more than meets the eye on first read―but knowing something of Wolfe's general literary outlook, "Jesus is universal" maybe exactly that.

The Hero as Werwolf ★★★★ | Not sure why it's spelled "werwolf" (not sure of quite a bit, actually) but this is a weird post-alien-invasion(?) story about a guy who hunts and eats the aliens(?)/uplifted-humans(?) but can somehow pass as one of them (thus the "werwolf" part, I guess). On the one hand, quite a bit of this makes me think more of vampires than werewolves, but on the other hand, there might be some profitable comparison to be made between this story and the myth of Lycaon of Arcadia...

Three Fingers ★★★ | An unnerving bundle of paranoia that makes me wonder how Wolfe never got banned from Disneyland (you'll see why if you read it).

The Death of Dr. Island ★★★★ | Once you allow for explicit Biblical parallels, a lot of the story makes sense, but much is left as an exercise for the reader. "Dr. Island" is a sentient space station done up like a tropical island, but because Wolfe is a Catholic this is a very mysterious sort of God in whose garden the protagonist finds himself.

Feather Tigers ★★ | Very "new wave"-y, hallucinatory, etc. about alien rabbits investigating an apparently depopulated Earth. The "People of the Yellow Leaves" are real people, a small tribe of a few hundred living in Laos and Thailand. (The alien bunnyrabbits, I assume, are not.)

Hour of Trust ★★★ | In the future, the United States has collapsed into civil war as the hippies run riot, and mega-corporations step in to maintain the balance, but know nothing of war. The story takes place at a conference in Europe where one corporation is trying to convince other nations to lend their military support. It's bleak as hell, suitably '73, but strikes me as a bit lacking in the details. Still, there are some powerful images.

Tracking Song ★★★★ | A "dying earth" travelogue narrative written by an amnesiac... which I think describes a good chunk of Wolfe's novel-length work in one form or another. The setting (an ice-age world with lost technology, implications of a larger space-faring civilization, bizarre human-subspecies ecology) reminded me a lot of George R. R. Martin's "Bitterblooms," although that was written a few years after this story was published. Whether the narrator's recording device is also a form of prayer is left as an exercise to the reader.

The Toy Theater ★★★ | Marionettes IN SPACE! Actually, I'm not entirely sure why this needed to be set on another planet. The twist is... well, not that much of a twist. But it's nicely written.

The Doctor of Death Island ★★★★ | Cryogenics, immortality drugs, and prison... as metaphor for Mount Purgatory? Yeah, probably! The ending is particularly cryptic, though.

Cues ★★ | Too cute, too short. The masochist in me enjoyed the groan-worthy pun at the end, though.

The Eyeflash Miracles ★★★★ | A blind boy with miracle powers... wait, didn't The Who write an album about that? Anyway, it's an odyssey-type story with shades of Huck Finn's encounter with the con artists "The Duke" and "The King," as well as the Wizard of Oz (several explicit references) as well as Christ-type myths (also explicit, particularly the "legion" scene). The characters are all well-realized if not quite relatable, and the blind-child POV makes for some interesting puzzles of interpretation on the reader's behalf.

Seven American Nights ★★★★ | Unreliable-narrator travelogue again! This time it's an Iranian guy visits a post-apocalyptic America, specifically Washington, D.C. The imagery will probably be immediate for anyone who's played Bethesda's Fallout games, although there's not a pseudo-Fifties vibe here; it's pretty clearly just post-apocalyptic. The exact nature of the apocalypse is unknown but seems fairly U.S.-centric and with a strong genetic and/or chemical component, but also all the cities are blown up so I dunno. Also the narrator randomly drops LSD and shoots a werewolf, so that complicates things.

OVERALL: ★★★½ | This is a weighted (and rounded) average because some of the stories are novellas or novelettes while others are only a few pages. I do recommend getting a taste of Wolfe's writing; he's one of the few older sf writers with truly unique styles.

[Calvin Stevenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The way Gene writes tickles my brain. Not all the stories were great but many of them were pretty interesting. The last one Seven American Nights was also more than it seemed, a twist on the expected experience of visiting a third world America, complete with secret police and conspiracy. He really did like to write in the found memoir/journal style, maybe he believed that people got more into the story using this vehicle. He did this in book of the new sun and the soldier of the mist series’ and probably many others. Fun collection.