The Island of Doctor 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.

Contents

11 • The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories • [Archipelago] • (1970) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe
26 • Alien Stones • (1972) • novelette by Gene Wolfe
55 • La Befana • (1973) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe
60 • The Hero as Werwolf • (1975) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe
74 • Three Fingers • (1976) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe
80 • The Death of Dr. Island • [Archipelago] • (1973) • novella by Gene Wolfe
131 • Feather Tigers • (1973) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe
138 • Hour of Trust • (1973) • novelette by Gene Wolfe
167 • Tracking Song • (1975) • novella by Gene Wolfe
225 • The Toy Theater • (1971) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe
232 • The Doctor of Death Island • [Archipelago] • (1978) • novella by Gene Wolfe
277 • Cues • (1974) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe
281 • The Eyeflash Miracles • (1976) • novella by Gene Wolfe
336 • Seven American Nights • (1978) • novella by Gene Wolfe

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

384 pages, Paperback

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.

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 was 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 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 was 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.

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gene Wolfe wrote a number of very highly regarded novels, but I'm in the minority of those with the opinion that he was a much better short fiction writer. This is my favorite of his books, a collection with a terrifically fun title comprised of two novelettes, seven short stories, and five novellas. My favorites are the Archipelago sequence, which are a lot of fun to list as well as to read. The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories was published in one of Damon Knight's Orbit anthologies in 1970, The Doctor of Death Island is from a 1978 Jack Dann anthology, and the best of the three, The Death of Doctor Island, appeared in one of Terry Carr's Universe anthologies in 1973, and won both the Locus and Nebula awards for best novella of the year. (My pick that year was a tie between it and a Roger Zelazny story, 'Kjwalll'kje'k'koothailll'kje'k, which is also fun to say.) Wolfe frequently made you feel that you weren't quite understanding everything he had to say, even though you recognized his prose as brilliant, but I found his shorter works more comprehensible. All of these stories date from 1970 - '78, and only one of them appeared in a genre magazine, the Christmas short story La Befana. All of the rest appeared in various original anthologies edited by Jack Dann, Thomas M. Disch, Damon Knight, Terry Carr, etc., which lends credence to the oft-repeated observation that Wolfe was a writers' writer, not a popular writer. My other favorites here are Seven American Nights and The Eyeflash Miracles.

[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.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely insane to me that Wolfe's stories and novellas are as complex and mind-altering as his novels. The stories collected are: "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories"; "Alien Stones"; "La Befana"; "The Hero as Werwolf"; "Three Fingers"; "The Death of Dr. Island"; "Feather Tigers"; "Hour of Trust"; "Tracking Song"; "The Toy Theater"; "The Doctor of Death Island"; "Cues"; "The Eyeflash Miracles"; "Seven American Nights". I'll discuss my favourites. Inevitably, there are always some weaker stories, but none of them were without merit. One of the strongest collections I've read in a long time. Le Guin said, after all, 'Humane, outrageous, forever unexpected. . . Some of the best American short stories of the decade are in this book.'

I won't discuss "La Befana" (a very short story about a strange alien), "The Hero as Werwolf" (some people's favourite, but didn't click with me: a horror at its heart), "Three Fingers" (a bizarre Disney-esque short story (of course not favourably Disney-esque)), "Feather Tigers" (rabbits are trying to bring tigers back from extinction?), "Hour of Trust" (very good, but not my favourite), "The Toy Theater" (a puppeteer's ambitions, but what else is going on?), and "Cues" (possibly the weakest story of the lot).

The very first story in this collection, "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories" (the reason this book has the humorous title "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories") is only 18 pages long. It is a dark story, as always with Wolfe, but also one of hope. Tackie is a young boy whose mother is a drug addict. "You" are Tackie, as the story is told in the second person. The book he (you) is reading, a kind of spin on The Island of Dr Moreau (all the stories collected here have echoes of Wells' novel), begins to invade his (your) everyday life. Characters from the novel enter into his (your) world and talk to him (you). We see it as Tackie's method of repression, but also healing. By the end, it is a rumination on how stories are always there for us when we need them, and never truly end, reminiscent, as my friend aptly said, of the ending of Roald Dahl's The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me,

“We have tears in our eyes
As we wave our goodbyes,
We so loved being with you, we three.
So do please now and then
Come and see us again,
The Giraffe and the Pelly and me.
All you do is to look
At a page in this book
Because that’s where we always will be.
No book ever ends
When it’s full of your friends
The Giraffe and the Pelly and me.”

Or as the ambiguous Dr Death puts it: "But if you start the book again we'll all be back [...] It's the same with you, Tackie. You're too young to realise it yet, but it's the same with you."

These 18 pages, which I've since read twice through now and planning a third, generated more conversation between some of my friends than some 300 pages novels we've all read. There is much to be unpacked about the two worlds in the book and how they interact with each other. As Tackie reads, you read fragments of his book with him. An example of some of the book in the book, then Tackie as he stops reading.

Unexpectedly the dog-man halted in front of him, forcing Ransom to stop too. For a moment the massive head bent over the unconscious girl. Then there was a barely audible growl. "You say, Master, that I can judge. Then I tell you Bruno does not like this female Dr. Death calls Talar of the Long Eyes."

You put the open book face-down on the pillow and jump up, hugging yourself and skipping bare heels around the room. Marvellous! Wonderful!
But no more reading tonight. Save it, save it. Turn the light off, and in the delicious dark put the book reverently away under the bed, pushing aside pieces of the Tinker Toy set and the box with the filling station game cards. Tomorrow there will be more, and you can hardly wait for tomorrow. You lie on your back, hands under your head, covers up to the chin and when you close your eyes, you can see it all: the island, the jungle trees swaying in the sea wind; Dr. Death's castle lifting its big, cold greyness against the hot sky.

***

"Alien Stones" is a trippy sci-fi short story about a missing astronaut inside an alien's spaceship (if it is that? Or is the ship the alien itself?). As ever, it is easy to read it on one layer (one enjoyable layer) but ultimately it starts begging for more questions, namely around the ideas of simulations. Who, or what, is a simulation in this story? There are rabbit-holes to go down online. I've already reread certain passages of the story to get closer to 'my' true answer.

***

"The Death of Dr. Island" is the second of Wolfe's "archipelago stories", as they are now referred to. I found this one easier to orient myself, though nothing is handed to you on a silver spoon. What I find enduringly fascinating about Wolfe as a writer is that element of his style. He explains nothing. You are dropped into the word and left to find your own way. Some readers will find this frustrating and others will find it addictive. I am in the latter camp.

Funnily enough, another kind of simulation of sorts. A sense of horrid dread pervades all corners of this story. A young boy, Nicolas, is in a strange 'land/island', trying to survive. There is a strange man on the island with him who is incredibly volatile. The trees, the waves, the monkeys, everything on the island can speak to Nicolas. I won't give away how/why, but interestingly it is another story about trauma and healing, though this one is far less hopeful than the first.

***

"Tracking Song" is a brilliant novella, in my top 3, that calls to mind the final part of The Left Hand of Darkness. In a snowy wilderness a man known only as 'Cutthroat' is trying to survive (another recurring theme seems to be survival!). He has lost his memory, another Wolfean classic, and has fallen from the 'Great Sleigh', though he does not know what that is. There are a few different alien races, almost tribal, who take him in. They battle with giants and other strange creatures. Eventually he finds himself in a giant, abandoned city of disused machines. Subtly, the world in which he has found himself becomes more apparent. Very, very good.

***

"The Doctor of Death Island" is another cold and nightmarish story, this time from the perspective of a convicted murderer waking from cryogenic sleep. Dreamlike as well as nightmarish, with lots of bizarre and beautiful imagery and ideas about forever, and living forever. Unreliable narrator galore, by this point.

***

"The Eyeflash Miracles" is one of the most insane stories of the collection. Written from the perspective of a blind boy, Wolfe is flexing his stylist muscles to the extreme here. It is chockfull of Wizard of Oz references (in the way certain Pynchon books are riddled with pop culture references for some reason), but also Christian and Hindu reflections (the boy seems to be a Christlike figure capable of flying and healing). A kind of Huckleberry Finn-like odyssey through a strange and future America. Easily one of the best stories here.

***

"Seven American Nights" is often regarded as one of the finest stories Wolfe ever wrote. On the surface, it is about a young Iranian man visiting another strange and future America (it has all the more meaning in today's political climate) and falling in love with an actress he sees at the theatre. Only by the end of the story do some of the other elements (that at least to me went unnoticed) rear their heads. Like with so many Wolfe stories, it was only by the time I got to the end I realised what might have been staring me in the face. So I'll be rereading it a few more times over the coming weeks. Nothing is what it seems, and once again, our narrator (this time writing in his travel book) is deliberately hiding things and fudging the truth. Towards the end there is one sweeping admission about having not told the whole truth, and from that line alone, plenty unravels. Strange sweets, deceptions and lies... nothing is at is seems... which once again we might say about this whole collection, his whole body of work. Gene Wolfe is quickly becoming one of the most versatile and complex writers I've ever had the pleasure of reading. The shadow that is cast on genre writers, I believe, is the only reason he is not collectively regarded among the very greats of literature.

[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!

[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.

[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.

[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.

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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.
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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.