Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the story:


Westwind by Gene Wolfe

This story is part of the The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction group collection discussion.

★★★★

Synopsis
A scarred man meets a blind woman at a hotel in a dark society. The benevolent ruler of this society seems to love everyone but most of all a secret agent called "Westwind". Both go their rooms, and the man contacts the ruler, reporting to him - he is Westwind. The blind woman is in his adjoining room, also contacting the ruler. Now, everyone seems to be Westwind.

Review
This is a straightforward allegorical tribute to Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare with Catholic Wolfe showing up.

Only one character is named - "Obie", a variant of "Obadiah", meaning the Servant of God. Also, the west wind is a strong religious allegory, e.g. it dissipates the plague of locusts into the Red Sea in Exodus. Contrast this with the destricutive east wind which only brings hardships: Wolfe named a protagonist from "A Story by John V. Marsch" Eastwind, the ancestor of the aborigines who greeted the incoming humans on St. Anne.

Wolfe brings in lame, scarred, and blind characters - all those should be loved. The story has a very nice ending, where all those disabled but privileged persons show pity on others.

I really like this one too. He mentions Chesterton in the Afterward saying this occurred to him after writing the story. I'm not too sure I believe that.

Of winds good and ill, If I remember correctly it is a west wind that brings in the main character at the beginning of Chesterton's novel Manalive.