Innocents Aboard: New Fantasy Stories (2004)
Contents
- Introduction (2004)
- The Tree Is My Hat (999, 1999)
- The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun (Winter Solstice chapbook from Cheap Street, 1991)
- The Friendship Light (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 40th Anniversary issue, October 1989)
- Slow Children At Play (Winter Solstice chapbook from Cheap Street, 1989)
- Under Hill (The Infinite Matrix, 2002)
- The Monday Man (The Readercon 3 Anthology, 1990)
- The Waif (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2001)
- The Legend of Xi Cygnus (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 43d Anniversary issue, October/Novermber 1992)
- The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun (Grails Quests, Visitations, and Other Occurrences, 1992)
- How the Bishop Sailed to Inniskeen (Spirits of Christmas, 1989)
- Houston, 1943 (Tropical Chills, 1988)
- A Fish Story (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 50th Anniversary issue, October/November 1999)
- Wolfer (Wild Women, 1997)
- The Eleventh City (Grotesques: A Bestiary, 2000)
- The Night Chough (The Crow: Shattered Lives and Broken Dreams, 1998)
- The Wrapper (Lamps and the Brow, 1998)
- A Traveler in Desert Lands (New Tales of Zothique, 1999)
- The Walking Sticks (Taps and Sighs, 1999)
- Queen (Realms of Fantasy, 2001)
- Pocketsful of Diamonds (Strange Attraction, 2000)
- Copperhead (scifi.com, 2001)
- The Lost Pilgrim (First Heroes, 2003)
Editions
- Tor hardcover, 2004, cover painting by Rene Magritte
Comments
Blurb
- Jacket blurb from the Tor hardcover:
"If any writer from within genre fiction ever merited the designation Great Authoer, it is surely Wolfe ... [who] reads like Dickens, proust, Kipling, Chesterton, Borges and Nabokov rolled into one, and then spiced with all manner of fantastic influences from H. G. Wells to Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft to Damon Knight. Modernist or post-modernist, formal allegorist or anatomist of the deepest complexities of the human soul, he is a wonder, yes, a genius, wiht a crooked lupine smile." -- The Washington Post Book World
GENE WOLFE has spent a long career collecting admiring reviews from readers and fellow writers across the spectrum of tastes and continues to produce top-notch work at all lengths. Perhaps best-known for his extended science fiction/science fantasy opus encompassing The Book of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, and The Book of the Short Sun, he nonetheless demonstrates unsurpassed skill in writing across all the genres of the fantastic: from hard science to high fantasy with stops along the way in contemporary fantasy, magical realism, horror, ghost stories, and everything in-between.
This collection appears between the publication of the two volumes of his latest masterwork, The Wizard Knight, and, for the first time, focuses solely on his shorter works of fantasy and horror. As he himself admits in his short intorduction, he believes in ghosts, "having had Certain Experiences," and he brings an authenticity of feeling and a true conviction to the stories in which ghosts appear. In fact, "Houston, 1943" contains much material that is autobiographical, although it has to be left as an exercise for the reader to decide where fact leaves off and fiction begins.
Once you begin reading his words, you have surrendered yourself into the hands of a master storyteller. you can't ever be sure exactly what will happen, but you can be utterly confident that the story will be surprising and challenging, that you will be entertained and transported to places you would never imagine on your own, and that you will remember the experience for a very long time. So, open the book, start the first story, and prepare yourself for the thrill ride of a lifetime. Terror, woner, awe, and surprise are all lurking within, awaiting the opportunity to leap out and clutch at your heart.
"His stories set standards by which the rest of us must measure ourselves. they will endure." -- Michael Swanwick
GENE WOLFE lives with his wife, Rosemary, in Barrington, Illinois.
GENE WOLFE has spent a long career collecting admiring reviews from readers and fellow writers across the spectrum of tastes and continues to produce top-notch work at all lengths. Perhaps best-known for his extended science fiction/science fantasy opus encompassing The Book of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, and The Book of the Short Sun, he nonetheless demonstrates unsurpassed skill in writing across all the genres of the fantastic: from hard science to high fantasy with stops along the way in contemporary fantasy, magical realism, horror, ghost stories, and everything in-between.
This collection appears between the publication of the two volumes of his latest masterwork, The Wizard Knight, and, for the first time, focuses solely on his shorter works of fantasy and horror. As he himself admits in his short intorduction, he believes in ghosts, "having had Certain Experiences," and he brings an authenticity of feeling and a true conviction to the stories in which ghosts appear. In fact, "Houston, 1943" contains much material that is autobiographical, although it has to be left as an exercise for the reader to decide where fact leaves off and fiction begins.
Once you begin reading his words, you have surrendered yourself into the hands of a master storyteller. you can't ever be sure exactly what will happen, but you can be utterly confident that the story will be surprising and challenging, that you will be entertained and transported to places you would never imagine on your own, and that you will remember the experience for a very long time. So, open the book, start the first story, and prepare yourself for the thrill ride of a lifetime. Terror, woner, awe, and surprise are all lurking within, awaiting the opportunity to leap out and clutch at your heart.
"His stories set standards by which the rest of us must measure ourselves. they will endure." -- Michael Swanwick
GENE WOLFE lives with his wife, Rosemary, in Barrington, Illinois.