An ideal introduction to Wolfe’s short fiction.
A major retrospective from this writer's writer, comprising 31 tales, 1970–1999, ranging from a few pages to novella length, selected by the author (with one exception, included at his agents' behest) and arranged chronologically.
In nonliterary circles, former engineer and Illinois resident Wolfe achieved acclaim by contributing to the invention of the machine that makes Pringles chips. We’re thankful for the chips, but the fiction that followed is even better. Many of the stories here are famous and have appeared many times, among them a story cycle that begins with the H.G. Wells-ish “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories,” continues with the Nebula Award–winning “The Death of Dr. Island” (murder as psychotherapy) and finishes with “Death of the Island Doctor” (a sentimental mediation on islands). Also instantly recognizable are “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” (cloning), “Bed and Breakfast” (on the road to hell) and “A Cabin on the Coast” (dickering with the fairies—the sole entry not selected by the author). Elsewhere, Wolfe shows remarkable prescience, envisioning a future United States where businesses compete by conducting wars via private armies, and another decadent future that astonishes and appalls a bewildered visitor from Iran. Others display typical Wolfian twists and sidebars: a Dark Age hot-air balloon, an author-agent correspondence, a review of a nonexistent film, puppetry, werewolves, witches, spies, a chess-playing computer, alternate worlds where fantasy becomes indistinguishable from reality, dreams and barbarians at the gate. Wolfe's prose is dense and allusive; he frequently employs unreliable narrators, often leaves readers with the impression that he knows things they don't, he interweaves many pieces with a persistent and occasionally obtrusive religiosity.
An ideal introduction to Wolfe’s short fiction.Pub Date: March 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2135-0
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
It’s understandable that Tor chose to make The Cassini Division, this Scottish writer’s splendidly direct, uncluttered, and action-packed third novel, into MacLeod’s 1999 US debut (p. 840); but it’s also annoying—inasmuch as The Stone Canal (his second novel, UK publication 1996) is a direct precursor. Dave Reid and Jon Wilde meet at Glasgow University in the 1970s, and their fates entwine: They become friends, political foes, rivals for the same woman’s affections, and movers and shakers in a 21st-century world of fragmented, polarized societies and incessant wars. Wilde, eventually shot dead (he blames Reid), reawakens 50 years later—death is no longer permanent—in a robot body in space. Bossed by Reid, Jon and others are building a universe-spanning wormhole near Jupiter—but they’re slaves of the “macros,” agglomerations of computerized post-human mentalities living thousands of times faster than ordinary humans. Fortunately, the macros soon destroy themselves, though some survive on Jupiter. In the second narrative strand, four centuries hence, Reid is gangster-in-chief of distant, capitalist-anarchist New Mars. Robot Jay Dub (Wilde, still in his hardware body) clones a copy of his own flesh then liberates Reid’s computer/android sex-slave, Dee Model, whose body is a clone of Wilde’s wife—thus precipitating a struggle between abolitionists (freedom for intelligent machines!) and Reid’s status quo. Another wonderfully knotty, inventive, intelligent yarn, if top-heavy with political minutiae that even dyed-in-the-wool Anglophiles will have a hard time deciphering.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-87053-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
A novella from Marvel Comics co-founder Lee and writer Peter David packaged with 12 new stories (from other writers) that follow the amazing web-slinger from his humble high-school beginnings to his contemporary crises of purpose. With one exception, these stories utterly miss the point and fail to translate the richness of the old comic panels to straight print. It was the combination of existential indecision, vigilante self-loathing, and killer art that always distinguished the Spider-Man comics. This was especially true of the comics that appeared in the 1970s, when the brooding Spider-Man's adventures were cast in a grim New York City, in whose angular shadows the character confronted his own demons along with a passel of criminal nasties and the disdain of the authorities. Threats from within matched the danger outside, and often Spidey looked like he might drift into psychosis. But this anthology seems determined to paint a revised, sanitized portrait of the wall-crawler. Only Ann Nocenti's twisted tale of organ thieves and genetic horrors (``Blindspot'') successfully conveys the dark side of Spider-Man as she enters the area between classical ethics and pop ambiguities that shows the web-slinger at his most complex. Other tales are stiffer: Spidey teaches a young boy a lesson about responsibility (Lawrence Watt-Evans's ``Cool''); Spidey races to keep Dr. Curt Conners, a Jekyll-and-Hyde character whose bad side is the Lizard, from snuffing out his family (Christopher Golden's ``Radically Both''); Spidey swings to Brooklyn, carrying a liver transplant for a little girl (Robert L. Washington III's ``Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Courier''). Other tales provide the supporting cast: Peter Parker's angelic Aunt May; his suffering girlfriends (Gwen, Mary Jane); his grouchy Daily Bugle editor, J. Jonah Jameson; and some of the more notable villains, including Doctor Octopus, Vulture, Mysterio, and Venom. Shows all too clearly why comics are comics and books are books. (16 b&w illustrations)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-425-14610-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
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