Innocents Aboard | ||||||||
Gene Wolfe | ||||||||
Tor, 304 pages | ||||||||
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A review by Chris Przybyszewski
However, I will not base this review on my personal involvement (read: none) with the author or on his past accolades. Instead,
I base my comments solely on the text called Innocents Aboard, a collection of short stories that appear for the first
time in collection. The individual stories have appeared across the gamut of the publication world, in places like the The
Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Realms of Fantasy, The Infinite Matrix,
The Readercon 3 Anthology, Grails, Quests, Visitations, and Other Occurrences,
Spirits of Christmas, and others. A quick look at the "copyright acknowledgments" page shows that many of these
stories were written over the last two decades of the last millennium, and a tone in the book is the
change between the old world and the new.
Such is the case of "Under Hill," the tale of an Arthurian Knight who has the chance to change the whole of human history. This
chance comes from a strange courier from the distant future. The courier is a miserable little creature, one who can no longer
tolerate the toils of his present. The courier gives the Knight the means to pacify all other humans, so that they cannot do
violence. The device also would make sure that their future generations would not do violence as well. Given the chance, the
knight demurs, and he throws the peace device into a nearby lake. His reasons are his own, though one expects that it has
something to do with his understanding that his business is a violent one. Without the sword, he is not much of a knight, though
the rules of chivalry would suggest otherwise. Wolfe's comment here is clear: we chose our path. Human history is not the product
of some mystical process of history like many academics would have us believe. Instead, human history is nothing more than a series
of decisions made at any given time.
Upon further reflection, perhaps the Knight did end up making a legend of his own, with the device becoming Excalibur and the pond
in which it was thrown the home of the Lady of the Lake. The coming of Excalibur would mean an end of human folly. Wolfe's reminds
us that it would be the end of the human story as well.
A second theme of Innocence Abroad is the relationship between folklore and personal experience, and the belief one must
exhibit to allow folklore to happen in one's life. Wolfe's stories read with the authority of an urban legend, but with the vitality
and believability of an 18th-century horror story. Wolfe has read his Poe, and the influence is clear as obsessed, first-person
narrators tell stories whose occurrence they barely believe themselves. As an interesting aside, Wolfe dedicates this book
to "John Cramer, PhD, Captain Wesley Besse, and everyone else who attended -- or is attending -- Edgar
Allan Poe Elementary School." Hmmm.
A first example is "The Wrapper," in which an IT specialist is given an Aleph in the form of a candy wrapper. The giver of
the wrapper, a small child, enters and leaves the man's life briefly, leaving only the small piece of colored cellophane
behind. When the main character looks through the wrapper, he is presented with a world without boundaries, a world in all its
detail and all its imaginations. The incredulous narrator can scarcely believe the thing he holds, and his fear is palpable. Wolfe
walks that line between the extraordinary and the unbelievable by focusing on the experience of this narrator. This guy
certainly believes he has experienced the things he thinks he has experienced. The reader will believe as well.
Another example comes from "The Eleventh City," where a professional folklorist comes face to face with an apparently true
story of a demonic pig that dates back to the New Testament. Slyly, Wolfe does not allow Cooper to experience this bizarre
happening between a local engineer, his girlfriend, and the neighborhood witch. Instead, Cooper must judge for himself
whether the event happened based on the engineer's story to him at the local cantina. An easier route would have put the
narrator into the midst of the story as in "The Wrapper." The difference is that while the first story features only the
psychological happenings of the narrator, the second includes multiple characters, action, and dialogue. The choice of
narrator turns "The Eleventh City" from typical folklore cum reality into an inquisition of just how much of this folklore
stuff is real, and how does that same folklore stuff play in our everyday lives.
Wolfe's answer: that folklore stuff is important. Pay attention to the stories around you.
Chris learned to read from books of fantasy and science fiction, in that order. And any time he can find a graphic novel that inspires, that's good too. |
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