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23rd out of 312 books
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104 voters
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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.
Paperback, 384 pages
Published
July 15th 1997
by Orb Books
(first published 1980)
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"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...more
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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 sto...more
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 sto...more
Andrew
rated it
Recommends it for:
people who want to expand into weird and underappreciated short fiction
Shelves:
ithinkthisiswhereiputstuffivefinish
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 ar...more
Throughout the 1970s Gene Wolfe was perhaps a more committed writer of short stories than he was a novelist. This collection features many of the best of them, from very short puzzling pieces like 'La Befana' to, long dazzling pieces like '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 there is to say enough to bring some shape to the stuff left unsa...more
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 there is to say enough to bring some shape to the stuff left unsa...more
Manny
rated it
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 Que...more
This book was such a disappointment. I'd been wanting to read Wolfe for years and thought the collection of short stories would be a good place to start. Plus, a friend had highly recommended the story 'The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories'. After reading the collection, I have to admit that I had to force myself to finish the book. It's not that the stories are written badly, they're written wonderfully, and for the most part I started each story thinking, 'this will be the one that red...more
Although it received awards this is exactly the sort of science fiction that gives science fiction a bad name. It was ultimately depressing. The author is a geek and in every story some other geeky guy gets a hot babe in a really banal way. I know William Gibson does it too but its ok when he does it. Trust me. Neither artist nor philosopher some of his stories probably seemed new at the time in a cyber punky sort of way. Perhaps the science part of science fiction does go obsolete but when you...more
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 Her...more
I've read a half dozen of Gene Wolfe's books and loved them without understanding them. This one takes the top prize--I don't think I get what happens in half of the stories. Yet I keep reading him. Not sure if that's something I should be admitting, but he's doing something right, since I bought a second copy of this one after losing track of the earlier mass market paperback. His stuff is certainly stimulating, and I hope some night I wake up and just 'get' him. But he doesn't bore me, an...more
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. Tha...more
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 ...more
Certainly one of Wolfe's better books of short stories. However none of the stories quite reach the poignancy of his first rank works, such as the novellas in The Fifth Head of Cerberus. To appreciate Wolfe's stories you have to be able to accept the limited and very unreliable viewpoint of his characters. If you can consider the story and what the story tells about the storyteller in the book then you will get a lot more from Wolfe. In this he is like a science fiction (oh I hate the term) Faul...more
I can't rate it because I only read a few of the stories.
I read them because they were related to LOST or so said my papa. And they were were.
The first one I read, "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories," which was basically about a little boy who was a part of a monster story and didn't know it.
The second one I read was "The Death of Doctor Island" which was the most clearly LOST related one...and it was kind of awesome...about a simulate...more
I read them because they were related to LOST or so said my papa. And they were were.
The first one I read, "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories," which was basically about a little boy who was a part of a monster story and didn't know it.
The second one I read was "The Death of Doctor Island" which was the most clearly LOST related one...and it was kind of awesome...about a simulate...more
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 themselv...more
THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR DEATH AND OTHER STORIES AND OTHER STORIES (yes, it's supposed to be titled that way), first published in 1980, is Gene Wolfe's first collection of short stories. It brings together 14 works published in the 1970's, some of which originally appeared in Damon Knight's "Orbit" anthologies. Like with any collection of short stories it ranges widely, but the volume does contain some of Wolfe's finest pieces.
The first story in this book may make the reader wo...more
The first story in this book may make the reader wo...more
Unfortunately, short stories, novellas and novelettes are rarely my thing. I get just caught up enough in them to start really enjoying them and then they end. Eh, what can you do? As is, I can't quite decide whether I liked this book or I really liked it.
If any of the three main stories (the doctor / death / island cycle) had been full fledged novels I probably would have loved them. I also really enjoyed "the eyeflash miracles" and "seven american nights". ...more
If any of the three main stories (the doctor / death / island cycle) had been full fledged novels I probably would have loved them. I also really enjoyed "the eyeflash miracles" and "seven american nights". ...more
[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 Samuel Delany and Rushdie and others before them [Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Poe, LeGuin], 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 ...more
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 Samuel Delany and Rushdie and others before them [Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Poe, LeGuin], 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 ...more
This is my all-time favorite story collection. I'll have to review it entry by entry when I have more than five minutes available.
Perhaps the single greatest sf short story collection ever published.
one of my favorite short story collections
Wybór opowiadań Gene Wolfe'a, jednego z lepszych autorów fantastyki, dokonany przez Arkadiusza Nakoniecznika, tłumacza i wielbiciela dzieł tego autora. Zbioru nie charakteryzuje jakaś myśl przewodnia, opowiadania te zostały wybrane by przedstawić polskiemu czytelnikowi reprezentatywną część twórczości Wolfe'a. Każde z opowiadań zostało napisane z niezwykłym wyczuciem języka, pięknym stylem i okraszone niezwykłym nastrojem. Polecam ten zbiór dla chcących zapoznać się z tym niezwykłym autorem.
I'm only a few pages into this book, and already it is good. Gene Wolfe realy knows how to write a sentence! This may seem kind of like a weird compliment, but it's really a high one in my book. I had the good fortune to hear him read at World Fantasy this year, and his prose style carries as well on the page as spoken aloud. I'll be working through this in my few bits of spare time over the next month or so.
Excellent collection of short stories. Wolfe manages to skew one's external perspectives, without alienating the reader from the internal narrative. For example, in Seven American Nights, a cosmopolitan playboy from Persia visits a decaying/post-apocalyptic? America and decides to immerse himself in its native rituals, in order to get a more authentic experience of its culture.
The best stories here in my opinion are the following:
* "The Death of Dr. Island"
* "Tracking Song"
* "The Doctor of Death Island"
* "Seven American Nights"
I think these all qualify as novellas, actually.
* "The Death of Dr. Island"
* "Tracking Song"
* "The Doctor of Death Island"
* "Seven American Nights"
I think these all qualify as novellas, actually.
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.
LaShawn
marked it as to-read
I finally took this back to the library after reading a couple of stories. Just couldn't get into it.
Solid collection of Wolfe short stories, the title story and its variants are especially strong.
Catherine
marked it as to-read
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Gene Wolfe is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is 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 is 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 C...more
More about Gene Wolfe...
While attending Texas A&M University Wolfe published his first speculative fiction in The C...more
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