Young People Read Old SFF

The Island of Doctor Death and other stories

Gene Wolfe

Young People Read Old SFF

30 Jun, 2024

July’s Nebula finalist is ​“The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” by Gene Wolfe. ​“The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” first appeared in Orbit 7. 

The Wolfe was not the only finalist sourced from Damon Knight’s Orbit series. Of the seven finalists, three (“Entire and Perfect Chrysolite” by R. A. Lafferty, ​“The Creation of Bennie Good” by James Sallis, and ​“A Cold Dark Night with Snow” by Kate Wilhelm) were first published in Orbit 6, three (“Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” by Gene Wolfe, ​“In the Queue” by Keith Laumer, and ​“A Dream at Noonday” by Gardner Dozois) were first published from Orbit 7. The only non-Orbit short story finalist was ​“By the Falls” by Harry Harrison, which first appeared New Worlds of Fantasy #2.

SF’s Old Guard was not well pleased by Orbit’s showing. Orbit’s stories smacked of New Wave-style ​“non-functional word patterns”. To express their displeasure, the grognards orchestrated a No Award for the entire category. Details here.

Our cultural context is very different from that more than half a century ago, and the whole New Wave vs old fashioned SF dispute as dead as many of the people involved. Nevertheless, one must wonder whether the Young People will react to Wolfe’s story with the enthusiasm of the voters who got ​“Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” onto the ballot or the righteous fury of the cabal who, discovering broccoli in their ice cream, made sure nothing won the short story Nebula that year. 

Let’s find out! 

Brian:

Reread this the other day, but now I’m listening to the Podcastle reading while writing my thoughts. ​“The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” was Wolfe’s first Nebula nomination, and in hindsight it’s crazy to think he would win only two Nebulas, given his fiction often seems designed to win them. If I remember right Isaac Asimov, when presenting the Nebula for Best Short Story, announced this story as the winner, but it actually did not win. There was no winner for Short Story that year. In hindsight it probably should’ve won, but at the same time I’d argue it’s actually not SFF at all; it’s a literary story that happens to involve an SF metanarrative. (edited)

A few things that make this story unusual. It’s written in the second person, which will have implications. Tackman is our protagonist, but given the second-person mode the reader is clearly supposed to be placed in Tackman’s shoes, which explains why Tackman is basically a stand-in for the average young SF reader, the kind of person who would’ve been an adult reader in 1970 but who really could’ve grown up reading H. G. Wells. This is not a coming-of-age narrative but a highly symbol-laden portrait of a young boy’s day-to-day life: his begrudged hanging out with Jason, who seems to be his mom’s latest boyfriend, his mom being divorced and, as it turns out, a drug addict. To escape his life, he retreats into an old SF novel which is totally not The Island of Doctor Moreau but is clearly supposed to make us think of that book. Was Wells’s novel not in the public domain at this point? Anyway, Tackman imagines himself in the world of the novel, with the characters — Doctor Death, the beat folk, etc. — coming alive for him. But of course, these are just characters in a story — but so is Tackman.

If we’re to take this as SF then we have to take the ending as the implication that Doctor Death, who up to this point we were supposed to take as a figment of Tackman’s imagination, all but informs the boy that he himself is a figment of someone else’s imagination. This being Wolfe, there’s some not-very-subtle Christian symbolism thrown in, including an invocation of the Adam-and-Eve narrative. ​“Did God make Eve […] when He took her from Adam’s rib, or did Adam make the bone, and God alter it to become what He wished?” Death is referring to his beast folk, but he’s also making a statement on the relationship between Wolfe, the creator, and his characters. Ultimately the characters of the book inside the story prove to be no less real than the characters outside it — at least to Tackman. It’s about our relationships with stories and how characters can seem real to us; we can think of our favorite characters as like real people.

This is good Wolfe. It’s brainy and meta, but also playful. Even the light misogyny that Wolfe is often guilty of can be explained here by Tackman’s age and his view of the world, so for example it makes sense that he struggles to understand his mother as a person — that is indeed part of the point of the thing. If someone wants to get into Wolfe and doesn’t wanna commit to a four-book series then this is a good starting point. Wolfe’s fanbase can be really ​“passionate” (annoying), so it’s easy to forget he actually did do very good work at times.

Rose:

This story stood out to me for a few reasons. It uses surrealism and reality blending to draw in readers while simultaneously trusting them to let go of confusion and accept the story they are in. Very few writers are confident enough to let questions go unanswered or allow readers to experience confusion/conflicting reality. Wolf applies what I like to call stucco prose or prose that feels cut off, potentially disjointed, and ​“splattered”. The work he produced has two distinct writing styles which melded and commingled in ways that felt uncomfortable at times and eerily normal in others. Having a character speak with the sort of affluence and verboseness of Dr. Death in a world full of shorter sentences and one-word answers to questions is startling and I think it is meant to be. The mix of kitchen sink realism that is the dinner sequence with the balcony and the car ride home and the genuine supernatural fantasy of the book world as it comes into being with Tackman’s actual life is enthralling. I like that Wolfe feels no need to let us know if these characters ever actually existed or not. I also appreciate the repetitive nature of each dialogue. It is new but feels like something I’ve heard before if a way that I find charming and which helps to bring depth to the final lines of the story. The store additionally benefits from a child’s lens and a childlike flow. Things do not need to be the biggest scariest worst things in the world they only need to be recognizable to the adult audience in ways that can bring us fear. Tackman does not really understand drugs or addiction or what kind of life he is stuck in. He has only the frame of reference that a child is privy to: understanding how and when groups get mad or yell, knowing what images are scary like a man with a big needle standing over a helpless woman, or what kinds of reactions outside stimuli can garner from his small world. It is effective in making us fear even when he does not, which only makes us fear more because he does not know his danger. All in I think this is a really wonderfully written piece with compelling plot and characterization. Likely my favourite piece I’ve read for this project thus far.

Kris:

I am afraid I am going to be the odd-one out here, as it didn’t really work for me. I am yet to honestly find something of Wolfe’s that does for me.

I think partially it is that I am not a fan of Pastiche, so to see those elements in there meant I was bored by those sections. On the complete opposite side of things, I didn’t feel that Wolfe had actually done anything particularly interesting in terms of meta-fiction compared with other writers I enjoy. He is certainly no Calvino or Borges.

So, it sits in a weird middle place for me where I didn’t feel it worked well in the parts I should have easily enjoyed and those areas that I don’t usually enjoy did not exceed my expectations.

So as such, just a not for me tale.