From: "Alice Turner" <akt@attglobal.net>
Subject: (urth) ST review
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2000 10:51:29 

From the NY Times, 1/16/00, Gerald Jonas column:

    Gene Wolfe's reputation as one of modern science fictions most impotant
writers rests largely on his series of novels about redemption, known by
their collective title, "The Boo of the New Sun." While rich in characters
and incident. they are best remembered for their almost palpable atmosphere
of inertia: in a far-future civilization exhausted by the weight of its
past, only the slow decay of tradition can lay the groundwork for a new
beginning.

    The short stories collected in STRANGE TRAVELERS--all written and first
published in the 1990s--share a fascination with inertia. The book opens and
closes with complimentary views of a society coming into existence around a
massive traffic jam. Unable or unwilling to abandon their imobile vehicles,
drivers and passengers create new roles for themselves, their agony redeemed
by fitful acts of kindness and creativity.

    It is never easy to tell in Wolfe's short fictions where reality ends
and dream begins. People who may be dead dream of dying, and even their
waking may signal a kind of death. Wolfe can write about ghosts and demons
in a style entirely free of whimsy or conventional horror, and he can make
straightforward science fiction sound like folk legends and wisdom tales. If
there is a single point to stories so varied and skilful, it is that what
happens is always less important than the people it happens to.


*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/