Rating: 
Summary: A collection to treasure.
Review: "The Island of Doctor Death ..." has finally been reprinted by Orb Books after being out of print for many years. It is, quite simply, one of the most remarkable collections of short stories in contemporary American literature. "Seven American Nights" recounts the travels of a foreign tourist in a future Washington, D.C. "Tracking Song" is a haunting tale of a man in search of his identity as he struggles to survive in an alien environment. "The Eyeflash Miracles" tells of a remarkable and innocent young boy who falls prey to a couple of con artists. These are some of my favorites, but each of these fourteen tales has its own magic to work upon the thoughtful reader. What makes Gene Wolfe special is not only his wonderful imagination and evocative use of language, but his humanity, which is evident in the colorful and surprising characters you will encounter on page after page. I first read this book several years ago an! d made the mistake of lending it to a friend who was clever enough not to return it. I have been searching for another copy ever since. I bought a copy of the reprint the day it arrived in stores and have come back to the stories again and again. No doubt my new copy will soon be in the same tattered state as my old one--but I won't make the mistake of lending this one out. Do yourself a favor--buy this book, read it and reread it, and never, ever lend it to a friend. I guarantee it will never be returned.
Rating:
Summary: A collection to treasure.
Review: "The Island of Doctor Death ..." has finally been reprinted by Orb Books after being out of print for many years. It is, quite simply, one of the most remarkable collections of short stories in contemporary American literature. "Seven American Nights" recounts the travels of a foreign tourist in a future Washington, D.C. "Tracking Song" is a haunting tale of a man in search of his identity as he struggles to survive in an alien environment. "The Eyeflash Miracles" tells of a remarkable and innocent young boy who falls prey to a couple of con artists. These are some of my favorites, but each of these fourteen tales has its own magic to work upon the thoughtful reader. What makes Gene Wolfe special is not only his wonderful imagination and evocative use of language, but his humanity, which is evident in the colorful and surprising characters you will encounter on page after page. I first read this book several years ago an! d made the mistake of lending it to a friend who was clever enough not to return it. I have been searching for another copy ever since. I bought a copy of the reprint the day it arrived in stores and have come back to the stories again and again. No doubt my new copy will soon be in the same tattered state as my old one--but I won't make the mistake of lending this one out. Do yourself a favor--buy this book, read it and reread it, and never, ever lend it to a friend. I guarantee it will never be returned.
Rating: 
Summary: A superb collection
Review: "The Island of Doctor Death and other stories," "The Death of Doctor Island"; "Tracking Song"; "The Eyeflash Miracles"; "Seven American Nights" are all worth the price of the book alone. The only problem is I didn't get some stories like "Paper Tigers" or "Three Fingers". Aside from that I really enjoyed this collection.
Rating:
Summary: I ripped this book in half and threw it across the room
Review: And then I taped it back together and read it again and again. One of the stories was just a bit to painful... If you loved the Urth of the New Sun books, hang onto your hat! Wolfe is at his best in these short stories.
Rating:
Summary: Wolfe's best collection.
Review: His Castle of Days comes at the second place.
One other reviewer called this a perfect introduction to Wolfe. It certainly is. Do not begin with The Fifth Head of Cerberus. That one might turn you off.
Wolfe is at his best in these short stories and he keeps publishing them. I hope an additional collection will appear. Even in his novels Gene Wolfe holds tight to his concept of creating tiny gems of writing. Every chapter in the Book of the New Sun could be seen as a short story. Some of them might well stand alone. Will make some weird reading, but that's Wolfe.
This is a review of this collection, so I will return to this book now. This language is one of the best prose I have yet encountered. Vladimir Nabokov is another superb stylist. If the language won't sedate you the ideas will.
This is so good! On par with the greatest of short story writers. Certainly the top of SF in general.
I'm not giving away anything. Just buy yourself a copy and start reading, slowly. Give it the time it needs. SF readers are generally not used to this kind of writing, but don't think you can't handle it. I don't think that many non-SF/F readers come here, but that's fine. They don't know what they're missing.
Other readers recommended the more favorite stories in this collection. Follow their advice. Start with them.
Rating:
Summary: This is one of the best short story collections ever.
Review: I'm usually hesitant about rating books as 9s or 10s on Amazon's scale. There are only perhaps a few dozen books of all time that I'd rate as 10s, and they tend to be written by the likes of Tolstoy and Cervantes. Even within a narrow category, where 10 means "best of this category," I'm hesitant about giving 10s. But, whether the caterory is "modern science fiction" or "20th century short story collections," Gene Wolfe's The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories gets at least a 9 or 9.5 (and we can round that off to 10 since 9.5 isn't one of the choices).
Wolfe's collection is superb. It features all three of his Island -- Doctor -- Death stories ("The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories," "The Death of Dr. Island," and the "Doctor of Death Island"), all three of which are superb. The collection also features such wonderful short works as "Seven American Nights," "Alien Stones," The Hero as Werewolf," and "The Eyeflash Miracles."
As you can probably guess from the title, the three Island -- Doctor -- Death stories form the heart of the collection. They are amazing not only in that all are great stories but that, despite the title similarities, each is different from the other. "The Island of Dr. Death," deals with a young boy who flees life by entering the fantasy world of the book he is reading -- a book that sounds as if it were The Island of Dr. Moreau as written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. "The Death of Dr. Island," possibly the best story in the book and one of the best SF stories ever written, deals with a three young sociopaths receiving therapy in a space station. Dr. Island is the "island" in the space station providing the therapy. The story examines human interaction, as well as what we do and don't value in life, on multiple levels. "The Doctor of Death Island" involves a prisoner who awakes from a cryogenic sleep only to find that humans are now virtually immortal and that a life sentence is still a life sentence. The ending is literally Dickensian. There is not a bad story in this book. The collection as a whole ranks with the best Wolfe has produced, which means that it compares favorably not only to any SF you care to mention but to any modern fiction you care to mention
Rating:
Summary: A book that might became part of you
Review: I've been keeping an eye out for this book since I lost my only copy in 1988 or so At the time I read them (age about 20) they were the most moving and mysterious stories I had ever read. In my teens I read mainly science fiction, and it all seemed to lead to Gene Wolfe, who is the only science fiction author I have any time for these days. (I've read The Fifth Head of Cerberus about 5 times now, and keep noticing new things.) There's no denying that Gene Wolfe is a very variable author. And wordy, and kind of baroque and labyrinthine (I'm a bit wordy myself), and he has kind of a special way of viewing women and sex. (It's not too difficult to see something a little unsubtly phallic in all these stories of guys charging around with enormous swords, for example.) But if you can swallow the lumps, or leave them on the side of your plate, there are elements in his stories that get to a very deep part of you, and stay with you for a long time. If you can handle stories that read like adventures, but affect you like dreams; if you can handle an author who in his greatest work comes again and again to the themes of cannibalism, aberrations of memory, and confusion of identity; if you can handle sudden ambiguity in the very things you were most sure of; if you appreciate Kafka's sense of humour, or Mark Twain's, or Borges's, or Daffy Duck's; if you can handle an author who can write three stories called The Island of Doctor Death [and Other Stories], The Doctor of Death Isand, and The Death of Doctor Island, where each story is totally unrelated, beautiful, and perfectly well-titled; if you can handle reading an anthology that has to be called The Island Of Doctor Death And Other Stories And Other Stories, because the title story is already called The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories--or which contains a story called The Hero as Werwolf, which has a missing 'e' in the title because it could just as well have been called 'The Wolf Gene'... If you can handle it, then you'll handle it, I guess. As you can see, I could go on for ever. You might grow a little impatient with Gene Wolfe sometimes, if you try to read everything he's ever written (I'm sure he feels the same about us, too), but not in this anthology.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect introduction to Gene Wolfe
Review: If you've read some reviews of Gene Wolfe, you've probably noticed an interesting trend. People either love him, or they hate him. This isn't such a great thing when you're not sure into which category you'll fall! Well, here's a collection of his works, broad enough and good enough so that you'll know by the end of it whether you are a fan, or whether his work is unswimmably deep for you.
Let me say that Wolfe is not casual reading. A deep, thorough exploration of his works will leave you re-examining your points of view on subjects as diverse as Christianity (The Urth of the New Sun series), the future of mankind (most of his works), the role of personal enterprise in capitalism (Hour of Trust, reprinted here), psychiatric medicine and it's practice (The death of Doctor Island, also reprinted here), and the origin of numerology (Alien Stones, possibly one of his best works, included). That's a rather short list of the things that Wolfe has left me pondering, late into the night, forced to re-examine my views in the light of the understanding he applied to each.
If that sound a bit thick, allow me a quick quote:
"You know nothing. You are like a child who has wandered by accident into a theatre half a minute before the final curtain. You see people moving about, some masked; you hear music, observe actions you do not understand. But you do not know if the play is a tragedy or a comedy, or even know whether those you see are the actors or the audience."
If the quote appeals to you, catches your interest, give this book a try. It is a great series of Science Fiction stories, written by an absolute master. If it doesn't even vaguely interest you, you might want to look further. Indra
Rating:
Summary: An uneven collection, but there are some fantastic stories
Review: 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 wonder why exactly Wolfe receives so much praise, for "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories" (1970) is a very immature work, an unconvincingly written tale of child whose love of pulp adventure magazines helps him escape a broken home. The next story, "Alien Stones", dates from two years later and shows a dramatic improvement in Wolfe's writing. On the surface it appears to be about a spaceship crew exploring an abandoned alien vessel, but under the surface hints at a darker story. Wolfe, like Larry Niven in his 60's hard science-fiction works, unfortunately underestimates the progress of technology---his spacecraft's computer uses CRT's and manual switches---and his far-future female character seems supiciously like a stereotypical ditz of the early 1970's. Nonetheless, the strong storytelling and intricate plot more than make up for this. "Three Fingers" is a short diversion, an enhibition of Wolfe's droll sense of humour. "Tracking Song" is another of the high points of the volume, the chronicle of a journey on a frozen world where humanity has evolved into myriad diverse forms. The narration is reminiscent of Wolfe's first great novel, THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS. If this collection begins with Wolfe's weakest story, it ends with one of his best. "Seven American Nights" is the record of an Iranian visiting a bizarre post-apocalyptic America for less than honourable purposes, an ironic reversal of the phenomenon of 60's hippies visiting the Middle East for drug tourism. The novella contains the hallmarks of Wolfe's finest writing: unreliable narration, casual relevations, fantastic world-building, the perpetual feeling that the reader isn't getting the whole story, and an ending that shows that all the plot's secrets were really right there in the text all along. This is a powerful work, and it is worth buying the entire collection just for it. While perhaps not ideal for the reader who hasn't read anything but Wolfe yet, this is an excellent work to turn to next if you enjoyed one of his accessible works like The Book of the New Sun, PEACE, or THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant masterpiece of storytelling
Review: The true art of the storyteller is often built on what is not said as much as what is said. Gene Wolfe is a master of this, and in his collection of short stories "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Storis and Other Stories" he truly excells at telling the reader no more than they need to create a clear image in the imagination. One brilliant facet that makes this collection so interesting is his bredth of topics...from Lycanthropy to future psychology, from toy making to the future of warfare, this collection takes the reader on a breathtaking journey into the imagination. The ability to wholely transport a reader to another place in the span of a few sentences is a real gift, and this collection is a showcase of that talent. Highly recommended for the sci-fi, fantasy and story-loving buff.
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