Innocents Aboard

A collection of short stories.

Locus Award nominee 2005.

Contents:

• Introduction by Gene Wolfe
  
• The Tree Is My Hat
• The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun
• The Friendship Light
• Slow Children At Play
• Under Hill
• The Monday Man
• The Waif
• The Legend of Xi Cygnus
• The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun
• How the Bishop Sailed to Inniskeen
• Houston, 1943
• A Fish Story
• Wolfer
• The Eleventh City
• The Night Chough
• The Wrapper
• A Traveler in Desert Lands
• The Walking Sticks
• Queen
• Pocketsful of Diamonds
• Copperhead
• The Lost Pilgrim

GENE WOLFE has spent a long career collecting admiring reviews from readers and fellow writers across the spectrum of tastes and continues to produce top-notch work at all lengths. Perhaps best-known for his extended science fiction/science fantasy opus encompassing The Book of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, and The Book of the Short Sun, he nonetheless demonstrates unsurpassed skill in writing across all the genres of the fantastic: from hard science to high fantasy with stops along the way in contemporary fantasy, magical realism, horror, ghost stories, and everything in-between.

This collection appears between the publication of the two volumes of his latest masterwork,The Wizard Knight, and, for the first time, focuses solely on his shorter works of fantasy and horror. As he himself admits in his short intorduction, he believes in ghosts, "having had Certain Experiences," and he brings an authenticity of feeling and a true conviction to the stories in which ghosts appear. In fact, "Houston, 1943" contains much material that is autobiographical, although it has to be left as an exercise for the reader to decide where fact leaves off and fiction begins.

Once you begin reading his words, you have surrendered yourself into the hands of a master storyteller. You can't ever be sure exactly what will happen, but you can be utterly confident that the story will be surprising and challenging, that you will be entertained and transported to places you would never imagine on your own, and that you will remember the experience for a very long time. So, open the book, start the first story, and prepare yourself for the thrill ride of a lifetime. Terror, wonder, awe, and surprise are all lurking within, awaiting the opportunity to leap out and clutch at your heart.