We just got through three blog posts about stories by one of the more challenging SF writers, a man beloved by critics whom we might associate with the New Wave but who doesn't share the leftist politics of the most prominent New Wave leaders like Michael Moorcock and Judith Merril. I refer to R. A. Lafferty, but the same description might fit Gene Wolfe. Wolfe came to mind for multiple reasons while I read Lafferty the last few days, so let's read three stories by Wolfe I do not think I have read before that have been chosen more or less at random.
"The Headless Man" (1972)
This story debuted in an anthology I should check out because it contains stories by numerous people I read, Terry Carr's
Universe 2. Joachim Boaz wrote about Universe 2 back in 2016, and after I get a few stories from it under my belt, I'll reread his blog post and see to what extent we are on the same page.
When Universe 2 was translated into Dutch, it was retitled, and our pals over in the Netherlands used Wolfe's story, "The Headless Man" as the title story. "The Headless Man" would be reprinted in the Wolfe collection Endangered Species; I have owned the red paperback Tor edition of Endangered Species forever, so I'll be reading it in there. (Way back in 2015 I blogged about three stories from Endangered Species about your favorite topic--mysterious women!) "The Headless Man" came to mind because I saw it in the contents list of the French anthology Univers 05 (complete with oh la la cover!) when looking up where Lafferty's "Entire and Perfect Chrysolite" was reprinted.
I'm going to have to admit I don't think I understand this one. The narrator explains that he was born without a head, and has a face on his torse--huge eyes where an ordinary man's nipples are, a huge mouth in his stomach, etc. He relates the incredible story that he has attended school and has lived a more or less ordinary life in public by strapping a fake head and neck to his shoulders, buying shirts that he can see through, and so on. Who could believe that nobody would notice that a guy has a lifeless face with eyes that don't move and so forth? The end of the brief story describes a sexual encounter. Somehow the woman doesn't notice this guy has eyes and a nose and mouth on his torso, and in the dark the narrator thinks that her body looks like it has a face as well, her breasts like eyes, I suppose, the crease in her stomach as she sits like a mouth. And that's the end of the story.
This isn't one of those Twilight Zone type stories in which in the end we realize the story is set on an alien world where everybody has no head--the narrator says again and again he is a one-of-a-kind oddity--and I don't think the woman in the story is a fellow headless person. Maybe it is significant that the woman is practically a prostitute, and they dicker over a price in an oblique way? Is this story about how people don't really look at each other but just see each other as sources of sex or money?
I'm going to have to mark this one down as beyond me and move on with my life. Maybe it is easier to understand in the Dutch translation?
"Thou Spark of Blood" (1970)
"Thou Spark of Blood" came to my attention because it is in the same issue of
If as Lafferty's "Ride a Tin Can" which we read for our last blog post, along with "Entire and Perfect Chrysolite." We might consider this a rare Wolfe story--in 1975 it appeared in the French edition of
Galaxy (which drew its contents from
If,
Galaxy's sister magazine, as well as
Galaxy) but if isfdb is to be believed, it would not be reprinted in English until 2023, in the collection
The Wolfe at the Door. I'm reading "Thou Spark of Blood" in a scan of that American issue of
If.
Here we have one of those pessimistic stories about how mankind may not be up to the challenges of long distance space travel, psychologically and technologically. Many SF writers, Wolfe among them, love murder mysteries, and "Thou Spark of Blood" is also a gory murder mystery full of descriptions of blood and dismemberment and decaying bodies. And, like many SF stories, in the end we find out the characters are in a simulation. I don't have to tell my regular readers that this story is reminding me of the work of our hero Barry N. Malzberg.
The story is short and economical and easier to understand than much of Wolfe's work. Three men are on a trip to Mars, a voyage of like four months, and as they finally approach their destination the psychological stress of the mission is breaking their minds and the three men hate each other. Maybe if the radio hadn't failed, maybe if the stereo hadn't failed, they wouldn't be going bonkers.
Two of the men wake up to find their comrade's throat has been slit. They each assume the other did it. Will these two be able to continue the mission without killing each other? Our first twist ending is the discovery that the dead man committed suicide after sabotaging the mission, essentially laying a trap in hopes his two comrades would join him in death. Our second twist ending is the revelation that the three men are in a simulator, not on their way to Mars at all.
Good.
"On a Vacant Face a Bruise" (2006)
I decided to read this one after seeing its evocative title in the contents list of
The Wolfe at the Door. This story first appeared in a little 40-page volume entitled
Strange Birds that presents two stories by Wolfe "inspired by the artwork of Lisa Snellings-Clark," whom I guess is a friend of Neil Gaiman's. The other story in
Strange Birds is "Sob in the Silence," which I think I read years ago in one of the "Best of the Year" anthologies it appeared in.
I am reading "On a Vacant Face a Bruise" in a scan of Strange Birds.
Genre fiction writers love the circus and carnies and that sort of thing, and "On a Vacant Face a Bruise" is about a circus that travels by star ship through what I guess is a human space empire or space civilization--there are plenty of intelligent aliens, but these are subaltern natives. I'm guessing this is the same universe as the various Sun Cycle books. "On a Vacant Face a Bruise" is a sad story about people, victims of violence and/or some kind of oppression, who come to the circus seeking some place they can belong. Wolfe's work is often counterintuitive or "edgy" and the story presents arguments that parents who strike their children and people who strike their spouses perhaps mean well and maybe their violence is justified. Another theme is the question of who is a person--we've got robots who at first seem to be people, people who seem at first to be robots, and alien people who at first seem to be mere animals--as in Lafferty's "Ride a Tin Can," somebody realizes some "animals" are in fact people and tries to secure for them the rights they have been denied. A related theme is freedom--do all animals and people really want freedom? Is freedom what is best for them, or what they deserve?
As is common in Wolfe stories, "On a Vacant Face a Bruise" contains secrets that are foreshadowed and then sprung on you much later, and various other surprises, and so I read it twice in hopes of catching more of these things. Actual sentences and images are clear and sharp and easy to understand, so the story is a smooth read, and I think all the mysteries regarding what is going on plotwise are cleared up by the time we get to the last page. Wolfe's writing is economical, but still evocative, and it is easy to get emotionally attached to the various characters even though Wolfe doesn't spend a lot of time describing them and their feelings or throwing lots of metaphors at you--every sentence of the story has value, there is no fluff or padding, Wolfe pulls the old heartstrings with a minimum of words or pyrotechnics.
Farm boy Tom is running away, having been beaten at home by his widower father, and comes upon a travelling circus. The circus is protected from people like Tom who can't afford to pay the entrance fee by a high-tech fence (this is one of those stories in which high and low technologies are present in the same milieu--the circus has a star ship and this transparent electrified fence, but people are using oil lamps and horses) but like Tarzan does like a million times, Tom finds a tree with a branch that hangs over the fence and thus he obtains entrance to the circus, after watching the show for free for a while. The hungry kid begs for food and steals some when his request is refused. While he watched her performance from above, a sexy dancer winked at him, and so Tom tries to find her, hoping she'll offer him a free place to sleep for the night. The dancer turns out to be a remote controlled robot--but the woman who controls it likes Tom, and gets him a job with the woman lion tamer.
Tom, who has a way with animals, becomes a full-fledged lion tamer himself, and interacts with the various human, alien, and animal performers of the circus, each interaction dramatizing some theme about violence or freedom that I listed earlier. Tom, a hard worker and a good manager, becomes a partner of the owner of the circus, but the story ends sadly because he is in love with the woman who runs the robot dancer but she leaves the circus to try to find the husband who hits her and has abandoned her.
"On a Vacant Face a Bruise," as I sort of hinted earlier, isn't a rousing defense of liberty or animal rights or a powerful denunciation of domestic violence or cruelty to animals, but more like an illustration of the ambiguities and complexities of life and relationships, with some individuals fighting for freedom, others passing up opportunities to escape their oppressors or exploiters, some characters who are both oppressed and oppressors, and others who are both liberators and exploiters--and of course there is raised the possibility that some individuals are better off in a subordinate role than in a state of freedom.
Thumbs up for "On a Vacant Face a Bruise," a strong representative sample of Wolfe's later body of work (which I feel is distinct from his earlier books, like all those Sun books, which have lots of hard words and in which it can be very hard to tell what the hell is going on.)
**********
"The Headless Man" went right over my head, but I enjoyed the traditional SF thriller "Thou Spark of Blood" and "On a Vacant Face a Bruise" embodies many of the characteristics of Wolfe's work that I admire and find entertaining and moving.
Reading Lafferty and Wolfe kind of takes it out of me, so maybe something more relaxing next time. But I do feel like I have been bitten by the Wolfe bug again, so maybe I'll hunt up more Wolfe short stories I've never read, or at least never blogged, soon.
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