Excellent review. Gene Wolfe is my favorite author, and what you said at the end about spacing out your reads of his because you treasure them resonates strongly with me. I do the same, and love that I have so much of his work to still look forward to. Borrowed Man was fun, I think I know what the puzzle pieces are he’s leaving, and when he’s explaining how the puzzle works, but need to give it a reread with a notepad and try to figure it out.
Thank you! Hoping to read the sequel, “Interlibrary Loan” this year and crossing my fingers for “Home Fires” too. Both have been waiting for me too long.
I haven't read any Gene Wolfe yet, but this is one of the most interesting premises I've heard in a while! I also appreciated your definition of a hardboiled detective. I took a mystery writing class in college but I feel like it was never laid out so clearly
Thanks! I’m glad the description helps. I love hard boiled detective stories and the robot/android/clone detective trope sci-fi uses to riff on it. I worry that there’s a bit of elitism around Gene Wolfe’s writing and that people new to him will be put off by that. To me he just asks that you trust him and enjoy the ride. Nothing else. But I would not recommend his Solar (New/Long/Short) Sun series until you’ve tried something else of his. The Borrowed Man is a pretty good place to start. 😁
@@literallybooks re: elitism I agree completely! There are elements of the Wolfe fandom that are doing no favors either to new readers or potential readers of Wolfe. The great thing about Wolfe is that you can enjoy the surface on first read, and then keep coming back for new layers.
I think that Smith can write this story for two reasons that support each other. First: he uses a very different tone than the exposition of his novels. I think that his narration in this story must be pretty close to how he spoke during his first life. Second: he is using a screen to do the word processing. He mentions that he doesn't really know how to use them at one point, so he presumably wrote with a pencil, or possibly a typewriter during his first life. Note that he has to use voice to text if he wants to render his spoken words as he can't write in the same style that he did in his first life. Arabella can't compose poetry, because it would be the same writing style as her first life. Maybe she could do Old English alliterative verse or something else that was completely different than the composition from her first life.
Thank you for bringing this up. One thing I appreciate about Wolfe is that he rarely comes out and says, “this thing is this way.” We’re left to puzzle out solutions. This seems to fit very well. Smithe has to follow the letter of the law not the spirit. A sort of riff of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics where the characters always try to find a work around. Only in Smithe’s world the “programmers” weren’t quite so diligent. Thanks!
