{"id":704,"date":"2002-03-29T16:06:52","date_gmt":"2002-03-29T16:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/?p=704"},"modified":"2016-10-05T16:10:48","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T16:10:48","slug":"strange-travelers-by-gene-wolfe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/book-review\/science-fiction\/anthology-science-fiction\/strange-travelers-by-gene-wolfe\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange Travelers, by Gene Wolfe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Strange-Travelers-by-Gene-Wolfe-e1475683762514.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-705\" src=\"http:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Strange-Travelers-by-Gene-Wolfe-165x250.jpg\" alt=\"strange-travelers-by-gene-wolfe\" width=\"165\" height=\"250\" \/><\/a><strong>Genre: Science Fiction Anthology<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Publisher: St. Martin&#8217;s Press<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Published: 2000<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Reviewer Rating: <img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-274\" src=\"http:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/uploads\/2001\/12\/fourstars.gif\" alt=\"fourstars\" width=\"45\" height=\"13\" \/><\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Book Review by Aaron M. Renn<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Have you read this book?<br \/>\n<span id=\"post-ratings-704\" class=\"post-ratings\" data-nonce=\"c71e038d1b\">Why not rate it! <img id=\"rating_704_1\" src=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-postratings\/images\/stars\/rating_off.gif\" alt=\"1 Star\" title=\"1 Star\" onmouseover=\"current_rating(704, 1, '1 Star');\" onmouseout=\"ratings_off(0, 0, 0);\" onclick=\"rate_post();\" onkeypress=\"rate_post();\" style=\"cursor: pointer; border: 0px;\" \/><img id=\"rating_704_2\" src=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-postratings\/images\/stars\/rating_off.gif\" alt=\"2 Stars\" title=\"2 Stars\" onmouseover=\"current_rating(704, 2, '2 Stars');\" onmouseout=\"ratings_off(0, 0, 0);\" onclick=\"rate_post();\" onkeypress=\"rate_post();\" style=\"cursor: pointer; border: 0px;\" \/><img id=\"rating_704_3\" src=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-postratings\/images\/stars\/rating_off.gif\" alt=\"3 Stars\" title=\"3 Stars\" onmouseover=\"current_rating(704, 3, '3 Stars');\" onmouseout=\"ratings_off(0, 0, 0);\" onclick=\"rate_post();\" onkeypress=\"rate_post();\" style=\"cursor: pointer; border: 0px;\" \/><img id=\"rating_704_4\" src=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-postratings\/images\/stars\/rating_off.gif\" alt=\"4 Stars\" title=\"4 Stars\" onmouseover=\"current_rating(704, 4, '4 Stars');\" onmouseout=\"ratings_off(0, 0, 0);\" onclick=\"rate_post();\" onkeypress=\"rate_post();\" style=\"cursor: pointer; border: 0px;\" \/><img id=\"rating_704_5\" src=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-postratings\/images\/stars\/rating_off.gif\" alt=\"5 Stars\" title=\"5 Stars\" onmouseover=\"current_rating(704, 5, '5 Stars');\" onmouseout=\"ratings_off(0, 0, 0);\" onclick=\"rate_post();\" onkeypress=\"rate_post();\" style=\"cursor: pointer; border: 0px;\" \/> <br \/><span class=\"post-ratings-text\" id=\"ratings_704_text\"><\/span><\/span><span id=\"post-ratings-704-loading\" class=\"post-ratings-loading\"><img src=\"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-postratings\/images\/loading.gif\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" class=\"post-ratings-image\" \/>Loading...<\/span><\/p>\n<p>This is a solid collection of Gene Wolfe short stories. They are a diverse lot, having only excellence in common. I&#8217;ll admit that I&#8217;m really not a big fan of short fiction, but the recent collections I&#8217;ve read are starting to convert me.<\/p>\n<p>My readings of Wolfe consist of only this collection and the recent &#8220;On Blue&#8217;s Waters&#8221;, so I obviously don&#8217;t have a lot of experience upon which to judge things. However, I&#8217;m starting to get the impression that Wolfe has a certain shall we say &#8220;motif&#8221; that is common to much of his work. This consists of a high tech setting, perhaps during or after some type of societal &#8220;fall&#8221;, but one in which the characters do not fully comprehend the true nature of things such that the technology appears almost magical. This could be because the character is a child, or is living in a post-tech future, or because the technology is so advanced that there is no need for humans to really try to know it.<\/p>\n<p>There also seems to be a certain similarity in his lead characters, especially those who narrate their own tales, though I&#8217;ve not really pinned this down exactly. I don&#8217;t suggest that these similarities are bad, or make his stories seem like clones because they don&#8217;t. I&#8217;m just speculating on things based on what I&#8217;ve read to date and I needed something to say in this review besides &#8220;It&#8217;s great!&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>One interesting thing to note is that Wolfe does not give cutesy intros to any of these stories. They stand alone and unadorned, which I liked a lot.<\/p>\n<div class=\"buy\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Strange-Travelers-New-Selected-Stories\/dp\/031287278X\">Click here to buy Strange Travelers, by Gene Wolfe on Amazon<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Genre: Science Fiction Anthology Publisher: St. Martin&#8217;s Press Published: 2000 Reviewer Rating: Book Review by Aaron M. Renn Have you read this book? This is a solid collection of Gene Wolfe short stories. They are a diverse lot, having only excellence in common. I&#8217;ll admit that I&#8217;m really not a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[154],"tags":[71,142,179,46,92],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfreader.com\/r\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}