The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories by Gene Wolfe1 (Orbit #7, 1970) is one of his ‘Archipelago’ series and opens with its child protagonist, Tackman Babcock, going to the store with Jason, a man who appears to be his ill mother’s boyfriend. When they get there Tackman sees a book he wants but Jason refuses to buy it. However, when they get back to the car, Jason takes the book out from under his jacket and presents it to the boy. Tackman is delighted, and flicks through the pages while Jason makes unsettling comments about his mother (he is told not to come into her room that evening, and that she is so soft that, when Jason climbs on her, “it’s just like being on a big pillow.”) This begins a thread of domestic unease that runs throughout the story.
The next section of the story is an extract from the book that Tackman has been given, which involves a Captain Philip Ransom floating alone on a raft in the middle of the sea. When he sees land in the distance he starts paddling towards the shore.
Then, when Tackman goes outside the next morning:
A life raft. You run to the beach, jump up and down and wave your cap. “Over here. Over here.”
The man from the raft has no shirt but the cold doesn’t seem to bother him. He holds out his hand and says, “Captain Ransom,” and you take it and are suddenly taller and older; not as tall as he is or as old as he is, but taller and older than yourself. “Tackman Babcock, Captain.”
“Pleased to meet you. You were a friend in need there a minute ago.”
“I guess I didn’t do anything but welcome you ashore.”
“The sound of your voice gave me something to steer for while my eyes were too busy watching that surf. Now you can tell me where I’ve landed and who you are.”
You are walking back up to the house now, and you explain to Ransom about you and Mother, and how she doesn’t want to enroll you in the school here because she is trying to get you into the private school your father went to once. And after a time there is nothing more to say, and you show Ransom one of the empty rooms on the third floor where he can rest and do whatever he wants. Then you go back to your own room to read. p. 200-201
The rest of the book mixes three layers of reality: the first is Tackman’s real world (we learn that his mother is separated from his father but she is shortly to be remarried to a Dr Black); the second is the book’s pulp story (Ransom is caught and held captive by Dr Death, a scientist who is undertaking Moreau-like2 experiments); and the third involves scenes where both the real and book worlds merge, such as the one where Tackman talks to Dr Death on a restaurant balcony when he goes out for a meal with his mother, two aunts, and Dr Black.
The rest of the piece sees the appearance (in the story thread) of, among others, Talar of the Long Eyes (a female love interest for Ransom) and Bruno (an uplifted dog), the latter of which later visits Tackman in his bedroom. The climax of the real world thread (spoiler) eventually sees Tackman finding his mother overdosed at a party in the house and calling the police. The culpability (or otherwise) of Jason and Dr Black in her drug use remains ambiguous.
The final paragraphs show that Tackman is probably a character in a story too:
[The police] go away and you pick up the book and riffle the pages, but you do not read. At your elbow Dr. Death says “What’s the matter, Tackie?” He smells of scorched cloth and there is a streak of blood across his forehead, but he smiles and lights one of his cigarettes.
You hold up the book. “I don’t want it to end. You’ll be killed at the end.”
“And you don’t want to lose me? That’s touching.”
“You will, won’t you? You’ll burn up in the fire and Captain Ransom will go away and leave Talar.”
Dr. Death smiles. “But if you start the book again we’ll all be back. Even Golo and the bull-man.”
“Honest?”
“Certainly.” He stands up and tousles your hair. “It’s the same with you, Tackie. You’re too young to realize it yet, but it’s the same with you.” p. 214
The last line arguably introduces a fourth level of reality into the narrative, that of the reader who is finishing Wolfe’s story.
I really liked this piece when I first read it but this time it struck me as a slighter effort—Tackman’s “real” life isn’t a particularly well-developed arc as much of the piece relates to what happens in the book and to Tackman’s interactions with the characters. That said, the story merges the various realities of the story in a highly accomplished (and for the time novel) manner, and I was attracted to the story’s evocation of the complete immersion of youthful reading—what a pity that seems to disappear with age.
***+ (Good to Very good). 6,050 words. Story link.
1. Gene Wolfe was on the Nebula Award final ballot with this story and was initially announced as the winner—until the master of ceremonies, Isaac Asimov, was told that it had placed second to No Award. Gardner Dozois picks up the story in Jo Walton’s An Informal History of the Hugo Awards (Tor, 2018):
I was there, sitting at Gene Wolfe’s table, in fact. He’d actually stood up, and was starting to walk toward the podium, when Isaac was told about his mistake. Gene shrugged and sat down quietly, like the gentleman he is, while Isaac stammered an explanation of what had happened. It was the one time I ever saw Isaac totally flustered, and, in fact, he felt guilty about the incident to the end of his days. It’s bullshit that this was the result of confusing ballot instructions. This was the height of the War of the New Wave, and passions between the New Wave camp and the conservative Old Guard camp were running high. (The same year, Michael Moorcock said in a review that the only way SFWA could have found a worse thing than Ringworld to give the Nebula to was to give it to a comic book.) The fact that the short story ballot was almost completely made up of stuff from Orbit [Damon Knight’s anthology series] had outraged the Old Guard, particularly James Sallis’s surreal “The Creation of Bennie Good,” and they block-voted for No Award as a protest against “nonfunctional word patterns” making the ballot. Judy-Lynn del Rey told me as much immediately after the banquet, when she was exuberantly gloating about how they’d “put Orbit in its place” with the voting results, and actually said, “We won!”
2. The book appears to reference H. G. Well’s The Island of Doctor Moreau and Richard Shaver’s ‘Lemuria’ stories, but I have no idea where Tala of the Long Eyes comes from.