Wolfe's short stories

Tony Ellis · 17 Oct 2004, 08:04 · from 2004-October.txt.gz

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From: tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com (Tony Ellis)
Date: Sun Oct 17 08:04:40 2004
Subject: (urth) RE: Wolfe's short stories
In-Reply-To: <001f01c4a9dc$deb7c020$9f3ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net>
Message-ID: <000801c4b45a$5644c3e0$6501a8c0@NAME>

Jason McCready wrote:
> I've been reading the short stories in Endangered Species. Could 
> anyone give me some hints on even beginning to understand 
> the three Procreation stories... 

The Procreation stories are among my all-time favourite Wolfe short
stories (admittedly, it's a long list). They're funny, inventive,
moving, and wonderfully concise - all things I love about Wolfe's
writing. Apologies in advance if I'm just stating the obvious, but: 

'Creation' is a jokey skit on Genesis. A scientist accidentally creates
a universe, and each day of its evolution corresponds to a stage in the
Bible story: the land separating from the waters, life, Adam, Eve etc.
The fly is the introduction of evil. Is this perhaps 'our' universe? 

Most writers would have been happy enough with a story like 'Creation'.
Wolfe, and this is absolutely characteristic of the man, takes the idea
and runs with it. 'Re-creation' introduces the idea that maybe a second
universe was created at the same time as the first, but one that has
evolved backwards through time. Sure enough, as it propagates back
through his life, the scientist suddenly finds himself 'remembering'
encounters with it.

Finally, 'The Sister's Account' ups the ante again. We witness the
birth, flowering and death of one of the worlds of this backwards
universe - in barely three pages. But we're no longer in the realm of
shaggy-god jokes and scientists. There's something very poignant about
these little glimpses of a paradise now lost forever, and it's no
coincidence that Wolfe makes our narrator a spinster. "When Gene had
married and it was clear I never would" is an incredible line - it tells
you so much about Sis in so few words, and where she stands in relation
to this world. As does the image of all the little rockpools on a shore
teeming with new life, each one reflecting her empty spinster's bed. 

The final sentence raises the bar again, and never fails to send a
shiver down my spine. Have we been listening all the while to the
thoughts of a woman who lived and died a whole universe ago?

One rabbit after another, all pulled from the same unremarkable-looking
hat. Irreverent tall story; beguiling could-it-work-like-that SF idea;
elegiac meditation on the mystery and transient nature of life. That's
how I understand Procreation, anyway.

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