PodCastle 171: The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories
Show Notes
Rated R: Contains Adult Themes
Check out a podcast a listener did for his High School Senior Project: https://public.me.com/chrisnkris (click on “RatCasts”).
The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories
by Gene Wolfe
Winter comes to water as well as land, though there are no leaves to fall. The waves that were a bright, hard blue yesterday under a fading sky today are green, opaque, and cold. If you are a boy not wanted in the house you walk the beach for hours, feeling the winter that has come in the night; sand blowing across your shoes, spray wetting the legs of your corduroys. You turn your back to the sea, and with the sharp end of a stick found half-buried, write in the wet sand Tackman Babcock.
Then you go home, knowing that behind you the Atlantic is destroying your work.
About the Author
Gene Wolfe
Gene Rodman Wolfe’s work is notable for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith. He is a prolific short-story writer and novelist and has won many science fiction and fantasy literary awards.
Wolfe is most famous for The Book of the New Sun (four volumes, 1980–83), the first part of his Solar Cycle. In 1998, Locus magazine ranked it third-best fantasy novel before 1990 (after The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) based on a poll of subscribers that considered it and several other series as single entries.
About the Narrator
Ben Phillips
Ben Phillips is a programmer and musician living in New Orleans. He was a chief editor of Pseudopod from 2006-2010.
