by Gene Wolfe

isbn: 0312890206
subject: Fiction and Literature, Short Stories, SF
finished: 7/23/1998

This is a subtle piece of science fiction with a genuinely intriguing plot. It contains three novellas set on planets Sainte Anne and Sainte Croix. The title story is the most straightforward, and is about a boy growing up in a rich household on Sainte Croix, who eventually discovers some very disturbing things about his family. The second is a surreal tale of the aliens native to Sainte Anne, before the arrival of the colonists; in the book, it's written by John Marsch, an anthropologist from Earth who briefly appears in The Fifth Head of Cerberus. The third story describes Marsch's explorations on Sainte Anne and his subsequent imprisonment by Sainte Croix's bizarre government, which seems to come directly out of a Kafka story.

This paragraph may contain spoilers. The central question of the book concerns the validity of Veil's hypothesis, which says that long ago the race of shape changers native to Sainte Anne killed off the human colonists and replaced them, becoming human to such a degree as to be undetectable. Although we never learn for sure if this happened or not, the fact that Marsch is not who he claims to be is a strong clue.

I consider The Fifth Head of Cerberus to be some of the best science fiction ever written. I imagine that it is not very well known because it (like the rest of Wolfe's work) demands a lot of the reader, and therefore it doesn't fit in very well with the bulk of SF. Highly recommended.