Mark's Picks

Gene Wolfe is one of the finest craftsmen in fiction today. Many of his short stories are exemplary of the form. He will likely never be a contender for a Nobel (or even a Pulitzer) because of his chosen milieu. But he consistently demonstrates that the supposed limits of science fiction have no merit.

In his novel Home Fires he addresses the question of true love and separation, pivoting on the issue of timing. Skip and Chelle married in a white heat of young love. But while Skip remains on Earth, pursuing what becomes a very successful law career, Chelle is a soldier, and she leaves him soon after the all-too-brief honeymoon to fight on another world, in another star system, and it is more than two decades before Skip sees her again. But for Chelle, her tour of duty lasts only months, and she returns still more or less a newly-wed, still young, to find a man who is much older and much changed. Skip takes her on a cruise to rekindle what he assumes needs rekindling and to discover if they still have a meaningful basis for a marriage. Clear-eyed and unflinching, Wolfe explores the meanings and consequences of choices in a world where timing is ever more complicated.