Gene Wolfe may be the single best writer in fantasy and SF today. His quotes and reviews certainly support that contention, and so does his impressive short fiction oeuvre. Innocents Aboard gathers fantasy and horror stories from the last decade that have never before been in a Wolfe collection. Highlights from the twenty-two stories include "The Tree is my Hat," adventure and horror in the South Seas, "The Night Chough," a Long Sun story, "The Walking Sticks," a darkly humorous tale of a supernatural inheritance, and "Houston, 1943," lurid adventures in a dream that has no end. This is fantastic fiction at its best.

Contents:

• The Tree Is My Hat
• The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun
• The Friendship Light
• Slow Children at Play
• Under Hill
• The Monday Man
• The Waif
• The Legend of Xi Cygnus
• The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun
• How the Bishop Sailed to Inniskeen
• Houston, 1943
• A Fish Story
• Wolfer
• The Eleventh City
• The Night Chough
• The Wrapper
• A Traveler in Desert Lands
• The Walking Sticks
• Queen
• Pocketsful of Diamonds
• Copperhead
• The Lost Pilgrim