A Borrowed Man

A Borrowed Man is a 2015 science fiction hardboiled noir novel by Gene Wolfe.

A Borrowed Man
Hardcover edition
AuthorGene Wolfe
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreFiction
PublisherTor Books
Publication date
20 October 2015
Media typePrint (Hardback)
Pages304 pp.
ISBN978-0765381149

Plot

In the 22nd century, Ern A. Smithe is a "reclone" of a mystery writer, embedded with the recorded memories of his original and stored in a library where patrons can consult or borrow him. He is checked out by a woman who hopes that he can help solve the mysterious deaths of her father and brother, because her father's safe had contained nothing except one of Smithe's novels. However, Smithe's original was not a detective, only someone who wrote about them — and his knowledge of the world is over a century out of date.

Reception

At Strange Horizons, John Clute stated that it was "almost (...) the saddest story I have ever heard", and "not (...) quite the most adamantly terminal novel Gene Wolfe has ever written", noting that its many apparent stylistic flaws are deliberate (for instance, Smithe's narration is in the style of a hardboiled mystery because, as a reclone, his speech production has been artificially constrained); Clute also observed that the name "Ern A. Smithe" can be parsed as "an urn in which a smith resides, a maker you can rent".[1] In the Chicago Tribune Gary K. Wolfe praised the novel's "tantalizing" depiction of the "oddly dystopian future" in which the book is set,[2] while the Los Angeles Review of Books felt that it was "a lonely book haunted only by metaphorical specters" and recommended it as "intriguing and rewarding", "fast paced and lively, quite accessible", while conceding that it may not "represent the author at the peak of his powers, or at his most complex".[3]

Publishers Weekly called it "a strange, unsettling story, deceptively simple and old-fashioned in style and plot".[4] At Tangent Online, Dave Truesdale described it as "well-designed 50/50 marriage of 1930s pulpish SF and the now classic noir detective murder mystery formula first given us by Dashiell Hammett", and "a rejuvenating reminder of that glorious and (dare I say it) naive time when SF was new, the dreams were large, and the ideas wild", but noted that although the novel "pays respectful homage to, and has fun with, the now classic detective murder mystery", it is not "a noir novel in the classic sense ".[5] Tor.com's Niall Alexander however, felt it to be "middling", with a "morally abhorrent" setting and "too much (...) meandering misdirection", and "the most fascinating thing" being Smithe's narrative voice.[6]

Sequel

In 2015, Wolfe announced that he was working on a sequel to A Borrowed Man, to be titled Interlibrary Loan; however, he specified that he "[hadn't] finished it yet, and it may not be published".[7]

Neil Gaiman stated[8] that Wolfe had turned over Interlibrary Loan to his publisher before his death, and Macmillan subsequently announced its publication for June 2020.[9]

gollark: Newtonian ethics and all.
gollark: It would only practically work if people cared enough to expend significant resources locally to help people far away, and humans don't seem to like that.
gollark: This is a values problem, not an economic system one.
gollark: The expected value of demanding for communism appears substantially lower than that of actually helping people with malaria.
gollark: Yet they do not do this, and instead ineffectually demand communism which would totally make everything great and wonderful.

References
  1. Scores, by John Clute, at Strange Horizons; published November 2, 2015; retrieved April 4, 2017
  2. Science fiction roundup: Stories by Gene Wolfe, Lisa Goldstein and Mary Rickert, reviewed by Gary K. Wolfe, in the Chicago Tribune; published November 5, 2015; retrieved April 4, 2017
  3. The Haunted Library of Gene Wolfe, by Joan Gordon, in the Los Angeles Review of Books; published March 3, 2016; retrieved April 4, 2017
  4. A Borrowed Man , reviewed at Publishers Weekly, published August 24, 2015; retrieved April 4, 2017
  5. "A Borrowed Man" by Gene Wolfe, reviewed by Dave Truesdale, in Tangent Online, published January 5, 2016; retrieved April 4, 2017
  6. Bound in Blood: A Borrowed Man by Gene Wolfe, by Niall Alexander, at Tor.com; published October 19, 2015; retrieved December 18, 2018
  7. The Humble Swashbuckling Grandmaster: A Conversation with Gene Wolfe, by Kate Baker, at Clarkesworld; retrieved April 4, 2017
  8. , by Neil Gaiman, retrieved October 10 2019
  9. Interlibrary Loan at MacMillan.com, retrieved October 10, 2019
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