Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the story:


The Eyeflash Miracles by Gene Wolfe

This story is part of the The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction group collection discussion.

★★

Synopsis
A blind, anbandoned boy starts a challenging journey on the way to “Sugarland” in a distant future where robots replace human work. He falls several times into a dream state where he can see and inconsciously works miracles like healing or flying.

Review
The story is full of religious motifs, e.g. the boy transforms in a kind of Christ figure. It also contains loads of Wizard of Oz references. The problem with it is that I couldn’t connect to the story – partly because I don’t know the Oz stuff.

There were two stories in the collection that did not bother to finish, and this was one of them. Just couldn't get into it.

i found this to be one of Wolfe's most racially tolerant and redemptively positive stories ever, juxtaposing Hindu and Christic imagery to great effect. This is a much more overt exploration of using a Christ figure in fiction, one whose miracles occur in conjunction with a fantasy world, than most of Wolfe's other fiction. The Oz imagery isn't as important as the mythic and religious syncretism. the fantasy scenes creep into the reality of the story and his miracles gain traction. They are headed to a real place in Texas, saying, I think, something to Wolfe's belief that all these spiritual, fantasy explorations are in some way very real and important to the world around us. The black man talks as he does to humor his damaged white friend, and doesn't begrudge the fact that he has been unjustly forgotten. oppression, persecution, and racism are all handled quite subtly in this story.

Thanks Marc for those insights. In retrospection, I understand what the author wanted to tell me. I only wasn't able to get traction and into the story to be able to ingest those theoretical aspects. Which is sometimes a problem, when an author overlays ideas too much on a story. In that regard, I think that other stories worked far better.