Review of “The Tree Is My Hat” (1999)
Gene Wolfe (writer).
Read in 2026.
I listened to the World Horror Convention radio play.
A pinkish-beige man named Baden, “Bad” to his friends, keeps a diary of his “attacks” as he tries to recover from whatever he caught in Uganda.
The play is well produced. The story is in the vein of H. P. Lovecraft, both in its concept of invasive pre-human “gods” alive in forgotten ruins, and in its distasteful exoticizing of African people. Wolfe replaces the overt racism with his usual unreliable-narrator schtick.