The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye
First edition cover
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| Author | Jonathan Lethem |
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| Cover artist | Jacket design by Steven Cooley Jacket illustration by Alexander Munn |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Short stories, science fiction |
| Publisher | Harcourt Brace & Co. |
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Publication date
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September 1996 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 294 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
| ISBN | (first edition, hardcover) |
| OCLC | 32969434 |
| 813/.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3562.E8544 W35 1996 |
| Preceded by | Amnesia Moon |
| Followed by | As She Climbed Across the Table |
The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye is a 1996 collection of seven short stories by Jonathan Lethem. In 2002 a collection of the same name appeared in the UK that also contained seven stories, but two stories from the earlier collection—"Vanilla Dunk" and "Forever, Said the Duck"—were replaced by "Access Fantasy" and "How We Got Into Town And Out Again". All of the stories, as with much of Lethem's early work, have definite science fiction elements despite their widely varying content and some thinly veiled commentary on modern society.
The collection won a World Fantasy Award in 1997.
"Vanilla Dunk" posits a future in which professional basketball players no longer rely on their own skills but instead wear exo-suits which duplicate the skills of historical greats. The assignment of these skills is based on a draft lottery and much of the story centers around the resentment of some players when an obnoxious and ungrateful white player receives by assignment the "Jordan skills". The player finishes only one season before retiring for endorsements and forcing the "Jordan skills" into dis-use for another 15 years.
"The Happy Man" posits a man who, due to having been raised from the dead by a government agency, must spend a portion of his conscious existence in Hell. During his periods of torment, his body remains on Earth, performing its daily routine but experiencing and remembering nothing. The story explores the consequences to the protagonist's family life, especially his relationship with his son, who attempts to model his father's experience of Hell as interactive fiction on a computer.
"Forever, said the Duck" is perhaps the most esoteric of the stories. Though not explicitly stated as such the many characters in the story appear to be computer program avatars of different aspects of the personalities of two lovers who have decided to purge their single past before embarking on a life together. The characters mingle and mix, literally, at a cocktail party and the aspects of the two lovers are revealed through both the shape and language of the avatars.
"The Hardened Criminals" uses a more gothic feel than any of the other stories and relies on the premise that criminals sentenced to life are literally hardened and used as bricks to construct the prison in which other criminals are incarcerated. The son of one of these criminals is sentenced and ends up being assigned the cell in which his father's face continually stares at him from the wall, much to his horror. This story anticipates some situations in Lethem's later novel The Fortress of Solitude.
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