Pete Palmer, having fought in Korea, was captured and decided to stay in Red China. A few years later, he changed his mind and returned to his homeland, to the town of Cassonsville (having previously served time in prison). However, there, meeting with classmates and old acquaintances, Pete is forced to take a fresh look at his life... “The Changeling” became the first truly “Wolfe” story: an unreliable narrator; a hero who doesn't understand what's happening; multiple interpretation options; attention to details (sometimes hidden) that the reader must track or find on his own; names with meaning... These elements had been found in Wolfe's short prose before, but it was here that he used them in such a way that even fifty years after writing, his authorship is undeniable. With all this, “The Changeling” succeeds in what his other brothers who came out of Wolfe’s typewriter do not always achieve: the story “works” even at a basic level, and a reader unfamiliar with all the author’s intricacies can simply read it and enjoy it. This does not mean that the reader will flip through the last page and closes the book, feeling warm and satisfied inside. Rather, it will be a feeling of vague anxiety, an itch that will not go away even if you scratch it. Perhaps it will even intensify. Perhaps this means it's worth re-reading The Changeling again.***Editor's introduction to a story in the Orbit 3 anthology:

I, like the late Harold Ross of The New Yorker, and most other editors are reluctant to publish stories I don't understand. However, "The Changeling" was still published in this anthologies. In my book of critical essays, In Search of Wonder, I separated stories that make sense from stories that mean something. I am not able to “make sense” of this story (to neatly put all the terms together and arrive at a clear sum), but I have a strong feeling that it means something, just like Kafka’s “The Trial” or Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. This one disturbing story - Gene Wolfe's second story for Orbit; his first was “Trip, Trap” in “Orbit 2.” Damon Knight

Annotation in the magazine “If”:

You have to fight for your place in the sun...

About the new editionIn Russian, “The Changeling” was published in the June 2002 issue of “If” magazine. This edition of the story corrects translation errors and brings its style closer to the author’s (for those who want to get acquainted with what was wrong in the magazine version, you will need to look into Errata). Notes and several articles have been added to help the reader. Contents• Changeling (actually, the story itself translated by Tatyana Pertseva, unauthorized edition of mtvietnam)• Personalia (outdated certificate about the author from the magazine "If")• Additional materials to help the reader (translation, where he required, mtvietnam):— Editor's notes (about the same length as the story itself)— Articles and theories from Wolfe fans (including Michael Andre-Driussi and Mark Aramini) and their discussion— Errata (for those who want find out what is the difference between the new edition and the previous one)