{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/34",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 34,
    "subject": "FREE LIVE FREE by Gene Wolfe",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1984-11-04T10:18:11+00:00",
    "last": "1984-11-04T10:18:11+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v9-196-8@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Donn Seeley",
        "address": "donn@utah-cs"
      },
      "date": "1984-11-04T10:18:11+00:00",
      "subject": "FREE LIVE FREE by Gene Wolfe",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Imagine my amazement when I walked home in the dark in the wee hours\nof my birthday recently and found a package from Mark Ziesing, sf\nbookseller and specialty publisher, on the doorstep.  Of course it\nwasn't a birthday present but the result of a check I sent him a\nmonth ago for a new book he's published, Gene Wolfe's novel FREE\nLIVE FREE ($45, 496 pp.).  The book is well-produced, profusely\nillustrated (a drawing by Rich Schindler appears at the head of\nevery one of the 60 chapters, plus there are several full-page\ndrawings by Rick DeMarco, and the (peculiar, to say the least) cover\nart is by Carl Lundgren), signed (by Wolfe and each of the artists),\nnumbered (mine is #218 out of 750), and genuinely funny...\n\nThe plot of FREE LIVE FREE is very difficult to summarize; not\nbecause a summary would give the game away (which games?!), but\nbecause the plot is so crazy that I couldn't possibly say anything\nwithout being misleading...  and I might not realize I was being\nmisleading until the next time I read the book!  No worries about\nspoilers from me this time.  About all I can say is that the book\nappears (stress the 'appears') to take place in a very run-down part\nof an unnamed large city, in our own time, and involves a literally\nbewitching cast of characters from the street.  There are\nscience-fictional elements in the story; and there are also fantasy\nelements, detective-novel elements, spy-novel elements, Dickensian\nelements, satirical elements, occult elements and probably as many\nother elements as I could name.  It's practically a periodic table.\n(I should mention that Wolfe also reveals a ghastly weakness for\npuns and malapropisms.)\n\nI can say what this book isn't: it most definitely isn't THE BOOK OF\nTHE NEW SUN.  It also isn't 'The Rubber Bend', 'A Criminal\nProceeding' (both from PLAN[E]T ENGINEERING) or 'The Eyeflash\nMiracles' (from THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR DEATH AND OTHER STORIES AND\nOTHER STORIES), even though it shares themes and styles with all\nthree stories.  The ultimate product is unique.\n\nI have some hypotheses about what the book IS (besides 'unique'),\nbut I won't spoil them except to note that the epigraph of the book\nreads:\n        'The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the\n        country demands bold, persistent experimentation.'\n                                -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt\n\nAnd I can't resist quoting at least one short passage:\n\n        '\"Well, blow me down!  I just remembered, I got a date wit\n        Olive.  What time is it?\"\n\n        'Stubb glanced at his wrist.  \"Six forty-five.\"\n\n        '\"Wow!\" Candy looked around at the darkened buildings.  \"It\n        seems more like midnight.  It really got late early\n        tonight.\"\n\n        'Nimo capering ahead of the rest, stopped and threw his arms\n        wide.  \"Lipstick!\"\n\n        '\"Listen,\" Barnes told Stubb.  \"I got to get slicked up.\n        She's going to pick me up in front of the Consort at eight.\"\n\n        '\"Okay, you're not heavy.  I bet Candy could do it.\"\n\n        'Nimo dropped to his knees before her.  \"If I only had a\n        lipstick, I could make stripes on these pajamas.  I could\n        give myself a red nose, too.\"\n\n        '\"Jim, get him away from me!  I think he's going to sing\n        that song from 'The Wizard of Oz.'\"\n\n        '\"I like it,\" Little Ozzie announced.  \"We're o-o-off to see\n        the Wizard, the Wonnerful WizardoFoz!\"\n\nBecause of the wonderful things he does,"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}