Subject: FREE LIVE FREE by Gene Wolfe

From: Donn Seeley <donn@utah-cs>
Date: Sun, 04 Nov 1984 10:18:11 +0000

Imagine my amazement when I walked home in the dark in the wee hours
of my birthday recently and found a package from Mark Ziesing, sf
bookseller and specialty publisher, on the doorstep.  Of course it
wasn't a birthday present but the result of a check I sent him a
month ago for a new book he's published, Gene Wolfe's novel FREE
LIVE FREE ($45, 496 pp.).  The book is well-produced, profusely
illustrated (a drawing by Rich Schindler appears at the head of
every one of the 60 chapters, plus there are several full-page
drawings by Rick DeMarco, and the (peculiar, to say the least) cover
art is by Carl Lundgren), signed (by Wolfe and each of the artists),
numbered (mine is #218 out of 750), and genuinely funny...

The plot of FREE LIVE FREE is very difficult to summarize; not
because a summary would give the game away (which games?!), but
because the plot is so crazy that I couldn't possibly say anything
without being misleading...  and I might not realize I was being
misleading until the next time I read the book!  No worries about
spoilers from me this time.  About all I can say is that the book
appears (stress the 'appears') to take place in a very run-down part
of an unnamed large city, in our own time, and involves a literally
bewitching cast of characters from the street.  There are
science-fictional elements in the story; and there are also fantasy
elements, detective-novel elements, spy-novel elements, Dickensian
elements, satirical elements, occult elements and probably as many
other elements as I could name.  It's practically a periodic table.
(I should mention that Wolfe also reveals a ghastly weakness for
puns and malapropisms.)

I can say what this book isn't: it most definitely isn't THE BOOK OF
THE NEW SUN.  It also isn't 'The Rubber Bend', 'A Criminal
Proceeding' (both from PLAN[E]T ENGINEERING) or 'The Eyeflash
Miracles' (from THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR DEATH AND OTHER STORIES AND
OTHER STORIES), even though it shares themes and styles with all
three stories.  The ultimate product is unique.

I have some hypotheses about what the book IS (besides 'unique'),
but I won't spoil them except to note that the epigraph of the book
reads:
        'The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the
        country demands bold, persistent experimentation.'
                                -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

And I can't resist quoting at least one short passage:

        '"Well, blow me down!  I just remembered, I got a date wit
        Olive.  What time is it?"

        'Stubb glanced at his wrist.  "Six forty-five."

        '"Wow!" Candy looked around at the darkened buildings.  "It
        seems more like midnight.  It really got late early
        tonight."

        'Nimo capering ahead of the rest, stopped and threw his arms
        wide.  "Lipstick!"

        '"Listen," Barnes told Stubb.  "I got to get slicked up.
        She's going to pick me up in front of the Consort at eight."

        '"Okay, you're not heavy.  I bet Candy could do it."

        'Nimo dropped to his knees before her.  "If I only had a
        lipstick, I could make stripes on these pajamas.  I could
        give myself a red nose, too."

        '"Jim, get him away from me!  I think he's going to sing
        that song from 'The Wizard of Oz.'"

        '"I like it," Little Ozzie announced.  "We're o-o-off to see
        the Wizard, the Wonnerful WizardoFoz!"

Because of the wonderful things he does,