{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/81", "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": 81, "subject": "Anyone read Gene Wolfe: Free Live Free", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "1990-06-12T03:26:20+00:00", "last": "1990-06-13T17:15:44+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Eric Sassaman", "address": "microsoft!ericsa at beaver.cs.washington.edu" }, "date": "1990-06-12T03:26:20+00:00", "subject": "Anyone read Gene Wolfe: Free Live Free", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Has anyone read Gene Wolfe's \"Free Live Free\"? I enjoyed his \"There Are\nDoors\" quite a bit. How would you rate \"Free Live Free\" on a 1-5 stars\nscale?\n\nThanks in advance!\n\nEric Sassaman\nMicrosoft OS/2 Systems Support" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Joan Frankel", "address": "jmf at abacus.uucp" }, "date": "1990-06-12T21:14:18+00:00", "subject": "Re: Anyone read Gene Wolfe: Free Live Free", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "ericsa at microsoft.UUCP (Eric Sassaman) writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Has anyone read Gene Wolfe's \"Free Live Free\"? I enjoyed his \"There Are\nDoors\" quite a bit. How would you rate \"Free Live Free\" on a 1-5 stars\nscale?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If 5 is the high end, I'd rate it a 2. \"Free\" is an effort-ful and\napparently pointless try at doing what Vonnegut used to do effortlessly.\nNote this is a \"how good is it rating\", not a \"is it readable\" rating.\nWolfe wrote it, of course it's literate, readable, etc. It's just not very\ngood." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Pete Hardie", "address": "slammer!nyet!pete at salestech.com" }, "date": "1990-06-13T02:27:37+00:00", "subject": "Re: Anyone read Gene Wolfe: Free Live Free", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "ericsa at microsoft.UUCP (Eric Sassaman) writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Has anyone read Gene Wolfe's \"Free Live Free\"? I enjoyed his \"There Are\nDoors\" quite a bit. How would you rate \"Free Live Free\" on a 1-5 stars\nscale?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I've read it. It's a dense work (like Wolfe's other novels aren't :-) and\ngets a little confusing because it changes viewpoint often, and it doesn't\nanswer all the questions it raises. It is also very convoluted.\n\nIt's got a good beat, and it's easy to dance to. I'd give it a 4.\n\nPete Hardie" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "R o d Johnson", "address": "johnsonr at thor.acc.stolaf.edu" }, "date": "1990-06-13T17:15:44+00:00", "subject": "Re: Anyone read Gene Wolfe: Free Live Free", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "ericsa at microsoft.UUCP (Eric Sassaman) writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Has anyone read Gene Wolfe's \"Free Live Free\"? I enjoyed his \"There Are\nDoors\" quite a bit. How would you rate \"Free Live Free\" on a 1-5 stars\nscale?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I've read both. I don't know quite what to say, though, if you enjoyed\n\"There Are Doors\". The two are similar in some ways - they both have\ncomplex plots (overly so, in my opinion, to the point of being contrived)\nand characters that are sort of flat. \"There Are Doors\" is an interesting\nattempt to write a character who is much less intelligent than his author,\nnot easy to do but, still sympathetic. I don't know if it works, though; I\nfound it hard to really care what happens to our guy once he gets back to\nhis own world. It felt like an exercise more than a novel.\n\n\"Free Live Free\" probably works better for me, but the plot machinations\nget *so* ornate (it's one of those time-travel stories where everything\ncauses everything else) and it takes so much energy keeping up with who did\nwhat to whom when, that some of the \"pleasure of the text\" is lost, and the\neventual outcome is kind of an anticlimax.\n\nI would say neither of these is up to Wolfe's best work (\"The Fifth head of\nCerberus\", the New Sun books). They remind me, as I say, of exercises,\nmuch as \"Peace\" seems to me to be an exercise that eventually bore fruit in\nthe New Sun books. They may eventually bear the same kind of fruit in\nanother great Wolfe work, and then again they may not. My sense is that\nWolfe is a little lost, looking for something to follow up the success to\nthe New Sun books, a hard act to follow, and he's marking time.\n\nOf course, neither is *nearly* as bad as Wolfe's worst work - \"Operation\nAres\". They're just Generic Wolfe - inventive, exuberant, playful,\ncomplex but, not much fun, for me at least.\n\nRod Johnson\nU Michigan Linguistics" } ] } ] }