{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/usenet/22",
    "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": "usenet",
  "thread": {
    "id": 22,
    "subject": "FREE LIVE FREE by Gene Wolfe",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1984-11-04T10:23:41+00:00",
    "last": "1984-11-04T10:23:41+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<1232@utah-gr.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Donn Seeley",
        "address": "donn at utah-gr.uucp"
      },
      "date": "1984-11-04T10:23:41+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 month\nago for a new book he's published, Gene Wolfe's novel FREE LIVE FREE\n($45, 496 pp.).  The book is well-produced, profusely illustrated (a\ndrawing by Rich Schindler appears at the head of every one of the 60\nchapters, plus there are several full-page drawings by Rick DeMarco,\nand the (peculiar, to say the least) cover art is by Carl Lundgren),\nsigned (by Wolfe and each of the artists), numbered (mine is #218 out\nof 750), and genuinely funny...\n\nThe plot of FREE LIVE FREE is very difficult to summarize; not because\na summary would give the game away (which games?!), but because the\nplot is so crazy that I couldn't possibly say anything without being\nmisleading...  and I might not realize I was being misleading until the\nnext time I read the book!  No worries about spoilers from me this\ntime.  About all I can say is that the book appears (stress the\n'appears') to take place in a very run-down part of an unnamed large\ncity, in our own time, and involves a literally bewitching cast of\ncharacters from the street.  There are science-fictional elements in\nthe story; and there are also fantasy elements, detective-novel\nelements, spy-novel elements, Dickensian elements, satirical elements,\noccult elements and probably as many other elements as I could name.\nIt's practically a periodic table.  (I should mention that Wolfe also\nreveals a ghastly weakness for puns 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 Proceeding'\n(both from PLAN[E]T ENGINEERING) or 'The Eyeflash Miracles' (from THE\nISLAND OF DOCTOR DEATH AND OTHER STORIES AND OTHER STORIES), even\nthough it shares themes and styles with all three stories.  The\nultimate product is unique.\n\nI have some hypotheses about what the book IS (besides 'unique'), but I\nwon't spoil them except to note that the epigraph of the book reads:\n\n\t'The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the\n\tcountry demands bold, persistent experimentation.'\n\t\t\t\t-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt\n\nAnd I can't resist quoting at least one short passage:\n\n\t'\"Well, blow me down!  I just remembered, I got a date wit\n\tOlive.  What time is it?\"\n\n\t'Stubb glanced at his wrist.  \"Six forty-five.\"\n\n\t'\"Wow!\" Candy looked around at the darkened buildings.  \"It\n\tseems more like midnight.  It really got late early tonight.\"\n\n\t'Nimo capering ahead of the rest, stopped and threw his arms\n\twide.  \"Lipstick!\"\n\n\t'\"Listen,\" Barnes told Stubb.  \"I got to get slicked up.  She's\n\tgoing to pick me up in front of the Consort at eight.\"\n\n\t'\"Okay, you're not heavy.  I bet Candy could do it.\"\n\n\t'Nimo dropped to his knees before her.  \"If I only had a\n\tlipstick, I could make stripes on these pajamas.  I could give\n\tmyself a red nose, too.\"\n\n\t'\"Jim, get him away from me!  I think he's going to sing that\n\tsong from 'The Wizard of Oz.'\"\n\n\t'\"I like it,\" Little Ozzie announced.  \"We're o-o-off to see\n\tthe Wizard, the Wonnerful WizardoFoz!\"'\n\nBecause of the wonderful things he does,"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}