Subject: FREE LIVE FREE by Gene Wolfe

From: Donn Seeley <donn at utah-gr.uucp>
Date: Sun, 04 Nov 1984 10:23:41 +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,