New publication info for Gene Wolfe's FREE LIVE FREE

The Usenet list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 13 Apr 1985
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/usenet/26

Donn Seeley13 Apr 1985, 07:55
I'm not particularly up-to-date on the vagaries of the sf publishing business, but I just received some publishing information that may be of interest to fans of Gene Wolfe. Wolfe's novel FREE LIVE FREE, which was written in 1983, was not published as expected in 1984 because of the demise of Pocket Books' Timescape sf line. Instead Mark Ziesing published a special limited edition of the book in late 1984. I talked to Mark Ziesing on the phone this week and asked him about the prospects for a trade edition of the novel. Ziesing said that he had some information that he wasn't completely certain of; the gist of it was that the book would appear as a Tor or Baen trade hardcover sometime in late 1985. (This may have something to do with the fact that David Hartwell, Wolfe's editor at Timescape, is now an 'acquisitions editor' for Tor, among his other occupations, according to Norman Spinrad's column in LOCUS #289.) I have a copy of Ziesing's beautiful (and expensive) edition, but this new edition would mean that more than 750 people would get to enjoy this warm, funny, STRANGE book... Wishing I knew when THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN will come out,
Eli Liang15 Apr 1985, 16:49

↳ in reply to Donn Seeley

3 quoted lines
From: donn@utah-cs (Donn Seeley) Wishing I knew when THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN will come out,
What is this? A new NEW sun book? Pray tell more. -eli
Donn Seeley04 May 1985, 05:19

↳ in reply to Eli Liang

What is this? A new NEW sun book? Pray tell more. I still don't know much about this book. The only official word I have on it is very old; it comes from the January 1984 LOCUS article on Wolfe in which he discusses why he quit his job to become a full-time writer: '... I've got the fifth book of the New Sun in first draft, but I haven't done anything on it for months. I plan to pull it out eventually and do the final draft. Comparatively little of the book takes place in the Urth of the Commonwealth. A lot of it takes place in space... The temptation is... to get away from [writing about Urth], because I know the place pretty well and it's time to go and explore a new place.' It's been considerably more than a year since this interview, so I suspect he has had a chance to work on the book some more. Does anyone else have any current information?

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