Subject: New publication info for Gene Wolfe's FREE LIVE FREE

From: Donn Seeley <donn@utah-cs>
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1985 07:55:30 +0000

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,

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From: Eli Liang <liang at cvl.uucp>
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1985 16:49:27 +0000

> From: donn@utah-cs (Donn Seeley)
> 
What is this?  A new NEW sun book?  Pray tell more.

-eli

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From: Donn Seeley <donn at utah-gr.uucp>
Date: Sat, 04 May 1985 05:19:48 +0000

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?