{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/usenet/42",
    "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": 42,
    "subject": "Anyone read Gene Wolfe: Free Live Free",
    "messages": 3,
    "voices": 3,
    "first": "1990-06-12T03:26:20+00:00",
    "last": "1990-06-13T17:15:44+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<55160@microsoft.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Eric Sassaman",
        "address": "ericsa at microsoft.uucp"
      },
      "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\nAre Doors\" quite a bit. How would you rate \"Free Live Free\" on a 1-5\nstars scale?\n\nThanks in advance!\n\nEric Sassaman\nMicrosoft OS/2 Systems Support"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<314@nyet.UUCP>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Pete Hardie",
        "address": "pete at nyet.uucp"
      },
      "date": "1990-06-13T02:27:37+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: Anyone read Gene Wolfe: Free Live Free",
      "in_reply_to": "<55160@microsoft.UUCP>",
      "reply_link": "header",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In article <55160 at microsoft.UUCP> 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\nAre Doors\" quite a bit. How would you rate \"Free Live Free\" on a 1-5\nstars scale?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I've read it.  It's a dense work (like Wolfe's other novels aren't :-)\nand gets a little confusing because it changes viewpoint often, and\nit doesn't answer all the questions it raises.  It is also very\nconvoluted.\n\nIt's got a good beat, and it's easy to dance to.  I'd give it a 4."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<649@nic.stolaf.edu>",
      "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": "<55160@microsoft.UUCP>",
      "reply_link": "header",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In article <55160 at microsoft.UUCP> 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\nAre Doors\" quite a bit. How would you rate \"Free Live Free\" on a 1-5\nstars scale?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I've read both.  I don't know quite what to say, though, if you\nenjoyed \"There Are Doors\".  The two are similar in some ways--they\nboth have complex plots (overly so, in my opinion, to the point of\nbeing contrived) and characters that are sort of flat.  \"There Are\nDoors\" is an interesting attempt to write a character who is much less\nintelligent than his author--not easy to do--but still sympathetic.  I\ndon't know if it works, though; I found it hard to really care what\nhappens to our guy once he gets back to his own world.  It felt like\nan exercise more than a novel.\n\n\"Free Live Free\" probably works better for me, but the plot\nmachinations get *so* ornate (it's one of those time-travel stories\nwhere everything causes everything else) and it takes so much energy\nkeeping up with who did what to whom when, that some of the \"pleasure\nof the text\" is lost, and the eventual outcome is kind of an\nanticlimax.\n\nI would say neither of these is up to Wolfe's best work (\"The Fifth\nhead of Cerberus\", the New Sun books).  They remind me, as I say, of\nexercises, much as \"Peace\" seems to me to be an exercise that\neventually bore fruit in the New Sun books.  They may eventually bear\nthe same kind of fruit in another great Wolfe work, and then again\nthey may not.  My sense is that Wolfe is a little lost, looking for\nsomething to follow up the success to the New Sun books--a hard act to\nfollow--and he's marking time.\n\nOf course, neither is *nearly* as bad as Wolfe's worst\nwork--\"Operation Ares\".  They're just Generic Wolfe--inventive,\nexuberant, playful, complex--but not much fun, for me at least."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}