Frek and the Elixir

This has got to be one of the most inventive and imaginative novels in recent memory. Rudy Rucker has created an astonishingly creative story by mixing well-drawn comedy and drama with the latest knowledge in biotech, computing, and quantum physics. Not to mention a visual richness that will turn on the inner freakiness of even the most stoic reader. Here we have the adventures of 12 year-old Frek, who lives in the 31st century in a world of forced conformity, and where a megalomaniac biotech corporation has eliminated most of the Earth's life forms, patented the genomes of the few remaining utilitarian species (including humans), and prohibited reproduction except by contract. Meanwhile, several different species of aliens are trying to turn the human race into a giant reality show, via interactive technologies controlled by weird multi-dimensional demigods. In short, Frek is the chosen human negotiator, and decides to bargain for the return of Earth's lost species in a deadly high-stakes production deal, becoming a hero in the process. Thanks to Rucker's knowledge of advanced science and the wildest future possibilities of technology, this novel benefits from a setting and characters quite unlike most sci-fi. The story is overflowing with crazy but strangely possible biotech and interactive technologies, while Rucker has also turned up the creativity meter with loads of inventively bizarre and truly "alien" aliens (I especially liked the wisecracking Orpolese and the droll Unipuskers). Rucker has also envisioned a completely mindboggling method of space travel called yunching, which is based on actual currently-known concepts from superstring theory. In a few places, Rucker lets the plotline slip while breathlessly inventing pile upon pile of future phenomena, but this is a novel that is as relentlessly fascinating as it is fun and empathetic. There are even good themes of friendship and family lurking beneath the wild and wooly sci-fi wonderments. This novel is highly recommended for any reader looking for something both really new and really different. [~doomsdayer520~]

This book is simply one of the best science fiction titles to be written. The main character is young, true, but this is soon forgotten in the complex, intriguing, and yes, allegorical storyline. The book is Rucker's denoucement of monoculture, a perfect statement for our day and age. The innovation in this book is spectacular; no old reused ideas here. I strongly recommend this book.

A joyful, picaresque novel full of mind-blowing concepts from veteran mathematician-cyberpunk-sci-fi writer guru, Rudy Rucker. It's 3003. Earth is a true nano-biotech Eden. Or is it? Well, families live in comfy house trees, food comes from the anyfruit tree, friendly dogs can talk to their masters but... ...there are only 256 highly-tweaked species created by the powerful NuBioCom corporation who also destroyed the Earth's original biodiversity in 2666... Sure the families might have a happy time inside their house tree but the Gov is trying hard to keep them in line. (Gov - government - giant media-controlling brain-washing worms, now that invention won't need a 1000 years to be accomplished on this planet.) Also there is the small problem of alien species determined to turn humankind into a massive reality TV show, each human monitored and more or less tele-controlled by an alien "player" to spice up the aliens' own boring lives. Frek Huggins (a modern Frodo Baggins?), a twelve-year-old kid becomes humankind's unlikely hero and only hope after a few clashes with Gov, NuBioCom and a dozen different alien species. Frek has no choice but to navigate the whole universe, visit different galaxies, enjoy or suffer the physics of different dimensions while fighting for his own sanity, his life and his friends and family. Can he also be the one who finds the Elixir, the DNA blueprints of all the lost biodiversity of planet Earth? Will he also free humankind from government, corporate and alien influence? This post-modern odyssey sounds like a recipe for big time disaster (a few Hollywood script writers would fry their brains after the first scene) but Rudy Rucker pulls off the impossible with a surprisingly joyful, intense and interesting novel. Other than him it may only be Paul Di Filippo (Fuzzy Dice, anyone?) who can convincingly push his heroes through ten dimensions, hurl them into a sun or have a billion cartoon characters fight the last crusade. Early in the book the English words and familiar mental images run out - Rudy forged some 80-100 new words to describe as many astonishing concepts regarding life in the 3000s, alien species and the joys and perils of intergalactic or transdimensional travels. The ever wilder adventures and the thought-provoking ideas jump at the reader with an alarming speed every half page or so. Science, science fiction and a great dose of humane concerns about our future mix with a ripping yarn. The intended audience (science fiction or science fans) might find it weird to follow a twelve-year-old character through interspecies business dealings, psychedelic space travel or battles against biotech-enhanced monsters, omnipotent aliens and evil governments. Hopefully, twelve-year-old kids, too, will pick this book up and allow it to create another few trillion neural connections in their developing brains. Perhaps the protagonist could have been older. However, if the child is a metaphor for humankind's la

His father Carb a notorious malcontent was forced to leave planet earth a few years ago before the Gov and his goons made an example of him. He left behind his wife and son Frek to live in a bio-tweaked house tree in the correct village of Middleville where technology insures everything is done according to ecological righteousness. Though still a preteen, Frek got the message of what happens to those who challenge the authority of Gov.By 3003, twelve year old Frek remains cautious until a miniscule alien vessel lands underneath his bed. The Anvil space ship insists that Frek was their destination as he must save the world with an elixir to repair the biome. Gov declares the son a chip off the old block of the father, an enemy combatant. Meanwhile Anvil has marketing plans for Frek and other humans. Frek accompanied by his canine Wow is on the run from the law while on a quest across the universe when all he wants is to become a teenager.FREK AND THE ELIXIR is a deep, intelligent, often amusing but always impertinent satire ridiculing many of today's "truths" by extrapolating these so called universals accompanied by technological advances a millennium into the future. The story line uses action but ironically provides an outrageous look at a disturbingly closed-fortressed culture in which differences are outlawed as all must support the Gov. Besides Frek being a terrific hero as he grows up rather quickly (aliens and the government will do that), the cast adds depth and the technology is sardonically as off the wall as this wild futuristic tale makes 1984 look freedom loving.Harriet Klausner

I think it was David Hartwell who said that "The Golden Age of science fiction is twelve." Twelve is the age when you first read that book (Asimov's "Foundation"? Clarke's "Childhood's End?" Frank Herbert's "Dune?") that blows open your mind, and makes you look at a brand new world (this one.)Rudy Rucker's new novel is the third attempt in the last couple of years by a major science fiction author to recapture the primal excitement of that moment by embracing and radically re-inventing familiar ideas and sub-genres. John Clute's "Appleseed" is a dense, trippy, phantasmagoric riff on the 1920's and 30's space adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs and E. E. Doc Smith; Gene Wolfe's "The Knight" is a crystalline post-modern distillation of Mervyn Peake and J. R. R. Tolkien. Now, in early 2004, comes Frek with his elixir--a brash, sardonic, endlessly inventive take on the 1950's counter-culture socio-political adventure-romps like Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination" and Pohl's and Kornbluth's "The Space Merchants."In 2666 multinational corporation Nu-Bio-Com releases a virus that kills off the reproductive capacity of every single organism on earth, except those that it had bio-engineered. In other words, it now holds the copyright on the entire biome.In 3003, Frek, a twelve-year old kid (coincidence?--I think not) goes on a galaxy, no, universe-spanning, adventure to fix their mistake.His adventure has everything you could possibly want from a book like this and then some. Plus, like every great science fiction novel, "Frek and the Elixir" is really about the present--about the power of corporations, about media and entertainment, about bioengineering, about quantum mechanics, about your wife or girlfriend, your next-door neighbor, and your boss, and about you, at age twelve, and now (do you really think you have changed?)