Frek and the Elixir

by Rudy Rucker

Overview

In the year 3003, nothing in the world is the same, except maybe that adolescents are still embarrassed by their parents. Society and the biosphere alike have been transformed by biotechnology, and the natural world is almost gone.

Frek Huggins is a boy from a broken family, unusual becaise he was conceived without technological help or genetic modifications. His dad, Carb, is a malcontent who left behind Frek's mom and the Earth itself several years ago.

Everything changes when Frek finds the Anvil, a small flying saucer, under his bed, and it tells him he is destined to save the world. The repressive forces of Gov, the mysterious absolute ruler of Earth, descend on Frek, take away the Anvil, and interrogate him forcefully enough to damage his memory. Frek flees with Wow, his talking dog, to seek out Carb and some answers. But the untrustworthy alien in the saucer has other plans, including claiming exclusive rights to market humanity to the galaxy at large, and making Frek a hero.

Frek and the Elixir is a profound, playful SF epic by the wild and ambitious Rudy Rucker.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765310590
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/01/2005
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.07(d)
Lexile:	860L (what's this?)

About the Author

Rudy Rucker is the author of a number of novels and popular science books, including The Fourth Dimension. He is professor of mathematics and computer science at San Jose. His SF novels have twice won the Philip K. Dick Award for best paperback original SF book. His most recent novel is As Above, So Below a fictional biography of the artist Bruegel.

Table of Contents

Part 1	The Departure	11
1	Middleville, 3003	13
2	The Thing Under Frek's Bed	34
3	In the Grulloo Woods	59
4	Stun City	84
5	Professor Bumby	112
6	Yunch!	142
Part 2	The Elixir	173
7	Renata	175
8	Unipusk	210
9	The Spaceport Bar	241
10	Orpoly	275
11	The Exaplex	310
Part 3	Earth's Fate	349
12	All Hell Breaks Loose	351
13	The Revolution	382
14	The Shuggoths	419
15	The Toons	444
	Glossary	465

Editorial Reviews

Oh, excellent! I love books that play with physics - branes and so forth - and this is godzoon googly indeed as Frek would say, and darned exciting. . . . a splendid book.” —Diana Wynne Jones on Frek and the Elixir

“This book is Robert Heinlein's Have Spacesuit-Will Travel with the vacuum tubes replaced by wetware and all the knobs turned up to 11!” —SF Weekly on Frek and the Elixir

From the Publisher

The Barnes & Noble Review
Rudy Rucker's newest offering -- a unique blend of George Orwell's 1984 and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland -- is a brilliantly wacky cautionary tale about the homogenization of society as only Rucker can envision it.

Fans of Rucker's cyberpunk masterpieces (Wetware, Software, The Hacker and the Ants, et al.) are in for a treat. The hero of this techno-organic fable -- set on a dramatically transformed Earth in the year 3003 -- is 12-year-old Frek Huggins, an ordinary boy who lives in his family's bio-tweaked house tree in the sleepy hamlet of Middleville. In a technologically advanced, ecologically friendly society ruled by the enigmatic Gov, fitting in and not causing any trouble is a way of life. Frek knows all too well what happens to people who question Gov: His father left Earth a year ago for the sanctuary of space after being targeted as a malcontent. But when a tiny alien ship enters Earth's atmosphere and lands underneath Frek's bed, the naïve youngster quickly becomes an outlaw revolutionary on the run for his life. Thus begins his epic quest to find an elixir to restore Earth's biome and to somehow destroy Gov. Before all is done, Frek's quest will take him to the ends of the universe and to the very center of the galactic core.

Profound. Astonishing. Irreverent. Anyone who doesn't cherish this richly described and wildly imaginative novel overflowing with weird aliens, outrageous technologies, and a future Earth with uproarious colloquialisms and a disturbingly closed-minded monoculture is absolutely gollywog gurpy. Paul Goat Allen

bn.com

Welcome to suburban life in 3003, after NuBioCom collapsed the biome in 2666 and destroyed the last of Earth's original animal species (and every DNA record needed to re-create them), replacing them with company-designed "kritters." Frek Huggins, the 12-year-old hero of this wry tale of cosmological hijinks from Rucker (Space Land), plays with his talking dog, Wow, argues with his sisters, forever resists his mom's attempts to get him to clean his room and daydreams of making it big someday as a toonsmith, the 31st-century equivalent of a video-game designer. Then Frek discovers the mysterious Anvil, a small UFO, hiding under his bed, and the toons on the wall start telling Frek he's going to save the world. Certain that the Anvil has something to do with his missing father, Carb (a social misfit who ran away years earlier to Sick Hindu, a space colony on an asteroid), Frek manages to escape with the spaceship only to find himself caught up in an alien plan to market humanity's thoughts and experiences to the rest of the universe. Bent on rescuing his father, and Earth, from the machinations of a vast multidimensional and extraterrestrial entertainment machine, Frek has to rely on a little help from his friends. Rucker successfully combines sharp-edged satire with old-fashioned pulp sensibilities to create a frantic tale of dirty double-dealing and high adventure. Readers in search of something "different" need look no further than this droll saga of the future. (Apr. 10) FYI: Rucker's last book, As Above, So Below (2003), was a historical novel about the Flemish painter Peter Bruegel. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly