Jim Stubb

Created by Gene Wolfe
(1931-2019)

Another wacky genre mix-and-match. And Free Live Free (1985) isn’t even really a detective story, even if down-and-out private eye JIM STUBB is one of the four main characters. It’s 1983, and elderly eccentric Ben Free offers free room and board to anyone who will come and live with him, and help save his home from demolition. Candy Garth (an overweight hooker), Ossie Barnes (an unemployed salesman) and Madame Serpentina (a self-professed witch) join Jim all take up the old geezer on his generous offer.

Alas, it’s too little too late, and the house is torn down, and Free disappears… but not before hinting that there’s something valuable hidden somewhere in the house. The four boarders team up to find it, although each has a very different idea of what the treasure might be.

The plot jumps from character to character, and along the way, there are wizards, shootouts, gypsies, men with goat heads, flying saucers, puns, wordplay, deceit, some scenes right out of the Marx Brothers, a handful of government conspiracies, a dash of time travel, treachery, a few two-timing broads and lots of other good stuff; more fiction genre cliches than you can shake an old pulp magazine at.

It reads like a Stephen King novel at times, albeit one where Steveroo mellowed out a bit on some dynamite weed before he hit the keys.

A strange book, but sorta fun. And it was reissued in 1999 by Tor Books, with an appendix intended to “untangle some of the more serpentine elements of the plot.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Prolific sci-fi and fantasy short story writer and novelist Gene Wolfe (1931-2019) was proclaimed “the finest writer the science fiction world has yet produced” by The Washington Post, and he certainly racked up the awards (Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy Award, etc.) along the way, including World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and induction into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. A former engineer (his most famous professional engineering achievement was contributing to the machine used to make Pringles ), he was known for his often dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith.

UNDER OATH

• “Gene Wolfe is as good a writer as there is today. . . . I feel a little bit like a musical contemporary attempting to tell people what’s good about Mozart.”
  — Chicago Sun-Times
• “Gene Wolfe is a national treasure.”
  — Damon Knight
• “(a) fine, delightful book… the final surprises aren’t even the kind of surprises anticipated. I refuse to say more. It’s a breath of fresh air. Read it.”
  — David Langford, White Dwarf #71

NOVELS

• Free Live Free (1985) | Buy this book | Kindle it!

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• Down Those Mean Skies
  An ever-expanding list of Sci-Fi P.I.’s.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. The cover displayed was from the limited release first edition.