Customer Reviews

Free Zone

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Free Zone by Charles Platt is a delightful science fiction fantasy novel set in a parallel universe where Los Angeles is a chaotic dictatorship with a libertarian Free Zone in the middle of it. We know it's an alternate universe because ours is referenced in it by the super-intelligent robot from the future who stumbles upon it while threading time-space looking for a better place for the combat-grrl president of the Free Zone and her geek boyfriend, his friends. This is because the Free Zone is being invaded by hyper-intelligent dogs, aliens, dinosaurs and subterranean troglodytes all at about the same time. Fortunately, the Hell's Angels are there to save L.A. from these lesser terrors.

This novel has an alphabetical listing of the seventy-one science fiction themes it touches upon in the back of the book. I bought it for that reason alone.

Today class, your assignment is to write a science fiction novel which uses at least fifty common science fiction themes. Free Zone is Charles Platt's answer to this challenge, and he proudly lists 71 themes at the end of the book. It's as light as a souffle, totally without substance. The characters are almost as hackneyed as the multitudinous themes, and the less said about them, the better. The one thing I really liked about the story was the idea of the Free Zone itself: after most state & federal government has collapsed, a section of Los Angeles secedes from the rest of the city and establishes formal anarchy, if that isn't a contradition in terms. The Zone includes LoveLand, the Mafia's X-rated answer to Disneyland. I wish Mr. Platt had stuck with that idea and developed it a little more, instead of running hog wild trying to bring off a meaningless literary stunt.