Frek and the Elixir [Paperback]

Rudy Rucker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 13, 2005

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Frek's pretty much an ordinary kid on an Earth with a collapsed biosphere controlled by NuBioCom. Then he receives a message that the Anvil, an alien's ship, is coming for him. Outside the house, the Gov's agents set up shop to watch for the Anvil. Under his bed, Frek finds a cuttlefish that tells him he's going to save the world. The agents find it, too, and chemically interrogate Frek, ruining his short-term memory. Frek and Wow, his dog, run away, and then Frek is taken aboard and away on the Anvil, traveling the galaxy with the alien, who wants exclusive rights to humanity's "branecast." Branecasting is popular with a number of other species, and humanity is the hot new thing on it. By fortuitous accident, Frek becomes humanity's agent with the Planck brane entities who run the whole shebang. Of course, branecasting is far more sinister than mere observation, for it allows a viewer to manipulate those who are branecast. Rucker fills out a bizarre future with a myriad details. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Thus edition (January 13, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765310597
• ISBN-13: 978-0765310590
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,527,947 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Golden Age of Science Fiction is Twelve., April 1, 2004

By 

Dmitry Portnoy (Studio City, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Frek and the Elixir (Hardcover)

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?)

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Godzoon Goggy Gollywog, August 20, 2006

By 

doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Frek and the Elixir (Paperback)

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~]

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars deep, intelligent, often amusing but impertinent satire, April 2, 2004

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Frek and the Elixir (Hardcover)

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