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Rudy Rucker

Frek and the Elixir Hardcover – April 1, 2004

by Rudy Rucker (Author)

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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, a misfit because he's a natural child, 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.

Print length

480 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tor Books
Publication date

April 1, 2004
Dimensions

5.84 x 1.49 x 8.64 inches
ISBN-10

0765310589
ISBN-13

978-0765310583
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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

About the Author

Rudy Rucker is a mathematician, computer scientist, professor and writer who has twice won the Philip K. Dick Award for best SF paperback original, and has published a number of successful popular books on mathematical subjects, including The Fourth Dimension and Infinity and the Mind. He lives in Los Gatos, California.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books; First Edition (April 1, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0765310589
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0765310583
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.84 x 1.49 x 8.64 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,755,074 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #54,929 in Science Fiction Adventures
- #195,468 in American Literature (Books)

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4.6 20 ratings

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Rudy Rucker

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Rudy Rucker has written forty books, both pop science. and SF novels in the cyberpunk and transreal styles. He received Philip K. Dick awards for for the novels in his "Ware Tetralogy". His "Complete Stories," and his nonfiction "The Fourth Dimension" are standouts. He worked as a professor of computer science in Silicon Valley for twenty years. He paints works relating to his tales. His latest novel "Juicy Ghosts" is about telepathy, immortality, and a new revolution. Rudy blogs at www.rudyrucker.com/blog

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Greg Meacham

Truly Gnarly

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 6, 2021

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A. Dry complex and colorful world with just enough mystery and humor to make it very entertaining and fun🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬. Tyne. Dry Brest of a science fiction story!

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JP Fish

Fireworks for your brain!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 16, 2015

Verified Purchase

Rudy Rucker was one of the most original writers I ever read. His books are like holidays for the imagination. I will tell you nothing of the plot or characters in this or any of his books. But I will say this. His stories never go where you think they will. You will always get a laugh. Then maybe an uncomfortable squirm in your seat. And you might even find a situation more adult than you expected. But, if you enjoy a good story with written with wit and no small amount of unpredictability, R. Rucker is your guide to places and people only he would think of.

One person found this helpful

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mickeymammoth

Amazingly good, entertaining and deep at the same time

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 23, 2005

Verified Purchase

This book locks you in from the first paragraph, which is a difficult feat for most sci-fi books, which tend to take a chapter or so to get you "into" the alternate universe. I think this book is meant to appeal to the young adult market, but it's equally fun for adults. Frek is a great hero; his most heroic aspect being his fairness and acceptance of all people and things. The world in this book is at once wonderful and saddening; this theme continues throughout the book, where Rucker challenges conventional plot devices by turning them bitter-sweet, ambiguous, and "real." Rudy Rucker has the most amazing imagination; I think he is unmatched. I can't recommend this book enough.

2 people found this helpful

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Christopher Broussard

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 3, 2018

Love this book!

Fun novel full of biological, mathematical, and physically cool ideas

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 18, 2006

Here is a rather delightful novel from Rudy Rucker. Frek and the Elixir is set more or less at the next millennium -- to be exact, in 3003. Hundreds of years before, NuBioCom destroyed the remaining natural species on Earth, and replaced them with a very few genetically engineered variants. They even destroyed the records of the genetic code of the natural species. Now, in 3003, Houses are grown from trees, the only pets are dogs, much of the food comes from anyfruit trees, and in many other ways it is clear that species diversity is rare. Frek Huggins is a 12-year-old boy living with his mother and his two sisters. He resents the fact that his father, Carb, left for the asteroids several years before. His life is nominally fairly pleasant but he doesn't quite fit in.

Then a flying saucer shows up, looking, it appears, for Frek. Frek is suddenly the object of the not-entirely-friendly attentions of the "counselors" of Gov, the worm-like alien that controls his city. He finds a saucer under his bed, and inside it is an alien cuttlefish, who assures him he will save the world and find the elixir that will restore the natural species to Earth. But Gov's representatives are not happy, and soon Frek is fleeing, at first into the dangerous Grulloo woods, home to many unusual kritters such as the Grulloo, intelligent people consisting of only a head, a tail, and two arms. Frek and a Grulloo make their way to Stun City to free the captured saucer and kill Gov -- but that doesn't work quite as expected. Soon they are off on a trip around the Galaxy, and indeed to different "branes". The situation is a lot more complicated than expected. Frek is to act as agent for a group of aliens who want to control the broadcasting of human experience to eager alien "viewers" -- but that broadcasting might also include mind control. And there are other aliens interested in controlling the same rights. Moreover, Frek meets his father, in the company of his new girlfriend and her daughter Renata. Naturally, sparks fly between Frek and Renata. So things continue, with visits to a number of alien milieus, some really fun and wacky SFnal ideas, and with Frek always keeping in mind not only the saving of the Earth's ecosystem, and the freeing of humans from potential mind control, but the restoring of his family.

I don't think I've really captured the fun of this novel very well. Rucker has long been known as an ideas man, and he doesn't disappoint here, with a couple of nicely portrayed alien species, some interesting mathematical and physical notions, and lots of clever biological ideas. The plot is not quite as successful, though it is fun to follow -- still, Frek's powers grow alarmingly as the novel continues, and the ultimate resolution, though emotionally satisfying, isn't fully convincing. The novel, with its 12-year-old protagonist, has a rather YA feel to it, though distinctly in the "YA to please adults" mode -- that is, I think it's a novel that will wow teen readers, but it's also quite fun for adults. I liked it, at any rate!

6 people found this helpful

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Reader

A blast

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 15, 2010

A thousand years hence, invading evil space worms, ubiquitously presenting themselves as the "Gov," have caused our biosphere to collapse and have destroyed the DNA records of extinct species just to ensure that they can't be resurrected. All of the few life forms remaining on earth have been bioengineered. Other aliens are competing for the rights to broadcast earth live to the universe as an alien-controlled video game with aliens at the controls. Frek, the 12-year-old hero, must find the title's "elixir" of earth life, its DNA heritage, and bring it back to earth, and of course he must defeat the bad guys. He meets up with aliens that can speak only in completely truthful third person imperative statements, aliens that reproduce through their tails, a "Planck brane" world reminiscent of Douglas Adams' universe, Brueghel-like demons, aliens that live in the sun and travel on solar storms, and aliens who use and teach him methods of matter creation that involve refashioning dark matter and energy. We first meet the word "tweet" in this book as something other than what a bird does, two years before there was a "Twitter," and a character plays a "Kinect"-type motion controller video game seven years before Microsoft introduced it. Besides string theory, brane theory, dark matter, bioengineering, and video gaming, the book touches on subjects not usually part of the SciFi thematic repertoire, such as how good people live on after their deaths through the memories of their offspring and friends, how bad memes perversely use similar reputational brownie points to live on, and how such manipulation can be countered through, e.g., ridicule. Endlessly inventive, funny, and grounded in (weird) science, this book shouldn't be missed.

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