The Free Lunch

What if the world was so terrible that your only hope for a happy life would be to hide away in the world's greatest amusement park...Dreamworld? InThe Free Lunch,Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Spider Robinson transports us to Dreamworld, a place where everybody has fun, dreams can come true, and the only sadness is when they close for the night. With his perceptive grasp of human emotions and his deft hand at humor, Robinson masterfully tells the take of Mike, a young teen who escapes our own dark, tormented near future into a dream--into Dreamworld. There he meets Annie, another refugee who has built a life in the underworld of this fantastic amusement park, perhaps the last vestige of innocence left in the world. But it is tainted by a dark secret--a ruthless competitor, who can't possibly create an attraction that's as much fun as Dreamworld, has decided that if he can't beat Dreamworld, he might as well destroy it. There's another threat to Dreamworld. Suddenly there are more trolls at the end of the day than were there in the morning...and nobody, not even Mike or Annie, knows where they're from. But it's up to them and their passion for preserving this last haven of joy in a world of horrors to save Dreamworld...and Earth's future.

Spider Robinson, winner of three Hugos and a Nebula, was born in the Bronx and raised on Long Island, and has been a Canadian resident for 30 years. Holder of a bachelor's degree in English from the State University of New York, he worked as a folksinger and journalist before publishing his first story in Analog in 1973. He now lives with his wife Jeanne Robinson (co-author of the Hugo- and Nebula-winning Stardance trilogy) on an island outside Vancouver, B.C., where they raise and exhibit hopes.

Eleven of his 31 books are set in Callahan's Place, a fabulous tavern founded by a time traveler, where puns flow as freely as beer, and smell far worse. The most recent is Callahan's Con [Tor July 2003]. He has contributed a regular editorial column, "Future Tense," to Canada's national newspaper, The Globe & Mail, since 1995. In 2000, he released Belaboring the Obvious, a CD of original music with the legendary Amos Garrett ("Midnight at the Oasis") on lead guitar, and in 2001 he was a celebrity judge at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam.

"If one were ever given the task of creating Spider Robinson from scratch, the best way to do it would be to snatch James Joyce from history, force-feed him Marx Brothers films and good jazz for the better part of a decade, then turn him loose on a world badly in need of a look at itself." --Vancouver Sun

"Spider Robinson refutes the notion that 'there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.' You get much more than you bargained for in this fun-filled-yet-serious novel. He's the antidote for entropy, the blahs, and the pernicious notion that humor and good grace are absent from the SF field." --Ben Bova

"How the hell is any self-respecting author supposed to compete with a storyteller as good as Spider Robinson?! I'm so jealous of his intelligence, his wit, his insight, his compassion--and his incredible humanity--that every new book he turns out is a punch straight to the heart! This is a guy who embodies the best of Sturgeon, Heinlein, and Asimov." --David Gerrold

"The Free Lunch is a three-course meal: adventure, humor, and solid extrapolation. Spider Robinson is a master storyteller, and this novel is one of his best. Bon appétit!" --Allen Steele