I suspect that Charles Platt has deliberately set his fictional Free Zone in the same area as the real-life anarchic villages of Venice (Silverlake, L.A.; Long Beach, California and vicinity); especially in view of Platt’s articles in an issue of Thrust lauding anarcho-villager and Prometheus winner Victor Koman. In any case Free Zone is as anarcho-libertarian as you’re likely to find — and a highly amusing spoof on the science fiction genre as well.

Like Koman’s The Jehovah Contract, Free Zone takes places at the end of 1999 in a decadent Los Angeles, but in Platt's novel the problem is not finding and killing God, but dealing with the multitude of crises which result from a “temporal singularity,” which Platt says is like a black hole except that it attracts events rather than objects. So it is that our anarcho-heroes, Dusty McCullough, and her lover, Thomas Fink, are faced not only with the threat of their Free Zone being invaded by the dictatorial mayor of Los Angeles, but also with most of the major cliches and stereotypes of science fantasy, including a genetecist who has created intelligent talking dogs, invading snaliens from interstellar space, dinosaur Atlantans in search of a good meal, mutants from Nevada seeking UFO liberators, a robot from the future sent to eradicate tachyon noise, Nazis from another dimension set to invade all continuums, barbarians from the hollow earth looking for a good time — and, as they say, much, much more.

Free Zone itself is a wonder to behold — a collection of hippies, bikers, dopers, hackers, deadbeats and geniuses who have rebelled and seceded from greater Los Angeles and are successful mostly because centralized authority has broken down in the 1990s due to government’s total inability to deal with the problems it has spawned. The environment has deteriorated to the point that protective gear is required for a simple walk. Universal Studios has become an X-rated theme park called Loveland. Soldiers of fortune are available to anyone who has the cash to hire their services. Spies from the Federal government and elsewhere are to be found in the most and least likely places. Christian Fornicationist Suzie Sunshine and undercover call girl Janet Snowdon thus become crucial to the complex plot that Platt has concocted from all this— but you’ll have to read it to disbelieve it, and that’s easy to do given Platt’s smooth satirical style.

To help his readers follow the complexities of it all, Platt has provided a number of aids: a cast of characters, a map, a plot diagram, and, in an appendix at the end, a list of themes (71 of them!) included or touched on in the book. If that’s not enough for you, Platt has coined a wonderful word for his Free Zoners and us—Freeps, the free people who just won’t take it any more.

Free Zone is a fine anarcho-satire that deserves our support and appreciation. I've nominated it for the 1990 Prometheus award and I hope you’ll agree with me that it deserves it. Highly recommended.