We unaccountably forgot to mention the 70th birthday of Luciano Pavarotti last week. Belated “Happy Birthday!”, big guy.

Luci was the model for one of the characters in my 2001 mega-blockbuster novel Fire from the Sun. In honor of his birthday, and because everyone seems to do it nowadays (my current publisher did it with _Prime Obsession_), and because I can (I own the copyright), I have put the entire text of the novel on my website here.

Yep, you can read the whole

thing for free. Go ahead, have a blast. Then buy it anyway — my children are hungry.