Ernst Vossoff, would-be interstellar tycoon, and Karl Nimmitz, his exceptionally dim sidekick, take the reader for a merry ride through a thankfully distant galaxy in Castro's (An Alien Darkness) zany collection of eight linked stories, which boast titles like "Just a Couple of Extinct Aliens Riding Around in a Limo" and "Just a Couple of Ruthless Interstellar Assassins Discussing Real Estate Investments at a Twister Game the Size of a Planet." Dejah Shapiro, Vossoff's impossibly gorgeous ex-wife who later falls in love with Nimmitz, provides the narrative frame, purporting to tell true stories of the bumbling duo to the sleazy aliens clustered around a classic wrecked spaceport bar. ("The jukebox switched to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir version of 'Louie, Louie.' ") The sharp, wide-ranging satire seldom lapses in tone or taste. In "A Ridiculously Lengthy Afterword" (which happens to be a model of concision), the author elucidates a few in-jokes and explains that the first of the series was mainly inspired by Robert Sheckley, not the late Douglas Adams, to whom the book is dedicated. Sheckley and Adams fans will find Castro a worthy successor to those two giants of comic SF.
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