Jerickson’s quirky and hilarious space adventure tickles with interdimensional mayhem. Orion Spatial, the behemoth corporation that manufactures platforms for instantaneous travel through the multiverse, has abducted criminal Pharos Barton Plyaedes while still in his pajamas. A clone committee hires him to retrieve an errant droid that is pursuing the Entirely Unwelcome and Unjust Tite, an entity that has caused death and destruction in the galaxy. The company gives Barton a K-Drive capable of traveling through time, as well as a persnickety Bookkeeper to keep track of his expenses. To help him locate the Tite, Barton employs a grumbling Monk of Karlof named “Brother Can Point In The General Direction Of What It Is You Seek,” and kidnaps the last known person to have seen the Tite, Harry Patterson, from the backwater planet Dirt, er, Earth. The quest has its difficulties: the Tite may be mythical, only travels through time, and can appear in two places at once.

Jerickson injects this brisk farce with a paranoid android, doppelgangers, a neuro-positronic initializer Mind Helmet to boost brain power, luck waves emanating through the galaxy, and Quasi-Investment Dollars (QuID). Interspersed throughout the book are comical extracts from the multi-volume History of the Multiverse explaining this uncanny world, including elements like “I-Drives” and “Planet Hubs,” which, on some “Planets of Little Interest” (PoLIs), were great stone circles whose original use was forgotten over millenia and mistaken by locals for “a clock, or something. Or somewhere to kill things for God.” Barton and his motley crew, including engineer Hong, who is stuck inside the ductwork, must find and return the missing droid before Orion Spatial’s Supreme Manager EMM erases the Tite from existence by blowing up the entire universe.

This tropey romp through multiple dimensions and outrageously bizarre aliens and tech delights with action and heart. Readers of classical science fiction and fans of humor will have much to smile about, and will hope for more rowdy adventures in Jerickson’s Multiverse.

Takeaway: Hilarious SF adventure with silly aliens, rogue cyborgs, and interdimensional fun.

Comparable Titles: Douglas Adams; Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A