Books: Dr. Dimension by John DeChancie and David Bischoff (1993)

“Dr. Demetrois Demopoulos had a dream – and a lot of burned-out parts. But, despite far too many experiments that had blown up his lab at Flitheimer University, Dr. D. was certain he was on the brink of building a working spacetime machine. And, of course, his arch-rival, the voluptuous Dr. Vivian Vernon, was determined to see that he failed – or else steal his invention. But neither of them reckoned on an unknown benefactor who shipped a crateful of future technology that would soon see Dr. D., Viv, and three of their colleagues off on a round-the-universe jaunt. Lost in spacetime, caught in the middle of a war between two super-races of aliens, and allied with a computer construct who sounded like a bad Borscht Belt comedian, was there any hope for the five humans to ever get back home- and would home still exist if and when they got there?”

I have a lot of respect for both DeChancie and Bischoff, as both have written several humorous fantasy series I read in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But here, in what seemed in 1993 of a start of a new series, comes a somewhat comedic attempt of merging pulp sci-fi (and set in 1939, the period works) with something-like The Hitchhikers Guide of the Universe style of humor. It works here and there, but it has a fairly high rate of failure with the gags.

I remember buying both this and its sequel back when they were first released. I never read them and ended up donating them – only to find them about a decade ago at a used bookstore. For some reason, I bought them again. They’ve sat in a box since then. And recently, I decided to go and read some of the books that have been in my Forever TBR pile.

But I find this book ridiculously cartoony, with it’s barely there plot, abysmal stereotypes (written way before the METOO movement), horrible puns, and atrocious wordplay. The two human villains are poorly developed and not as interesting as the three heroes. To be honest, I’m unsure what their true purpose was for being in the book. So if they were aiming to make fun of science fiction, they missed the boat here.

Also, the various aliens are remarkably goofy, and some of them could be fun. Not believable at all, but almost fun. Not sure if I’ll get to book two…maybe save it for a palate cleanser sometime in the future.