Ernst Vossoff and Karl Nimmitz: How boldly the names of those two hapless thugs and misadventurers resonate throughout the universe, even unto future and past eras! Vossoff is the mustachioed, wild-eyed, never-say-die leader of the pair, while Nimmitz is the handsome, slack-jawed, always-say-duh follower. As a team, they spread terror, consternation and laughter among sentients everywhere. But when they crossed paths with the richest, most beautiful woman in the universe, Dejah Shapiro, their linked fates became separated, and the former partners became rivals. This book, a collection of sequential tales, is their history (not quite from start to finish, since the pair are eternal), as narrated ostensibly by Dejah herself.

The first story is "Just a Couple of Sentients Sitting Around Talking." Here we encounter V&N operating at their most primal level, as they land on a planet resembling a cue ball, and try to snooker the only two inhabitants of this artificial world, who happen to be naked and possessionless supermen. In the next misadventure, "Just a Couple of Extinct Aliens Riding Around in a Limo," the boys make what they consider a fine deal. For billions of credits, they will render homage to an extinct alien race. What they do not bargain for is that the act of homage will occur on a rather intimate bodily level. What would you do if faced with a solar system being attacked by a spaceship in the form of a giant pink bunny? Make a deal with the besieged race to fight the bunny in exchange for all their wealth? If so, consider yourself completely in sync with our boys as they appear in "Just a Couple of Space Rogues Playing Name That Tune."

In "Just a Couple of Pastrami Sandwiches in a Living Room the Size of Infinity," we first encounter the redoubtable Dejah Shapiro. She falls in love with Nimmitz (having already experienced the dubious benefits of being Vossoff's ex-wife), and before you can say "cosmic screwup," Vossoff's scheme involving the ultimate weight-loss program has been thoroughly sabotaged. Now the focus of the stories shifts to incorporate revenge themes. In "Just a Couple of Highly Experimental Weapons Tucked Away Behind the Toilet Paper," a machine that gives access to alternate universes proves problematical. A Fantastic Voyage-style mission to battle rogue mitochondria is the centerpiece of "Just a Couple of Freelance Strikebreakers Arguing Economics in the Liver of Justice." A confusion as to Nimmitz's real identity nearly triggers a mass assault by a whole solar system in "Just a Couple of Subversive Alien Warmongers Floating All Alone in the Night." And the final story, "Just a Couple of Ruthless Interstellar Assassins Discussing Real Estate Investments at a Twister Game the Size of a Planet," finds Dejah trying to recover from Nimmitz's thoughtful but idiotic love gesture: staging a party for billions of her closest friends and enemies.

More than just a couple of laughs

The corps of SF humorists and satirists is a small and exclusive one, although there are numerous wannabe applicants to the club. De Camp and Pratt, Kuttner, Sheckley, Goulart, Laumer, Harrison, Webb, Bunch, Rucker, Lem—the roll call is full of famous names, to which can now be added that of Adam-Troy Castro. Forging a distinctive style and a personal set of themes, he has learned from all his illustrious predecessors and managed to extend their canonical work into new territory. (In his afterword, Castro is explicit and revealing about his various influences and homages, naming several of the folks I cited.)

What Castro has done is layer some fresh postmodern influences onto the classic SF-humor tropes. His pair of rogues bears no small resemblance to several mass-media characters, whereas older protagonists tended to derive their origins from more literary models. But, being a Boomer, Castro incorporates such icons as Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges and the in-your-face stances of assorted standup comedians into his characterizations. Moreover, Castro has completely and gleefully abandoned all attempts at logic, plausibility and worldbuilding that often dragged down the earlier works of others. The universe that Vossoff and Nimmitz inhabit is utter cardboard, not meant to be a functioning cosmos on even the level of Goulart's Barnard System. But this gaudy absurdist scrim is perfect for the absolutely whacked schemes and cartoonish flailings of the characters.

This is not to say that Castro's ideas do not have their own SF fascination. Intelligent mitochondria, weight loss through gut teleportation, a planet overloaded with a "flash crowd" of guests—in the hands of a Larry Niven or Greg Bear, these would all be deemed brilliant conceits worthy of serious treatment. In Castro's sweaty embrace, these beautiful concepts are watusi'd around the dancefloor, then diddled in the hat-check room. Pardon my metaphors, but this is what reading Castro's stories does to you. The language is so flashy, hyperbolic and funny, in a Mark Leyner/Steve Aylett vein, that you start to get giddy and want to imitate his worldview in your own speech.

Once in a while, Castro overdoes a riff. As he himself notes, Nimmitz's intelligence gradually decreases to the point where he's almost catatonic. Vossoff becomes a tad less fascinating once he's more bent on revenge than chicanery. And one set of dumb aliens tends to resemble another too closely. But all in all, the stories hold up at least as strongly as any eight random skits by Monty Python, another spiritual ancestor.