alter P. Burmeister and Henry Carver are 22nd-century lawyers forced to leave Earth and take their legal careers elsewhere. Their bumbling adventures are told in a series of lighthearted stories collected together for the first time.
After the inventor of the Mattin Link, a means of instantaneous space travel, retains Henry, he becomes the only survivor of its trial run, and must flee his mob investors. Disguised as a beggar priest, he signs on to a ship carrying a pair of prize pigs to Mars. Through pluck and luck, he saves the planet from a plague. Meanwhile, Walter has been sent to a Venusian prison colony, where he inadvertently breaks up an illicit drug ring.
Waldo and Henry set up practice together on Mars. Their first client has invented a powerful new explosive, but once again meets an ill fate. Their second client has invented a machine that converts sewage into food, and Waldo and Henry must travel to a moon of Saturn to negotiate release of the prototype. In their next adventure, Waldo gets an assignment from the governor of Mars to guard his son and dog from dangerous representatives of the local workers' union. Meanwhile, Henry, due to his success in the Mattin Link caper, is forced to investigate a newfound alien artifact that seemingly teleports things at random.
In other adventures based in their new lunar law offices, they must steal back a pig capable of sniffing out "lunar truffles" that have been stolen by Earth, try to find a rumored immortality serum, assist a voluptuous female jouster in defeating a bioengineered dragon and help an opera company stage "Charge of the Light Brigade" in zero G with midgets on pigs.
Mad barristers declare Martian law
Space Suits collects all 11 of Charles Sheffield's short stories concerning space lawyers Waldo Burmeister (a rotund, humorous member of the team) and Henry Carver (the straight man and first-person narrator of these tales). Most of the stories were written in the late 1970s and published in Jim Baen's Galaxy magazine, although several of the stories were written in the 1980s or 1990s, and one was published just last year.
The titles of the stories are mostly puns on famous literary titles, such as "The Decline of Hyperion," "The Dalmatian of Faust," and "Parasites Lost." Sheffield's humor has a decidedly Anglo flavor, similar to the verbal slapstick and twisted situations featured in many BBC TV comedies. Waldo and Henry are likable, bumbling characters, and their clients generally have interesting problems. Most of the plots derive their primary humor from the lawyer protagonists succeeding through sheer dumb luck.
Other examples of the wellsprings of humor that tickle Sheffield's funny bone that appear repeatedly in these stories include: inventors who die testing their new invention; lawyers seeking easy money; people in disguise (preferably men as women); pigs (preferably in zero gravity); large, voluptuous women; gluttony; sewers/sewage; stupid puns; incompetent bureaucrats; men made stupid(er) by love; and men desperately avoiding women attracted to them.
Those who find these kinds of things funny as well should find Sheffield's light and humorous tales of space lawyers Henry and Waldo to be their cup of tea.
