What you are about to read is brought to you at the special request of StarWolf, who heard my explanation of why I feel ENDLESS UNIVERSE is the unintentionally funniest SF novel I have ever read and asked me to write a review. What follows is not a review, but a short and accurate summary:
— Yes, gentlebeings. May I be of service?
— We are two of the elite space explorers here to pick up some six week old babies.
— We'll raise them to be trained from the cradle space explorers, just like us.
— Captain, we aliens charged with looking after the children are getting bad vibes about this planet. We're not going outside and we're not letting the kids out.
— Well, you can do what you want. We adult humans will keep poking around out there.
— Crewman, have you seen the Captain?
— Not recently. Captain, Captain.
— There he is. He's lying down in front of that strange plant. Why, he's dead, Doc.
— Must have been a heart attack.
— There's one of the children from the nursery. Now we can choose a new captain.
— Here, little Marina, pick one, just one, of the names out of this hat. That's a good girl. The new captain is...
— Captain, what are your first orders?
— Well, we'll keep poking around outside.
— Doc, there's someone else dead in front of one of those weird plants.
— That old man. Must have died of old age. Anyway, I'm fed up with those stupid aliens. As medical officer of this ship, I order the kids out to get some fresh air.
— Ahhhh! Help! Ahhhh!
— What the blazes! A dead kid, a dying alien, other hurt humans. Doc, what's going on?
— Can't figure it out, Captain.
— Well, I'm going to send out some guys in space suits to see if they can find anything.
FIFTY PAGES after the healthy first captain is found dead in front of a weird plant occurs this staggering realization, "So the plants were the danger."
— Another planet. I wonder what it's like.
— The air's alright. We don't need our helmets.
— Ahhhh!
— Captain, first landing party wiped out by some disease in the atmosphere.
— Second batch better keep their spacesuits and helmets on.
— Good idea, Captain.
— There, we've decontaminated the spacesuits and the outside of the shuttle craft.
— Good. I'll go inside and fiddle with some of the equipment we were using down there. Ahhhh!
— Drat. Forgot to decontaminate that equipment and the inside of the shuttle craft.
— Why so glum, Captain?
— I don't have enough crewmen. We lost so many in those unavoidable accidents that even working double shifts it's nigh impossible to keep the ship flying.
— Wait, Captain, we will be able to keep exploring the universe, after all. We've just made contact with another ship of trained from the cradle space explorers. By combining our two surviving crews, we'll be just able to man one ship.
— Another ship lost, though. I wonder how many of our original hundred are still flying.
— No, Captain, we won't have to lose a ship. We're going to do something revolutionary. We're going to take on three dozen adult volunteers from that planet over there and train them to be space explorers.
Michael McKenny 1985