The first in a series from Aussie authors Martin Nixon and Robert J. Camp, Ephemeris: Part Circle is a preposterous space adventure wrought with danger, weird aliens, and trivial irritations. The story began its life when the writing duo were just a pair of sci-fi-fuelled teens, and was an attempt to harness their extensive archive of endlessly escalating private gags into something tangible. As such, it reads like something banged out by Douglas Adams that time he was secretly two excitable kids in a trenchcoat.
The tale follows the authors' fictionalised selves through a colourful and slightly grotty world filled with a supporting cast of time-hopping space cadets, safety-obsessed ninjas, and a car with a mean face. When hapless Martin falls off his bike and accidentally summons a cabal of interdimensional and demographically inclusive baddies, our heroes are left homeless and seriously peeved – and their only chance at reconciliation is an epic final boss showdown on the moon. Their adventure takes them to secret island bases, skybound petrol stations, and countless joyfully acknowledged movie tropes.
More so than the story, the text itself pulses with the kind of breathless energy that follows several hours of role-playing games and fizzy pop. Every thought inspires its own flabbergastingly obtuse tangent, creating an interwoven maelstrom of in-jokes so dense that it's impossible not to applaud. Action sequences are conveyed in such exhaustive detail that even the most frenetic end up spanning several chapters. Throwaway details are expanded upon in footnotes which probably account for a third of the novel's text, describing everything from a what a guy's shoes look like to historical accounts of racial tensions among insects.
It's this admirable (and deranged) insistence upon wringing every molecule of comedy from an already fun situation that makes the heart and soul of this book, and it could only come from two mates screwing about and trying to make each other laugh. The fact that Messrs Nixon and Camp have thought to write down their mental ramblings since adolescence – and even more impressively, translate them into a fictional universe as cohesive as it is cacklingly bonkers – is worth admission alone.
Ephemeris: Part Circle is a hypercharged Hitchhiker's for the internet age; an ADD assault of delirious exuberance bristling with nerd affection and an unshakable sense that we're definitely in on the joke. It's like they smashed up a bunch of Red Dwarf and Doctor Who DVDs and glued them back together with liquid Nintendo.
Exhausting, enthralling, irresistible.
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