Interworld
Reviewed date: 2025 Aug 9
Rating: 1
256 pages
Up-front verdict
Wow this was bad.
Dunjer
Tom Dunjer owns Security Plus, which is a private security company in Happy City, one of the nicer independent city-states in a dystopian world of computers and mechs. He's following up on a lead about his brother-in-law Joe Rankin, who turns out to be dead. Also his sister has been kidnapped, and back at the office someone has broken into his impregnable safety vault and stolen a consignment of Linzeteum.
Linzeteum?
I've never heard of Linzeteum, and Dunjer doesn't know what it is either. His secretary Miss Follson tells him they've been safeguarding it temporarily until Terra-North Lab can pick it up. Dunjer pays a visit to Dr. Humperdinck Sass who explains that Linzeteum is the key to everything. Dr. Sass has developed a device called an activator that uses Linzeteum to open doors into other universes. This is very dangerous, but fortunately whoever stole the Linzeteum can't use it because he doesn't have an activator.
Gulach Grample
One of Dr. Sass's activators has been stolen. The thief is Grample, a secretive tycoon who owns and runs most of Happy City. Now Grample has the Linzeteum and an activator, and is off galavanting around in alternate universes.
Incoherent
At this point the story became completely incoherent. It was never fully coherent to begin with, but once the characters are flipping through other universes, the plot is impossible to follow. I did gather that somehow their arrival in each alternate universe was triggering disaster: in one, their arrival corresponded to the outbreak of a nuclear war. In another, an invasion of alien octopuses from outer space. I think, in the end, they all--Dunjer, Sass, and Grample--end up in a universe pretty similar to the one they started out in, with no Linzeteum and no activators.
Is it good?
No. No, it is a terrible book. Or rather, I disliked it immensely. I'm mature enough to recognize that author Isidore Haiblum is talented enough that he wrote in this style deliberately--it's just not a style or genre that I enjoy.
First, it's a hard-boiled detective story (sort-of) set in a science fiction world. It's not actually science fiction. Second, it's got no coherent plot. Third, the storytelling style got tiresome quickly. Maybe there's a way to do hardboiled stories well, but fast-talking characters who make wisecracks combined with an author who leaves out half the information and expects you to piece it together is not the way.
Also, I guess maybe it's supposed to be funny? I never could tell. The zany and wacky hijinks struck me as possibly intended to be funny, but it was always delivered so seriously that I'm not certain.