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Sometimes you are just in the mood for something fun -- fun, fun, fun 'til your editor makes you read something with literary sway. You want to sit back and enjoy yourself, have a few laughs, escape the madness of reality with the insanity of fiction. You want to read The Chronological Adventures Of Detrius Thesper and, dammit, you're going to do it. Or something along those lines...

Detrius Thesper is nobody's notion of a hero. Self-centred, cowardly, inept -- he's more like the bungling sidekick who has to be rescued every other chapter. Well, at least he got that part right; he's a menace to his own safety and to anyone within a kilometre radius.

Really, with a visitor from the future you ought to be able to expect more than that. But, that expectation isn't going to get you anywhere in this book. Detrius is just one of a quartet of marooned time-travellers. One is a young woman who wants nothing to do with their old lives and really wants nothing to do with Detrius (something about desertion). The only one with any idea of how to get them home is going strictly by memory. The fourth, and most stable, member of the team is due to be released from an insane asylum any day now.

Between Detrius' crew and the monster that "followed" them into the past, things are not looking promising for Melbourne, in fact, for Australia as a whole. Of course, everything will really hit the fan when the "authorities" decide to step in. This would be a good time to take a vacation anywhere else. War zones included.

Let me just say that the worst is yet to come.

The Chronological Adventures Of Detrius Thesper follows a proud tradition of British humour of the absurd. Think of him as Tom Sharpe, minus the malice. Not that no one gets knocked off in this book, but not with quite the prolonged glee of that esteemed author. Perhaps, it is more like Ben Elton's stuff. Then again, maybe it's just strictly Doran. Whatever comparisons you make or how you classify it, The Chronological Adventures Of Detrius Thesper is a hoot.

If the name seems familiar, you are probably correctly connecting Doran with Thylaxene, one of the strongest and most unsettling anthologies to come out in 1998. From New Zealand or anywhere on the globe. If the name seems unfamiliar, it might be because Doran and his co-horts are from a gasp! foreign country. In other words, they are part of the wealth of fine fiction that isn't making it into US bookshops. Yep, we're getting robbed.

The Chronological Adventures Of Detrius Thesper may not go down in history as one of the classics of the genre, but it is one I feel genuinely fortunate to have snagged. You will, too.

Lisa DuMond writes science fiction and humour. She co-authored the 45th anniversary issue cover of MAD Magazine. Previews of her latest, as yet unpublished, novel are available at Hades Online.