The idea of the book was very clever, and the first half of the book was a lot of fun. About halfway through the book, that changed, and the second half was a total hash.Maxwell Parker was a successful tabloid writer. He covered the science beat, which meant he did articles about goofy science tricks, mad scientists, and anything science-related that his boss came up with.While interviewing an amateur scientist about his weird ideas, he got infused with a "charge" of some kind of energy which tended to bring people, animals and other things across the boundary from parallel worlds. Hilarity ensues, only...just as things are starting to get serious, the rules change, and suddenly HE is the one moving across the boundaries to other worlds. After that, most of the story was just generic world-hopping, exploring some very trite alternate world settings. A few were more and more outrageous, past the point of reason. That works if the story is being played for humor, but this wasn't. The ending was slightly better.The problem was that the story asked philosophical questions for which there can be no answers, like "can I be in a parallel universe which is indistinguishable from my own?" There is no answer short of madness.So, the book is readable and interesting, but far from one of Foster's best.
