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Honest, the Martian Ate Your Dog Humorous Science Fiction Novel
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Basement of the Universe

This is another story which involves the detectives from 3D Inc., who are first introduced in "The Hunt for 'Read October'". This time, the story is about another one of the partners, Peter Vimes Crenshaw, whose wife has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Pete goes in search of his wife and finds that she's literally dropped through the cracks, in to the basement of the universe. What is the basement of the universe? Does he find his wife? Is she alive? That's the story of the novel.

At least, that was supposed to be the story at first, with a few variations :p It was the original story of "Basement of the Universe" as my wife and I plotted it out. She even wrote the first draft of the story along those lines. Later, we decided to tie it into my Fifty Galaxies series and so we began making a few changes to the story and then the story began to change way too much for Laurie's taste when I began attempting to re-write it :) So we agreed that I'd do the story my own way under the original title but that she'd keep the original story under a new title and do with it what she will.

The new story tied together the concept of the basement that we'd created for the original story with the events from "Honest, the Martian Ate Your Dog". I can't reveal too much here as it would give away too much of the ending of "Honest" (hence the detailed description of how the story came to be :p). Suffice it to say that "Basement" continues on from some of the events in "Honest, the Martian Ate Your Dog". It brings back some of the minor characters from the earlier novel but also brings in the counter-detectives introduced in "The Hunt for 'Read October'".

Excerpt - Basement of the Universe

"You want us to go where?", Jupiter stared at the latest clients of 3D[1] Inc, sitting across the table from him.

"The basement," answered the taller of the two, the one who had introduced himself as Sthri Pio.

"But ... but ... why?" stammered Jupiter, glancing at his partners as if for support. Pete simply shrugged, as if to say that clients by definition were weird. Bob was staring out the window again, lost in thought. Jupiter made a mental note to speak to Bob about that later, it looked bad when one of the partners totally ignored a new client.

"You see," the tall one leaned across the table conspiratorially, "we want you to find a dog."

"A dog? In the basement?"

"Yes," said Sthri while the other one, Reeltu, nodded his agreement and smiled.

"Ah, hah! But we don't have one!" said Bob returning to the land of the here and now suddenly and deciding to take part in the conversation.

"A dog?" asked Sthri, raising one eyebrow and looking quizzical.

"No, a basement. So we can't go looking for one!"

"A basement?" asked Sthri, looking puzzled.

"No, a dog! We can't go looking for a dog in our basement because we don't have one!"

"A dog? Or a basement?" responded Reeltu, darting a glance at his partner which spoke volumes.

"Both. We don't have a dog or a basement."

Jupiter decided to intervene before further confusion ensued.

[1] The Dynamic Detective Dudes Inc. a counter-detective[2] agency.
[2] The Wilson-Fiske act had enabled counter-detectives to come into being. Those in favour of counter-detectivess claimed that if they were being investigated, by golly, they had a right to counter-investigate.

 
       
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