"The Book" being referred to here is just the first of at least two books that eventually need to be written about Darwood and Smitty. I mean, you can write forever about people's lives, until they're dead -- usually killed if it happens in a book like this. But I wouldn't want to bore anyone more than necessary. So I keep to the most interesting tales.

This one happens in 2045. At that point, our beloved brown delivery trucks are hovering on a magnetic grid system and the company is known as Earth Express, (since someone else got the contract for interplanetary deliveries).

Darwood and Smitty are mere deliverymen*, until they're commissioned to stop at a prison and pick up a package for Earth's president. At that point, they're in hot water with people on every side ... and it's not very clear which side is UP. But they've got to figure it out quickly, because the president wants to see them, and so does Squat -- the fellow from the sticks who greets them from up in a tree -- and so do the Jovians, who are ugly, mean, and funny smelling. Or are they just ugly and smelly with a profound mystical side?

Now, as you can probably tell, I try to tell the story with a rigid sense of obligation to the facts and only the facts. But Darwood ... he's kind of a funny-man. And Smitty is probably even funnier because he's so serious and suspicious. So the story is pretty amusing despite my best efforts to keep it from being so.

That probably does it for now. I may post some samples on this site before long, but I have to decide if that would keep anyone from publishing it, which would be a decidedly sour turn of events for ol' Darwood and Smitty.