You can’t help but smile while reading Robert Edeson’s Bad to Worse, his second book featuring Richard Worse, polymath, conversationalist, fighter, and resident of Perth. The mirth may have something to do with the Dickensian names Edeson uses throughout – not just Worse, but an aeronautics engineer called Walter Reckles, the Norwegian–British logician Edvard Tossentern, and the aptly named villain, Glimpse (who only makes a short appearance). It may also come from the reader trying to separate the real science and philosophy from the author defying the laws of nature and daring his readers to pick the difference.