Cardboard Universe, The

From his humble beginnings as a scribbler of generic science fictions to the night of his horrifying death, Phoebus Kinsman Dank was probably the only real genius of our time, and certainly the most prolific...So writes William 'Bill' Boswell, the nation's leading 'Dankian' scholar and coauthor of "The Cardboard Universe", the seminal biographical guide to the science fiction writer's life and work. After years of tracking the obese, obsessive, and logorrheic pulp novelist, Boswell joins his coauthor, critic, and disaffected fellow acolyte Owen Hirt, to create the ultimate guide to Dank's life and work: a biographical encyclopedia, in which the two memorialize - and fight over - Dank's treasured yet hackneyed body of work. As the reader is pulled along by the unbelievable antics of Dank, the raucous Boswell vs. Hirt backstory gradually comes into focus, and eventually subsumes the story altogether.