Science fiction books can be divided into two categories: those that tell of one important change that might happen to our world, and those that try to drag in everything that might ever happen to our world. Godplayers is among the latter.

At the beginning of Australian writer Broderick's latest novel, August Seebeck leads an ordinary life in an inner-Melbourne suburb. His great-aunt Tansy tells him that every Saturday night she finds a body in the bath upstairs - each time it's a different body, so she says.

One Saturday night, August is the person who finds the body. All he wanted to do was take a bath. Two women step out of nowhere. One of them is Lune, who becomes the love of August's life. Lune introduces him to the multi-universe Contest of Worlds. They disappear with the body, then return for August, who has no choice but to join the Contest.

In his 'Afterword', Broderick tells us that he wanted to write an old-fashioned science fiction tale that incorporated all the latest cosmological research.

Influences on Broderick's writing include Samuel Delany, Roger Zelazny and Alfred Bester, so high-tech baroque is his idea of 'old-fashioned'. Broderick really has read all the latest research. It's all crammed into 328 pages. August Seebeck is still confused at the end of the book about what kind of a game he is playing. Frankly, so was I.

The plot moves faster than a faster-than-light spaceship, and there are more clues on each page than in a whole library of Agatha Christie, but the end still left me significantly more puzzled than when I started. I suspect a sequel is looming.

If you like dazzling million-idea science fiction, Godplayers is the book for you. But if you prefer the quiet, one-good-idea-per-book approach, look elsewhere.

My guess is that Godplayers will earn a whole new set of admirers for its already highly respected author.