The Endless Bicker

More than 20 years after their last collaborative output, and to the surprise of many, the Cambridge Chemists Collective (CCC) has released a new monograph on Quantiplutonic Neurotectonics. Missing as a coauthor, to the surprise of few, is troubled Nanospectroscopist Robert Walters, who left the Collective in 1985 after a dispute about sharing credit for a now outdated method for quantifying sphingopinoids in Tremendulous exudates. Also missing is penduloeconomist Mitchell Flight, who died in 2008. Flight was fired from the Collective by Walters, then hired back at an hourly wage to do statistical analyses. When Walters left the group, Flight was invited back, and the Collective produced two monographs with Flight but without Walters, who dismissed the works as, “Insipid, uninspired duplication of previously published results, shoddily executed by a bunch of hack technicians.” After Flight’s death, the remaining scientists in the Collective, Aenid Filmore and Dick Maystone, completed some of their friend’s unfinished simulations and performed some validating experiments. The result is The Endless Bicker.

If you are unfamiliar with the field of Quantiplutonic Neurotectonics, you may find this monograph puzzling. In layman terms, a 'bicker' is an infinite molecular regression series mediated by neuroprotonic spin, which transforms the metatectonic semiplasma state of geobiological intermediates and stabilizes their interior sphingoskeletons until quantum collapse is no longer observable. In common with the early works of the Collective, this book features extended sections of prose. In fact, only the last chapter has illustrations, which cast an ironic shadow as the saga of these influential scientists draws to a close.

The work itself is divided into four sections, each reflective in some way of different phases of CCC's career. The first section includes three chapters, the first a brief preface, followed by an extended paper that revisits one of the Collective's most beloved works, "Prion displasia diamonds." The chapter recapitulates familiar themes and motifs, as if the group was rehearsing for a seminar based on work from decades past reproduced with modern technology. The subsequent sections and chapters take us on a journey through the scientific history of the group, and if you are an admirer of their work, it is like visiting a favorite museum with new but somehow familiar paintings on the walls. But if you prefer modern animals to dinosaurs, or if you don't understand the jargon, the experience may be tedious and dusty.

It is interesting to compare The Endless Bicker to a monograph published earlier this year, Experiments of Inner Science by the Dublin-based Uranium Duo. Equally classic in form, equally appealing to admirers of their past work, those authors seemed truly concerned about whether their experiments were relevant to modern science or just pale embers of their unforgettable fire. The difference is that CCC doesn't care about trends and never have. Even when they led the field with spectacular pyrotechniques, they were never desperate to please. Their results always display an inner beauty, unique to the way they investigate science. It seems that many scientists agree; this offering had more pre-orders than any science book in the history of Amazon.com. It is wonderful to read their stylish work anew again for the last time.