Author: Paul Melko
Cover Artist: Jon Foster
Publisher: Tor Books
Binding: Hardback
Publication Date: February 2009
You are tired of your old life and friends, your job sucks, and the police are after you – what do you do, where do you escape to when you need to make a quick getaway? If you’re like John Rayburn, or his genetic doppelganger, the nefarious John Prime, and have a miraculous device that allows you a certain leeway that others lack, you simply leave your woes behind and start your life over again in an alternate universe. The catch is, many alternate universes can be deadly, and just because you can travel from one to another doesn’t mean that the new life you make for yourself will turn out any better than your previous one.
This is, in a nutshell, the concept behind Paul Melko’s latest SF novel, The Walls of the Universe. Sure, the idea of alternate universes is a relatively old, tried & true one, but that doesn’t mean it’s trite – in the hands of a skillful writer, like Paul Melko, the old becomes new again. The farmboy naivete of John Rayburn, before his initial fateful meeting with his double from another universe, helps make the concept new for the readers of Melko’s novel, because we see everything through Rayburn’s eyes.
John Rayburn’s small town high school life, raised on a farm by loving parents, is turned upside down the day he first meets a version of himself from another universe who calls himself John Prime. Prime pretends to be his friend, as well as an exact genetic duplicate of Rayburn, and weaves a tale of having traveled through several universes, each one different from the rest, sometimes in drastic ways. He describes where he came from to Rayburn, noting a few key differences:
“In ever universe I’ve been in, it’s always something simple. Here George Bush raised taxes and he never got elected to a second term. Clinton beat him in ’91.” He opened the history book and pointed to the color panel of American presidents. “In my world, Bush never backed down on the taxes thing and the economy took off and he got elected to his second term. He was riding even higher when Hussein was assassinated in the middle of his second term. His son was elected in 1996.”
John laughed. “That joker?”
Prime scowled. “Dubya worked the national debt down to nothing. Unemployment was below three percent.”
Prime travels from universe to universe with the use of a device strapped around his chest that has a dial on it so a person can set it for whatever number of universe he/she desires. He’s meet other versions of himself before, he tells Rayburn, many who were almost the same, but some who became deliquents, smoking cigarettes and getting drunk. Also, he’s meet several versions of a high school cheerleader, Casey, who Rayburn likes but has been too shy to ask out. In other universes, she’s gotten pregnant, and is slutty.
What Prime doesn’t tell Rayburn is that the device is not working properly. It will only send a person to universes after the last number showing on the dial, not to any previous ones. And, he’s the one, in some cases, who has made the different Caseys pregnant. He tricks John into using the device, giving him the assurance that he can easily return after verifying Prime’s story that he really can travel from one universe to the next.
Instead of being someone who can be trusted, Prime has schemed to set up a new life for himself at the first universe he arrives at that’s as close as possible to his own. He also has with him a suitcase full of money, that he’s either stolen and/or made from marketing ideas based on technology some of the universes lack that others have. His plan in Rayburn’s universe is to patent and market the Rubik’s Cube, which hasn’t been invented there, and to earn millions.
What of John Rayburn? He soon learns the truth of his dire situation, and what a conniving, scheming SOB Prime is, and he vows to get revenge on Prime whenever he figures out how to get back. Getting back, however, John finds, is easier said than done. His travels take him to a universe he likes enough to stay in for number of years, working at his parents’ farm. In this universe, they never had children, and treat him as sort of both an adopted son and a farm hand. He attends college with the money he earns, studying physics to learn as much as he can about alternate universes, and how to return to his own universe.
There’s a Casey again, who is John’s on-again, off-again girlfriend. Two fellow students, Grace and Henry, become very important characters in the novel, and help him build a pinball machine for a project. Rayburn doesn’t want to be anything like Prime, but pinball machines have not been invented in the universe he’s made his new home, and the machines the three manufacture become a big success. His main goal, though, remains trying to reverse engineer the strange device, discover how to fix it, and then return to his own universe to get back his old life and get revenge on Prime.
The novel goes back and forth between the perspectives of the two Johns, the lives they are leading, and their attempts to succeed in their inventions, and in their personal relationships with family, friends, and girlfriends. Though Prime is despicable in many ways, Melko manages to make the reader have empathy (at least, to a degree) with him, and the twin plot lines really are a good aspect of the novel. Also, one can’t help but root for Rayburn’s efforts and studying to pay off, and be able to eventually pay back Prime for tricking him and taking over his life.
As a complication in the twin plots, there are other people who have been stranded without devices in both universes the Johns have set up lives in. They have their own agendas and are involved in making themselves as comfortable as possible monetarily by marketing inventions, music, and ideas from other universes. For example, in the universe Rayburn finds himself in, Beethoven only wrote six symphonies, and the company that is backing the pinball machine also is marketing symphonies seven through nine as the compositions of others. They are also marketing scuba gear for the military, and defibrillation machines, all stolen ideas from other universes.
I was captivated by the fates of both Johns, and I thought the way Rayburn opens up the device, reverse engineers it, and figures out that antimatter powers it, is pretty interesting and cool to read. Melko has written one novel previously, Singularity’s Ring, that is also well worth reading. If you like to read novels about parallel or alternate universes, like I do, The Walls of the Universe is one you’ll want to check out!
