Review: The Walls of the Universe

[megwrites]

Title: The Walls of the Universe
Author: Paul Melko (PaulMelko.com)
Genre: Science Fiction
Page Count: 384 pages
Publisher: Tor




The Basic Plotline: When high school senior John meets his doppleganger from another universe and is tricked into using a device to go to an alternate world, he finds himself stranded and must do everything in his power to get back while the other John goes about living his life in his stead.


The Positives: What I appreciated about this book was that it was a fairly easy read, if sometimes flat. I think it might actually have made a better YA novel than an adult science fiction novel, especially since there are many themes concerning growing up, identity, and finding your place in new surroundings that might have resonated very strongly with a YA audience.

The science in the novel is solid and the internal logic is sound, and while it was not explained in depth or satisfactorily to reader who didn't have a physics background, I found that it stood up to what scrutiny I could place it under.

Prose-wise, it's a very simple, functional book with few stylistic flourishes or excess. It is very lean, and keeps it's eyes on the ball, so to speak. Like wise, the plot is very linear and straightforward and does not make any detours.


The Negatives: I can't say I enjoyed this work. It fell flat for me. I felt little or no connection or sympathy for John or the other characters. They seemed to simple and two dimension to me.

The story of a simple but plucky and intelligent farm boy who is unhappy with his small town life who gets taken on a whirlwind ride through the universe has been done to death. There was nothing particularly interesting about John or John Prime or any other character. The beginning scene of John angrily going out the door, frustrated with his life, uncertain of whether he'll get to go to the Jedi academy college. It reads like a thin veil or a bad homage to Star Wars. I expected for there to be two moons and a John Williams piece swelling in the background.

While I realize that there is some commonalities between all hero-on-a-quest stories, this one has particular bits of Star Wars and other things I've seen done in other stories, shows, and movies that didn't feel like clever references but shoddy borrowing.

The dialogue between characters is often stiff and cardboardesque and rather unbelievable, considering that some of these characters are supposed to be high school seniors or college students. They often sound like forty-year-olds. There is no flavor or characterization to their dialogue. Everyone, save the one Russian lab tech, sounds and talks just like John. Even in the other universes he goes to. Also, everyone speaks English in the other universes he goes to.

Not to mention that it seems like Melko's interpretation of alternate universes is not grounded in any study of history. For instance, a character says that, very rarely, the South wins the Civil War. Which is a boneheaded assessment of history, because that assumes that there is always a clear victor in that war, and it very easily could have come to a draw or to a tense, ongoing ceasefire. Not to mention that any historian that doesn't acknowledge that there should be at least a few universes in which the North breaks from the union in reaction to unfavorable shipping taxes or the Embargo act can - and I say this as a historian and a Southerner - get stuffed and mounted like a deer head on my grandaddy's wall. Please to be remembering your American history, thank you very much.

There are many things that go unexplained in the novel, despite the many opportunities for the character to ask for explanations. The other travelers from alternate universes are kept mysterious, and much of the terminology they use is never explained either with exposition or context, and they are the most interesting and unique part of the novel. The idea that there would be marauders who make their bread and butter out of plundering less advanced universes (or at least less advanced Earths) is something somewhat original and more interesting.

Also, the main jist of the novel seems to be an overdeveloped answer to a question of whether you could take inventions between universes (ie, inventing the Rubik's cube in a world where it never existed) and get rich from it. It would make for a good internet meme, but makes a poor central plot point for a novel. Spending several chapter watching John invent pinball is painfully boring.

The ending is rushed and somewhat dissatisfying, and makes for a rather beige ending to a beige plot.

Not to mention that I was somewhat curious as to why there would be alternate Earths with everything from no people to too many people, but never an alternate reality in which Earth itself had not existed, or Earths which were uninhabitable because they surround a sun that is too hot, too cold, too near or too far. It is never explained how the character always lands on an inhabitable Earth, and I felt that was a logical flaw in this novel that deserved some mention.


CoC score: 0. There are no characters of color in this novel. It is discussed how many different universes turn out, and at one point a character says that in 5 out of 12 universes, Napoleon never loses or universes where the South wins the civil war, but there seems to be no universe in which, say, Europe is completely depopulated by the Plague and the dominate culture comes to be a non-white culture like China, India, Egypt, or the Ottoman Empire. Lord forbid that the Persian Empire should have survived or that the great conquerer that was Alexander the Great was not Greek but rather of another culture who conquered from East to West?

I have to say that I find that to be an atrocious example of unexamined privilege and the way that racism is deeply ingrained in SF/F, and this is just another offering to the pile of novels that completely ignore, erase, and otherwise forget the existence of people of color.

How blind must you be not to be able to imagine even one universe that is not dominated by European/White cultures, to be unable to write even one character of color in the many version of Ohio that are visited? Does this author somehow believe that Ohio is devoid of any significant amount people of color?

GLBT score: 0. No queer people appear in this novel.


Gender score: 2. There are exactly three (or four) female characters in this novel. John's mother, the two versions of Casey (both of whom are destined to be John's love interest and nothing more), and Grace. Grace also is a love interest of John until becomes the love interest of Henry, one of the other characters. She then gets tortured. The only redeeming feature that keeps this from getting a rating of a "1" is that at least Grace gets to shoot the men that tortured her. But women in this novel do not seem to be terribly important, and are there just as arm candy and supporting roles. They don't even get to be marauders, as those are all male.