Review: The Walls of the Universe

I really, really liked Paul Melko’s “The Walls of the Universe.” The problem is I wanted to love it.

The first third of the novel unfolds at a breathless pace as we meet John Rayburn and his double from a parallel universe, John Prime. Prime has come to John’s universe with a device that allows the user to pop from one parallel universe to the next. Prime offers John the chance to explore the next universe over, promising John that he can pop over, recharge the device and just pop back. Little does John suspect that Prime’s device only allows you to journey forward to the next universe and not backward and that Prime is looking for a way to steal John’s life out from under him.

For the first third of the novel, we alternate back and forth between John’s journey and Prime’s scheming in John’s home universe. Prime has come forward with ideas and inventions not yet seen in John’s universe, intending to claim them as his own and take the credit and fortune that comes with them. We slowly see how Prime works his way into John’s seemingly ideal life, not only getting the girl John has always had a crush on but also working out the first stages of fame and fortune by introducing the Rubik’s Cube to that universe. Meanwhile, John must learn the ropes of travel, eventually deciding to settle down in one safe universe and going to college to try and understand the device.

In the course of the story, Melko allows the reader to both root for and against each John. Prime could easily be a one-note villain, but as Melko explores the character and allows us to get to know him, we become more sympathetic toward him and even begin to pull for him as some of the later events of the story begin to unfold. And while John may be initially be a victim, he eventually begins to take on some of Prime’s traits that early on made us pull against him, leaving the reader with some fascinating questions about nature vs nurture. And, like all good sci-fi, he presents the arguments and allows readers to draw their own conclusions.

The book also brings up some interesting ideas about “destiny,” as we see John’s journey to ending up with the same girl in two universes as well as having to tangle with the same bully in both.

It’s once other various inhabitants from other parallel worlds show up that things begin to drift off course a bit. The story tries to expand the concept of the infinite number of universes, each one slightly different than the next, with concepts about people who only exist in one universe and the morality of jumping from one place to the next and trying to cash in. We also find that John’s machine is damaged and that through study John is able to reverse engineer a working device to return to our world.

However, once John gets a newly working device, things begin to derail a bit. The problem is these concepts come up so late in the story that they seem tacked on and aren’t as fascinatingly explored as some of the concepts and characters early in the novel. It may be that Melko wanted to have some hard science in a character based sci-fi story, but it just feels a bit out of place.

But that shouldn’t keep you from reading “The Walls of the Universe.” For 300 pages, it’s one of the most fascinating, compelling and page-turning sci-fi (or really any genre) novels I’ve read in a long time. I’m hoping that Melko might return to the universe he’s created here and show us the last 50 or so pages are all about setting up a great follow-up.