The Walls of the Universe
Paul Melko
Tor Books, 2009
U.S. hardcover, first edition
ISBN 978-0-7653-1997-7
384 pages; $25.95

I’ve always loved the notion of parallel universes. Maybe ten universes from here there’s a Terry who went to grad school in English instead of law school, earned tenure at a good university, and met her sweetheart ten or twenty years earlier than in this universe and lived happily ever after. Maybe fifty universes away is a Terry who never broke up with the guy she dated through most of college, married him right after graduation, had a bunch of kids, and was thoroughly miserable. And maybe 100 universes in the other direction is the Terry who went to law school, loved every minute of practicing law, became a famous trial lawyer, and is single, rich and happily arguing in front of a jury right this minute. I can conjure up all the possibilities in my imagination with great pleasure.

Even more fun, though, is reading a book like Paul Melko’s The Walls of the Universe, which plays out the consequences of being able to jump between universes. Melko starts with two versions of John Rayburn. One is a high school senior who lives on a farm and is getting ready to go to college – not at Case Institute of Technology, where he really wants to go to study physics, but at the University of Toledo, which is affordable with a year or two of farm work. He’s in a bit of trouble at the moment, having beaten up his classmate, Ted Carson, but for the most part he’s a good kid with a solid head on his shoulders.

One fall morning shortly before Halloween, though, a boy comes out of the woods to greet him with a familiar face – his own. This is John Prime, a John Rayburn from another universe who has been jumping from universe to universe and is now hungry and tired and – though he doesn’t dare say so to John Rayburn – looking for a place to settle down and call home, earn a few bucks, get it on with Casey Nicholson, who is the girl for him in every universe. John Prime tricks John Rayburn into using the device that will take him into another universe, not telling Rayburn that it works in only one direction.

The book splits into two at this point, following each John in his separate universe(s). John Prime, who never did seem like such a great guy and who solidifies that impression when he tricks John Rayburn into using the device, has a pretty difficult time of it, despite the fact that he undertakes plans to market Rubick’s Cube, which was never invented in John Rayburn’s universe. John Rayburn manages to stay a pretty straightforward sort of guy. His anger when he finds that he has no way back to his own universe nearly gets the better of him, but after a close call or two he settles down into work and college. Despite himself, he finds that he has invented pinball, something never seen in the universe he lands in.

Both Johns, however, draw the attention of forces who believe themselves to be from the original and only universe, the one of which all others are copies. These individuals have been stranded in subsidiary universes, where they despise everyone and make a cushy living putting out artworks (like the rest of Beethoven’s symphonies – didn’t he write only three in his lifetime?) and devices that were never invented in the universes in which they are exiled. These people aren’t amused when someone else treads on their new invention turf, and they are especially not amused when they learn that John Rayburn has a universe-skipping device.

The book grows darker the longer one reads, and the pace never lets up. Seeing how John Prime and John Rayburn resolve their respective problems is exciting, interesting and just plain fun. The Walls of the Universe is a great use of an old trope.