THE WALLS OF THE UNIVERSE

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

THE WALLS OF THE UNIVERSE

Paul Melko

published by Tor Books, 2009

Reviewed by Thomas Wm. Hamilton

     This book is based on a novella of the same name which appeared in Asimov's SF Magazine in 2006, and won a Hugo as best novella that year.

     John Rayburn is an unhappy youth living on his family's farm. He has a crush on a girl in his high school, and an enemy who glories in bullying him. John comes into accidental possession of a belt with three buttons, one inoperative, but the other two send him to a neighboring parallel universe. He has no control on where he ends up, and no way to return to his home world. He explores a variety of worlds, including one with the appalling consequnces of an all-out nuclear war between Pakistan and India. In better worlds he seduces his crush a dozen times, lives on his family farm in a world where his parents had no son, and begins to settle down and develop a permanent relationship with his crush. But he accidentally causes the death of the bully, whose body he conceals.

    Rayburn moves on to other worlds, gradually discovering that there are at least two factions with devices to visit parallel worlds, which they are in the process of conquering. Both factions take after him when they realize he is not one of them, and has a device that is apparently more advance (if damaged) than any they have.

     As with any good SF hero, Rayburn figures out how to build a world shifter that permits him to return to other worlds. He goes back to the one where his crush wants to marry him. His solution to suspicions he murdered the bully is neat, and also, I felt, very funny. The book ends with the competing factions being stymied for the time being, but there is no explanation for the source of the original world shifter that Rayburn had, and the book cries out for a sequel, if not as the first of a prolonged series.

Hit Counter