Paul Melko’s first two published novels share a concern with the multiplicity of identity, as well as a utilitarian writing style; nonetheless, they are very different books.

In Singularity’s Ring the geek rapture has been and gone, the hive-mind Community vanishing with it, leaving a small population on Earth’s surface and a massive Big Dumb Object—the titular Ring—in place around it. With the exception of the ‘singleton’ underclass, most humans live as conglomerate entities called pods: two to five bodies melded by pheremonal communication and complementary specialisations into a manifold being that is theoretically more effective and adaptable than a singleton could ever be. Our teenage hero[es] are a pod of five, collectively known as Apollo Papadopulos, and the novel follows [them/it] as [they/it] lose out on the chance to be the first interstellar pilot, go on the run after uncovering a plot against [themselves/itself] and—eventually—Save The World from the rise of Community2.0.

A fragmentary focal character is a bold move, and makes for tricky reading at first. Initially, each chapter is told from the viewpoint of one of the five elements of Apollo, which gives us some insight into their individual mindsets—the muscle, the communicator, the ethicist, the memory-man and the autistic mathematical genius. Perhaps to balance the confusing multiplicity of Apollo and other characters, Singularity’s Ring is written in spare prose, and it features a linear plot, thin characters and sock-puppet baddies, none of which hold up brilliantly to enquiries beyond the scope of the story.

That said, it moves fast enough to make that a minimal problem, and Melko has salted in a decent amount of worldbuilding that examines how we might reach a Vingean singularity (and how one might go horribly wrong), as well as some interesting thoughts about the nature of posthuman personhood. Given the raw potential of Melko’s imagined world, however, I can’t help but wish he’d gone to town a bit more with the world beyond the immediate moment of the plot—if only for the wallpapering it might have given to the narrative cracks.

Walls of the Universe is a more traditionally sf-nal story, the first section of the novel having won the accolade of Best Novella 2006 from the readers of Asimov’s. Ohio farmboy John Rayburn meets his doppelgänger in the pumpkin patch one evening, and is subsequently persuaded to take a jaunt with the same universe-hopping gizmo that brought the other John (henceforth known as John Prime) to Rayburn’s reality. Beware of strangers bearing gifts, even when they have your own face… as the novella finishes, Rayburn ends up stranded downstream from his own reality while Prime settles in to the absence he leaves behind.

From here, the plot ramps up slowly in the same linear fashion as Singularity’s Ring, with a similar climactic crescendo of Just Desserts And Justice Served. Prime’s device is far from being the only temporal gamepiece on the board, and an assortment of Men With Guns (though not always literal ones, at least at first) are thrown into the mix to add obstacles and complications for our duplex hero, whose two incarnations have very different approaches to dealing with adversity; Prime’s reality-hopping has left him a lot more jaded than the comparatively naïve and virtuous Rayburn.

It’s a classic sf-nal conceit handled with a modern sensibility—the Johns survive by “reinventing” intellectual properties that don’t yet exist in their new universes, for example, and the moral implications of murder, teenage pregnancy and other mishaps and misdemeanours get a perfunctory airing—but there’s little depth of character and theme to get lost in, nor any of the vivid description or philosophical diversions that the multiverse conceit lends itself to so well.

That said, not all readers demand that sort of writing; in fact, the majority probably dislike it. Melko’s concern is to keep the pages turning, and he succeeds admirably—I was surprised how quickly I rattled through them—but I feel no urge to re-read either book. They’re a fine enough way to kill a few hours (and I’ve certainly read novels by better-known authors that I enjoyed a lot less), but they don’t meet the comparisons to Vinge and Stross with which they have been awarded (presumably on the basis of the title alone); there’s not enough flesh on the bones for my taste.

However, the question remains: is this just-the-facts-ma’am writing purposefully aimed at younger readers, or is YA a newly-minted badge of convenience to separate new incarnations of such material (which is not a new style of writing by any means, either within the genre or without) from the growing body of what—for want of a less contentious term —we might label as “literary” (or, universe forbid, “adult”) sf?

It’s a semantic argument, of course, as well as a matter for marketing departments more than critics; Melko’s work will be greatly appreciated by readers—young and old—who yearn for science fiction that “just tells a story”, and its worth can (and should) be judged by each reader on their own terms. But I doubt that’ll stop someone from using Melko as a poster-child for everything that every sf writer should be doing to Save The World… er, Save The Genre, I mean.