Wednesday, June 7, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Melody by David Hoffer

 


David Hoffer's "Melody" is a self-published science fiction novel that is now a finalist in this year's Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (#SPSFC2 - See my earlier SPSFC2 reviews here), of which I am a Judge. The novel bears the subtitle "A First Contact Novel" and well, kind of means what it says, as the novel features humanity's first contact with alien life in the form of a mysterious communication received from beyond the stars. At the same time, the novel isn't quite the typical version of a first contact novel - with the story focusing upon a protagonist who might be connected to the mysterious aliens rather than dealing with alien visitors physically showing up on our world.

And well, Melody is a cynical take on first contact, and it's one that pretty much didn't work for me, even if it certainly isn't a bad book. The main theme of the book seemingly is that human contact with alien life and advanced technology is going to treated with extreme distrust and that humans will try to immediately misuse and abuse such technology if given it, especially governments and militaries. Is this a plausible idea? Sure, it can be, but it's not a particularly insightful or interesting one. Add in a take on reincarnation that I kind of found distasteful and well, Melody is not a book I would have chosen to be a Finalist had I been a judge of it earlier in the competition.
----------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------
From an early age, Stephen Fisher perceived things differently than other people...and to make it worse, he heard a voice telling him to do certain things. After a disastrous attempt at treatment in his childhood, Stephen found the voice controlled by medication, allowing him to live a normal life as a child psychologist, marry the woman of his dreams, and even to have a daughter, Danika. But Stephen sees signs that his own madness is duplicated in Danica, as she seems to hear a melody that only he can recognize coming from a specific spot in the night's sky. But that moment is soon overshadowed when a moment of relapse results in Stephen getting into a car accident that takes Danica's life...

Yet that moment brings Stephen to the attention of Government Agents like NASA Doctor Dolores McCann, who have detected that same melody - a transmission - coming from an alien source from that area in the stars. They believe that this transmission contains a program for humanity, which contains advanced technology far beyond human understanding. It's a technology Dolores and her fellow NASA scientists would like to explore, but her fellow government agents - especially the military ones - would like to adapt instead into a weapon of unimaginable power.

In any event, it soon becomes clear that Stephen may be the key to understanding the transmission and the technology...and for Stephen, the voice in his head hints that the technology might be the key to the impossible: getting to be reunited once more with Danika. But is the voice Stephen is hearing really a sign from the stars? Or just another moment of madness in a world full of it?
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Melody alternates its story between two perspectives: the first person perspective of Stephen as he tries to figure out what is real and what is in his head, and whether he's going mad as he follows a voice in hopes of being reconnected with his lost daughter; and the third person perspective of Dolores, a NASA scientist who wants to keep control of the investigation into the alien signal and to keep that investigation focused upon learning and science rather than on military applications. The story isn't really trying to hide the answer to the question of whether Stephen is crazy or involved in something extraterrestial - Stephen unwittingly uses some kind of power in the prologue even if he doesn't realize it after a time jump to star the story - and so the real question at first in his story is what exactly is the nature of that connection rather than whether he's crazy. And then the question is: what does Stephen's connection and the alien signal mean for humanity?

The answer in this book at least (the book's ending offers a sequel hook to a potentially different kind of book) is kind of dark and extremely cynical. As seen most notably in Dolores' chapters, this book poses the very cynical - if perhaps realistic - idea that the introduction of alien technology by a mysterious transmission will be co-opted by those paranoid and distrusting of any outsiders and used as a weapon as soon as possible, even without a proper understanding of the nature of that technology and what effects it might have (as the Atom Bomb demonstrates, that last bit is certainly borne out by history). And the book absolutely HAMMERS this theme, with Dolores' team's insights being co-opted repeatedly until, after the end of the first act, there's a devastating effect on the world that Dolores shamefully goes along with, and Stephen and the book concludes that humanity is not ready for the technology and takes steps to stop that tech before it can be more fully unleashed. Again there's nothing wrong with this idea or tone, but the book hammers it and doesn't really have any other message except that humanity largely can't be trusted, and well that's just not that interesting, just dark and cynical. You can do a cynical take on how the world will handle new technology for sure, but usually that is done with either subtlety or some interesting message about the results, even if its in a story without hope, but here there's just none of that, and it's kind of unsatisfying.

Equally unsatisfying to me at least is the book's major twist, which involves an extrapolation of ideas about reincarnation to lives across the universe. I have no problem with the idea of reincarnation itself - either as a religious concept or a concept in fiction (indeed, one of my favorite epic fantasy series plays really well with the concept) - but this book's version just has some really disturbing implications that I really didn't like, which basically use reincarnation to allow for characters to simply replace new lives pretty much immediately (that's all I'll say without spoiling) which really makes literal the idea of "Replacement Goldfish" characters. The idea that aliens might reincarnate as humans is perhaps interesting - the idea that someone who dies may be immediate reincarnated and take the place of their newborn relative is just making a mockery of death as having any meaning or the idea that new life can be created at all, which might be something interesting in another creator's hands, but is just ignored here.

Overall Melody isn't a winner for me - while the book isn't bad, it's just cynical and dark without really saying anything interesting and its concepts at best are more offputting than anything else. I'm not seeing why this is a finalist and I won't be ranking it very highly.

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