The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry

Published by ‎ G.P. Putnam's Sons on July 6, 2021

The “many worlds” theory of parallel universes lends itself to many stories by science fiction writers. The 22 Murders of Madison May is the latest parallel universe story. The novel is apparently being developed as a television series. Television might be its natural element.

Madison “Maddie” May is an actress who was cast in a film that gave her career a jump start. Sadly for her, a fan named Clayton Hors sees the movie and falls in love with her. Clayton has a portal, a device that allows him to travel from one universe to another when the universes happen to be bumping against each other, an event that happens once every 30 hours. As Clayton journeys from universe to universe, he searches out the Maddie in each new place he visits. She’s never quite the woman he fell in love with — she’s usually not an actress at all, or at least not a successful one. Clayton feels betrayed by his encounters with Maddie and invariably kills her and moves on to the next universe. He’s done this about twenty times when the novel starts.

A group of people who have also acquired portal devices are moving through universes, following the path that Clayton creates. How this happens is the subject of a muddled explanation that requires travelers to acquire anchor points known as “moorings” to assure they will end up on a similar world (as opposed to, for example, travel to a universe where Earth doesn’t exist or has a noxious atmosphere). Where and how the travelers acquired portals and why they banded together are unanswered questions. While science fiction requires the suspension of disbelief, some writers try to provide a credible, science-based explanation so that the reader will not be discomforted by accepting unlikely realities. Max Barry doesn’t bother with credible explanations, but this isn’t the kind of science-based story that demands them.

It is instead a story of good guys chasing a bad guy. Clayton is the bad guy. The primary good guys are Hugo Garrelly (who really isn’t all that good) and Felicity Staples. Hugo is one of the travelers who has a portal. Hugo is chasing Clayton through various universes in an attempt to save various Maddies, hoping in the process to get ahead of him so that Clayton can be stopped. Felicity is a reporter who, quite against her will, joins Hugo on his travels.

The rules of physics that govern that novel posit that a new arrival in a dimension will replace that person’s existing counterpart. The novel’s most interesting aspect involves Felicity’s reaction to the lives that her counterpart was living as she enters each new universe. She has the same significant other in each, but they aren’t identical. One likes to cook. One has a beard. One is learning to make shoes. One largely ignores her while another is surprisingly attentive. Naturally enough, she likes the attentive one. But when she leaves a universe she leaves nothing behind. While she feels guilty about abandoning her significant others, Hugo gives her little choice.

Also of interest is the notion that the dimensional travelers might be motivated by the desire, not just to stop various Maddies from being murdered (there are an infinite number of Maddies, after all, so a couple of dozen deaths are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things), but to spread good things (such as music and art) from worlds where they exist to worlds where they don’t, making worlds better, one world at a time. The notion is never fully explored because it might not be consonant with the actual intent of the travelers.

At bottom, The 22 Murders of Madison May is an entertaining chase novel, with interdimensional portals substituting for the airplanes and fast cars that usually facilitate chases. Felicity and each of the Maddies are likable. Their character development isn’t deep but it isn’t shallow. Each incarnation of Madison makes her sympathetic — the reader might feel sad that she’s probably going to die, given her persistent determination to live a better life — while Felicity’s moral struggle (as well as her career struggles) make her an appealing character. Clayton is a basic sociopath who probably doesn’t need any more characterization than his obsession with Maddie. The plot isn’t complex but it isn’t overly simplistic, despite the absence of any real explanation for the underlying premise of interdimensional travelers and their mysterious portals.

The novel has the feel of being thrown together to meet a deadline without taking the time to flesh out the story’s premise. Maybe it was thrown together in anticipation of selling the story to television. After all, few television shows worry about whether the premise makes sense. Max Barry could have written a better novel, as he’s done in the past, but The 22 Murders of Madison May has sufficient entertainment value to qualify as a decent beach read.

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Providence by Max Barry

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on March 31, 2020

Mashing together themes are that are common in science fiction, Max Barry crafts a fun and interesting story in Providence. The themes include the danger of allowing Artificial Intelligence to supplant humans in making important decisions, the risk of corporate officers becoming indistinguishable from military officers, and the likelihood that the military industrial complex will manipulate public opinion so it can fight a profitable war.

The war is being waged with aliens who look like (and are therefore referred to as) salamanders. Salamanders have the ability to expel a force from their mouths that blows a hole through just about anything. The first human explorers to encounter salamanders tried to communicate with them, but ended up with holes in their bodies and ship. Hence the war.

Humans decided to take it to the salamanders, devoting more than 20% of their GDP to the production of weapons and ships. After humans were defeated in battle, the company that manufactures the AI that runs the ships’ systems blamed the humans for not recognizing the threat quickly enough. The blame could just as easily have been placed on the AI, but that wouldn’t have been profitable.

The new Providence class of ships is controlled entirely by AI. Humans are along for the ride, primarily to make propaganda videos showing their success at destroying salamanders. Propaganda is also designed to convince the public that salamanders hate humans, when in fact humans have no clue about what motivates a salamander. Nor are humans likely to learn, since their goal is to eradicate salamanders as a species.

Four characters are on a ship that is the novel’s focus. Jolene Jackson was the lone survivor of the defeat that sparked the decision to put AIs in charge of the war. She reluctantly agreed to become the ship’s captain, although the job gives her little to do beyond trying to make the crew appear to have discipline. Isiah Gilligan (“Gilley”) is a civilian who works for the company that made the ship and its AI. Gilly is in charge of maintaining the ship’s systems, but since the ship maintains itself, he spends his time trying to solve puzzles, including the nature of the enemy. Gilly is driven by curiosity.

Paul Anders is a claustrophobic loner who doesn’t respond well to authority. He is in charge of weapons, but since the ship decides for itself which weapons it will fire, Anders spends most of his time throwing ninja stars at Gilley. Talia Beanfield is essentially a psychologist who is charged with promoting the crew’s mental welfare, but her primary function is to assure that the crew produces upbeat propaganda films that viewers will appreciate.

In the tradition of science fiction novels, characters confront their fears, make sacrifices, puzzle out solutions, and persevere. Unlike traditional science fiction, however, Providence avoids a predictable ending, the kind where a few brave humans outsmart and outfight vast numbers of aliens. Instead, Providence reminds us that any aliens we eventually encounter are likely to be truly alien, so different from us that we won’t be able to understand them. Well, except for the curious among us, who might eventually work out the truth by making intuitive leaps that would escape an AI. In this case, the truth is a perfect blend of awesome and awful.

Max Barry tells much of the story in a light tone, finding humor in human foibles. As the humans come to grips with their true role on the ship — giving Earth something to cheer about so they won’t gripe so much about the cost of a seemingly futile war — they begin to bond with each other. Like all good fiction, the story is more about relationships than destroying aliens. Some of the novel come across as filler, but for the most part, Barry creates action and suspense that keep the plot in motion, while generating genuine excitement near the novel’s end.

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Lexicon by Max Barry

Published by Penguin Press on June 18, 2013

Research suggests that babies babble the phonemes of hundreds of languages and that parental encouragement of recognized sounds shapes the language the babies learn to speak.  If that is so, perhaps there is meaning in those root sounds that we don’t fully understand.  Maybe the brain has a fundamental language (akin to machine language) from which all other languages derive.  That concept, at any rate, provides a foundation for understanding the story that Max Barry tells in Lexicon.

Building on various “confusion of tongue” myths that explain the divergence of language (including the Tower of Babel), Lexicon becomes a contemplation of words:  how they shape our lives, how we use them as tools to manipulate others, how we weaponize them.  Barry’s novel imagines tangible words that literally have the power to kill, but it’s easy to see that as a metaphor for our use of words to control and even to destroy others, psychologically if not physically.

The story begins with Wi Parkel’s kidnapping from an airport.  People who have taken the names of dead poets are trying to kill him.  Wil has no idea why he’s been targeted.  Has he been mistaken for someone else, or has he forgotten his former identity?  He knows only that this has something to do with an incident that wiped out all three thousand residents of Broken Hill, Australia.

Soon the story takes us to Emily Ruff, sixteen and homeless.  Emily is recruited to take a series of tests because she’s unusually persuasive.  If she passes, she’ll attend a school where the teachers have taken the names of (mostly dead) poets.  The school’s approach to persuasion is holistic, with special attention to the power of words.

The narrative jumps around in time, challenging the reader to reorder the novel’s events in linear time to make sense of the story.  How Wil’s story will intersect with Emily’s isn’t immediately clear, although Barry plants clues in the first third of the novel that make it possible for the reader to guess the truth before it’s revealed.   The novel’s clever construction engages the reader’s attention by adding the elements of an intellectual mystery to two very different stories:  while Wil’s story has all the elements of a thriller (including chases and gun battles and a conspiracy that could lead to world domination), Emily’s is a science fiction coming-of-age tale.  The eventual joinder of the two stories transcends genres.

To the extent that it is a lengthy parable about the power of language, Lexicon strikes me as something that China Mieville might write.  They are stylistically different authors -- Barry uses more humor than Mieville -- but the depth of abstract thought that characterizes Mieville’s writing is present here.  Like Mieville, Barry takes familiar themes (“power corrupts”) and illustrates them in imaginative ways.  Barry riffs on the manipulative potential of the internet and on the insidious nature of online data collection while telling some of the story -- or providing enlightened commentary on the story’s themes -- in the form of IRC chats and online forum posts (including, a bit ironically, posts on Barry’s own online political forum).  He explores the conflict between our dual instincts for privacy and intimacy.  He suggests that we are enslaved by primal desires in the same way that words hold us in bondage.

Lexicon isn’t as purposefully goofy as some of Barry’s other novels, but like his other works, moments of humor lighten a serious theme.  It’s possible to put all of the deep thinking aside and enjoy Lexicon as an ingeniously plotted amalgam of genre stories:  romance and science fiction and action/adventure and mystery/thriller.  It’s better to appreciate Lexicon on each of its different levels:  for its humor, its excitement, and its ability to stimulate thought about the magical power of words (even words we don’t recognize or consciously understand ) to influence our lives.

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