Novel Depicts Optimistic Existentialism and Creative Request of Scientific Theories

"The Area" by Ray Melnik has a simple subject and the story-line itself is fairly simple, however the treatment of its main scientific and philosophical ideas are tremendously original; their straightforward position inside an otherwise normal story demonstrates the natural attractiveness of the book that Melnik, in the introduction, refuses to refer to as science fiction because "science is not fiction. It's a real possibility of the most all-encompassing variety."

The book's narrator, Harry Ladd, is recently divorced from his wife. He currently lives in a little apartment in town center where he's quick access to shops, the neighborhood bar, and many form -hearten people to keep him company. Harry becomes good friends with the neighborhood pub owner's daughter, Lacey, and an intimate relationship develops between them, with Lacey being mature enough to understand that Harry is going right on through a hard time because his mother is dying of cancer. Harry spends nearly all of his time relaxing his mother, playing along with her delusions, and struggling with the decision of whether to inform his estranged brother, Malcolm, that their mother will soon die.

As boys, Harry and Malcolm were close. As the older brother, Harry often looked out for Malcolm. Throughout the book, Harry remembers their childhood and the bond they shared, a bond that eventually was severed when Malcolm grew up and was able to escape from their parents' home. Harry's father was physically abusive to both their mother and the children. Harry constantly recalls his father's violent behavior, and a lot more, how his mother and brother suffered while he tried to look after both of these. This violent youth has shaped who Harry is today-a thoughtful person, an atheist and a believer in technology. Harry doesn't have tolerance for people who attempt to push their religion on him.

Ray Melnik contains an introduction to "The Room " that discusses the theories behind it. These traditional twentieth-centuryexistentialist writerusually depicted the universe as meaningless and with out a God. While this view frees man to produce his own life and choices, many existentialist works were marked by a sense of despair. Melnik takes the genre a step further by mixing scientific principle into the function. If "The Room " is existentialism, it's more post-existentialism, having a maturity situated in science that provides potential hope for mankind. Melnik states that the novel 's scientific theories were influenced by Leonard Susskind's "The Cosmic Landscape" Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" documents by Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins, and theories of alternative or parallel universes and "string theory" Readers need not be aware of these theories to take pleasure from the novel ( though they will probably want to investigate them later); Melnik effortlessly blends the theories to the novel so the conclusion is mature, well- made and the logical solution to the primary character's problems.