Title: Pinball Wizard
Author: Michael D. Meloan
Publisher: IF SF Publishing
ISBN: 978-1733386487
Pages: 136
Genre: Novel
Reviewed by: Barbara Bamberger Scott

Read Book Review

Writer and screen producer Michael D. Meloan here offers a sage, scintillating look at wide-open backstreet barrooms and well-guarded government hideouts, once upon a brilliantly imagined time.

Meloan’s central character, Ralph, is a computer whiz who has lucked into a government job working on top secret, nuclear initiatives. Though lacking a complete security clearance, his smarts make him highly sought after. For brief stints of release, there is his steamy, live-in relationship with the musically talented and very sexy Chrissie.  The two discovered each other at a hang-out run by Linda, a woman attached to famed (and actual) writer and poet Charles Bukowski, who figures in the story.

Meloan’s deft melding of the realistic and the fantastic comprises one of the many glories of this winding tale. When someone asks Ralph if he is the “Pinball Wizard” – referencing the highly popular musical work of Pete Townshend and The Who – or merely the pinball itself, the crux of the novel is revealed, for Ralph is both – at times a brain-driven career aspirant determined to make his way upward, at other times a randomly bouncing object, with ideas and activities that take him far from the structured routine of his employment. As the plot develops, we see Ralph struggling to care for his now estranged parents: his father frail and ill but holding the reins of power through control of the family fortune – and his mother in the arms of another, believing that she has finally found true happiness. There’s a lot at stake for Ralph as he buffets back and forth from wild hippie haunts to nuclear bunkers, but Chrissie’s sensuous antics help him forget, for a time, all his inner conflicts. Then an order comes down from the government hierarchy:  he must get Chrissie out of his life or lose his chance for a stellar career.

Meloan is a noted producer who has written frequently for various outlets, and was in fact a companion to, and interviewer of, the real Charles Bukowski and his spouse Linda. This careening, often raucous yarn – one could almost call it a parable – has sufficient sex, drugs and rock and roll to create an emotional ride, neatly contrasted with the computer world and its cold comforts. All the while, Ralph clings to visions of a higher purpose, to be sought, perhaps, in world wandering, – one could almost call it a pilgrimage. Readers may see themselves contemplating the same factors and hoping that Meloan is poised to create a sequel to this intriguing, amusing, and thought-evoking story.