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The MetSche Message
Young Andre, with his severe visual disability, experiences years of alienation, frustration, and abiding sadness in the face of human beings’ cruelty to one another. At his boarding school for the blind and then later at college, his sources of joy are good food, music, and computer science—and eventually, the arms of his lover, John. Only in middle age does he learn that he and a very few others have been chosen by two far superior alien races to deliver a crucial message to all of humankind.
The story is told primarily in the form of a long account of Andre’s from his very earliest memories of being a visually impaired baby to the stunning visions of their planets imparted to him by the aliens, the Metans and Schegnans. Along with allowing him to view their beautiful present worlds, they show him the extremely violent past that they have evolved beyond.
Can human beings ever do the same? Will Andre, John, and the two psychiatrists who are also privy to the aliens’ powerful message be able to convince others on Earth to listen and learn?
Readers are left to imagine their own answers to these questions. What they could never doubt are the emotion and deep humanity from which this imaginative and poignant story obviously springs.
The story is told primarily in the form of a long account of Andre’s from his very earliest memories of being a visually impaired baby to the stunning visions of their planets imparted to him by the aliens, the Metans and Schegnans. Along with allowing him to view their beautiful present worlds, they show him the extremely violent past that they have evolved beyond.
Can human beings ever do the same? Will Andre, John, and the two psychiatrists who are also privy to the aliens’ powerful message be able to convince others on Earth to listen and learn?
Readers are left to imagine their own answers to these questions. What they could never doubt are the emotion and deep humanity from which this imaginative and poignant story obviously springs.
297 pages, Hardcover
Published November 1, 2022
2 people want to read
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June 7, 2017
The Metsche Message is a unique blend of science fiction and poignant coming-of-age story. The reader learns of the challenges faced by Andre, the book's visually impaired protagonist. Having a visual challenge myself and having had to face eye surgeries from a very young age, I could sympathize. I, too, attended a "boarding" or "residential" school for the blind. Not the esteemed Perkins, but one in the South. I, too, mainstreamed from this school to a public high school for part of the day. It's a nice idea, but you end up exhausted trying to serve two masters: the high expectations of the boarding school administration and the uncertainties of the public school teachers who usually need a bit of educating in the ways of the visually challenged and blind. If you are lucky, you might even make friends. Looks and/or brains help with this. You also hope your support system at the boarding school is everything you have been told it will be.
If this book had simply been a coming-of-age novel, it would have been worth reading because of it straightforward account of the protagonist's challenges in life, at school, and even in college and of how he ultimately triumphs. But there is more. We are treated to a mystical element in that the protagonist is contacted by an advanced civilization and shown a nearly utopian future and invited to join it.
If this book had simply been a coming-of-age novel, it would have been worth reading because of it straightforward account of the protagonist's challenges in life, at school, and even in college and of how he ultimately triumphs. But there is more. We are treated to a mystical element in that the protagonist is contacted by an advanced civilization and shown a nearly utopian future and invited to join it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review