Important Information

Title: Firestar

Author: Michael Flynn

Publisher: Tor

Cover art: Shockingly cheesy though at least showing a real scene from the story.

Length: 573 pages in Hardcover (substantially longer in mass-market paperback!)

Rating

6/7 (one of the best and most inspiring novels of space exploration ever written)

Critical Essays

"Always the Goal: the place of Michael Flynn's Firestar in the shaping of speculative fiction"

"Politics: an examination of the current political balance in speculative fiction"

"Another complaint is that the novel often seems to have a soap opera quality, both in dialogue and in various plot devices. The dialogue during the inter-personal relationships is often melodramatic, bordering on corny. This threw me somewhat, considering the monotone quality of everything else. In addition, we often - often - encounter the same characters repeatedly, with them running into each other, seemingly by coincidence."

--fantasticadaily.com, Mervius

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Stop right there! Flynn is quite a master at the dialogue: he correctly identifies idioms in the speech patterns of different social classes, children, minorities… everyone. There's a lot of smarmy melodrama out there in the world of speculative fiction but we don't see any of that here. The perfect diction of the characters and the realities in which they're placed save the novel from that horrid disease that afflicts so many of our genre's bestsellers. We're not sure exactly what turn of phrase set off this guy but we think he's wrong. But more egregious is his complaint about coincidence. To explain why would spoil the novel but rest assured there is a very distinct and a very important reason (in fact, one of the central tenets of the novel) why these coincidences occur and it's foolish in the extreme to chalk it up to poor writing.

"Flynn's high-tech prose is mesmerizing, filled with dazzling imagery and emotion. Firestorm [sic] blends the technical complexities and hazards of space travel with the human desire to explore and succeed. "

--bookpage.com, David J. Corwell

Kind of pedestrian but still a nice summation of what is good about this very good book; that is, it presents perfectly the act of exploration and the desire to explore--if this isn't something you want to read about then don't say David J. Corwell didn't warn you. [NOTE: yes, he really did call this book "Firestorm" instead" of "Firestar." How clumsy is that? It's pretty clearly an error because he correctly refers to the book's title earlier in the review... but Jesus, how do you excuse something like that? Hopefully they'll get a correction up and we can take this little note down.]

It's desperately sad how little notoriety this brilliant book enjoys. It's one of the sharpest stories of near-future space travel and exploration that we've ever heard of much less read. It has moments of brilliance, a complete cast of characters filled with all the flaws, ambitions, and random dislikes that real people suffer. But best of all, it is about something very important and most especially important to the science-fiction reader: how we achieve space travel in our lifetime. If that doesn't get your blood pumping then, dear reader, you're not only investigating the wrong genre you ought to check around and see if someone's trying to nail the coffin shut around your cold, heartless body.

The book opens with a prologue some decades ago--presumably in the 1970s--where a young Mareisa van Huyten witnesses a shooting star--that is, a meteorite falling to earth. Many years later she is the chairman of a sprawling industrial empire called Van Huyten Industries (VHI) some of whose companies invest heavily into aerospace and are even delving into commercially viable space travel. While we follow the events of building and testing the new SSTO (single-stage to orbit) vehicles we also see another of VHI's companies investing in public school curricula and even taking over the management of some schools in order to improve student ability and aptitude. The bulk of the novel proceeds with the governmental politics involved in a commercial space program, the personal politics of test pilots and business executives, and the rising ambitions of high school students as they begin to share a dream. It may not sound exciting--but it is! Fast paced, filled with a simmering ferocity, it is enough to fire the imagination of any diligent reader.

One of the book's only downfalls is that it is so near-future. Published in 1996, the events of the book begin in 1999 and culminate in 2007 (though continued in later sequels). It makes for a short life-span for the novel which will soon have to be viewed as alternate history instead of near-future science fiction. That coupled with the cheesy cover art and sort of horrible title (Firestar being one of the lesser known female superheroes from a popular cartoon in the 70's/80's) probably spelled doom for a commercial success.

Which is damned sad because this book will appeal to shockingly wide audience. For every military officer who has been involved in air academies and flight-testing, to every person involved with NASA, to every enthusiast who follows the pursuits of the X-ships attempting to claim the prizes for the first commercial crafts to achieve orbit, to every parent and teacher deeply concerned about the state of public education, to every executive sick of the bad-name that Big Business has in contemporary American and yearns to see Big Business cast in a light of achieving very important aims--each and every one of these people will find something in which to delight in this fine, fine book.

However, it is due to the near-future reality of the novel that we fail to nominate Firestar for a 7 and hold it at a 6. This book could be very important and might still be a smashing success (we think it could easily translate to film) but because of it's near-future bent, we think that reality will quickly outgrow Firestar's applicability. While CS Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet trilogy is painfully out-of-date in regards to scientific technology it survives to these days because of a certain philosophical interest. Firestar, because it deals so deeply with politics and science, will not have a similar crutch on which to stand forty years hence and beyond. We don't believe that this particular book will be very long-lived but rather burn briefly and brightly.

The most important and most brilliant part of Firestar is exactly its optimism. So often, business is cast as the villain. So often people of will and ambition are given a flat, monomaniacal nature. So often speculative fiction authors show us a bleak future filled with corruption, mutation, ecological disaster, and pain. It is amazingly refreshing to find a novel that reawakens that exploring spirit to which America owes so much. This book all by itself could inspire legions of young people to engage in space travel and that, by any measure, is a laudable gain.

Firestar is a book absolutely not to be missed by devotees of science-fiction because it is exactly the kind of book that can make science-fiction an important genre in the world of literature.

There is so little buzz out there about this book despite the fact it's put out by a very major publisher in Tor and despite the fact it's so very, very good. Maybe due to the title and cover-art, maybe a lack of marketing by Tor... but who knows? The truth is that it is not widely read nor very popular and that's a shame because it has to be discovered quickly if it's going to enjoy success. Almost no one has reviewed it, few websites have discovered it, it's impossible to find in bookstores, and it's listed as out-of-print at the internet booksellers. We think if it is discovered by what would be a very receptive audience it can have a tremendous (if short-lived) effect on the genre opening whole ranks of near-future speculations on space exploration. We hope for that event!

We believe that this book should appeal to a huge audience most especially those who revere the concept of space exploration coming in our generation. It is a tremendous celebration of the human explorer and for those enthusiasts who enjoyed that aspect of Star Trek or Robinson's Red Mars they will find Firestar an immensely satisfying book. Additionally, it will be greatly uplifting for those students nearing high school graduation or first entering college. It is a stupendous argument for taking one's education very seriously and entering the hard sciences or military academies or even better focusing the objectives of business majors. Certainly, for every young person that read and loved Ender's Game and thought they found the ultimate novel, these should turn to Firestar and have their dreams truly awakened.

There is some complaint over the political aspect of the book, which is said to have a Capitalist bent. This is true to the extent that government is shown as a stumbling bureaucracy and capitalists are shown as something other than greedy scumbags. If you can't stand the thought that private enterprise could successfully launch a space program, then this is not the book for you and you should return to your commune with some other kind of book. We think that both sides of the political argument are dealt with very fairly and depicted perfectly--you have to be some kind of real left-wing nut to feel this way but they're out there. We will say that while certain sentiments in Firestar owe themselves to Atlas Shrugged and perhaps The Fountainhead, it is completely unfair to try and claim Firestar is a similar kind of political diatribe. That is simply not the case. It is a book about dreams and those dreams are reaching beyond our potential. That should be worthwhile for the vast majority of people in any political movement.