Important Information

Title: The Wreck of The River of Stars

Author: Michael Flynn

Publisher: Tor/Tom Doherty Associates

Cover art: really darn cool cover... maybe just a bit over the top for mainstream books but perfect for sci-fi

Length: 480 pages in hardcover

Rating

5 out of 7 (very accomplished writing and superb ending but the cost/benefit equation is sort of heavy on the "cost" side).

Essay

The Invisible Hand: Divine allegory within Michael Flynn's The Wreck of The River of Stars

"The accomplished Flynn (In the Country of the Blind) offers more character analysis than action and adventure in this stand-alone novel, which fans of more cerebral SF will find thoroughly absorbing... This is a sad but compelling study of (literally) explosive group dynamics in an arena where technology is critical to human life."

--Publisher's Weekly

PW offers a nicely accurate and succinct summation-this book is far more character than plot and those fans who enjoy that kind of introspection will deeply revere this book. In fact, this book could serve well in business settings for people studying group dynamics.

"Flynn's fully realized characters, easy mastery of technical detail, and meticulous, consequential style perfectly matches the theme of this long, dense, spellbinding, brilliant work."

--Kirkus

Whew! High praise from Kirkus! Again, nicely succinct and accurate: this book is long and meticulous. We would add that it has moments of brilliance.

"The Wreck of the River of Stars is a classical tragedy. Hubris, small mistakes, misunderstandings, mishaps and personal conflicts collide, echo and feed back in a downward spiral that will ultimately wreck the great ship."

--sfsite.com, featured review (Peter D Tillman)

"Classical tragedy." Really. This is why it's so important to carefully choose the reviewers that you trust. Tillman obviously has no idea what "classical tragedy" really is. "Classical," in this sense, must refer to the ancient tragedies of Greece: Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and the like. This is the definition as given us by Aristotle:

Tragedy then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude...

 Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts which parts determine its quality--namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song... Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all...

A perfect tragedy should, as we have seen, be arranged not on the simple but on the complex plan. It should, moreover, imitate actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation. It follow plainly, in the first place, that the change of fortune presented but not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity: for this moves neither pity nor fear; it merely shocks us. Nor, again, that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity: for nothing can be more alien to the spirit of Tragedy; it possesses no single tragic quality; it neither satisfies the moral sense, nor calls forth pity or fear. Nor, again, should the downfall of the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would, doubtless, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor rear; for is aroused by unmerited misfortunes, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves. There remains, then, the character between these to extremes,--that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous,--a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families.

(Aristotle, Poetics, translated by S.H. Butcher, 1895, quoted from Criticism: The Major Texts, ed. W.J. Bate.)

As you will read below, this book is about characters, not action. Rather than the examination of an illustrious man in a situation demanding action it is an ensemble cast with a study of group dynamics and their own independent actions. If one reads all of Poetics, one finds a great many other inconsistencies as well. We're not defending Aristotle as the final arbiter of what is good or bad in in literature but merely that if one is going to invoke the term "classical" one ought to know what it means. Good reviewers should not bandy about terms like "classical" unless they're ready to use them correctly.

What an interesting book this turned out to be! Though we should warn you at the outset that this book can be charitably described as "dense" or "detailed" or "patient" but a more accurate description might be "torturous ." But the interesting thing is how surprisingly well it ends, which makes all of that torture somehow worthwhile and enough to elevate our rating of this book to a very pleasant 5.

River is a character study first and foremost. It is a novel completely confined within the realm of a single, aging freighter, The River of Stars, from which the title takes its name (not to mention the ultimate path this story will take). The plot takes place within a similarly confined realm of time-only a few weeks. Is the tale of the struggles of these space mariners in a very real and tangible setting of intra-solar travel and the problems and dangers that arise. This crew will begin with the death of their captain in transit and go through a bizarrely fascinating tale of twists and turns as they attempt to deal with a growing crisis that will threaten them and their ship. It is not at all like the tales of the Titanic with a sudden catastrophe but rather a growing mass of small incidents culminating in potential disaster... if one could imagine a growing tumor metastasizing in a body as a metaphor of the structure of this book then it wouldn't be far off the mark. It is slow, symptomless, painless, and too lately noticed.

More importantly--and what Flynn is attempting to tackle--is how the mariners themselves contribute to the danger and the "wreck" of their spaceship. The novel could not open better than it does which is a listing of the crew manifest. These people are the heart and soul of the tale. Flynn will concentrate far more on how these people react to their external situation and then in turn react against each other then he will on plot or setting or any other function within novel.

But there are plenty of books out there that are character studies. Ray Bradbury, for example, is famous for this. Flynn is doing something entirely different that sets himself apart. Where other authors who study people are offering (and successfully in some cases) some insight about humanity and the feelings we all share as individuals--that is, the reader can visualize himself within these characters and "realize they're not alone in the world--Flynn is taking a much more clinical approach and very specifically identifying people and their types.

In his foreword, Flynn acknowledges a debt of gratitude to the authors of the (in)famous Meyers-Briggs personality types (we feel, by the way, that all speculative fiction fans are probably INTP or INFP for you Meyers-Briggs initiates). River reads almost like a case-study for Meyers-Briggs. Each character is specifically typed, they behave accordingly, and the natural conflicts occur. What results is not the more customary notion of not being alone but rather a sense of how different people are and how hard it is not to be lonely. It's really rather striking when examined in the final summation of the work.

The clinical nature of the story is augmented (or exacerbated) by the third-person omniscient narrative. Not only is the narrator omniscient but amazingly intrusive. Each chapter is filled with narrative aphorisms, generalizations, and pronouncements regarding the different personality traits and actions of the people involved precisely as if the reader and the narrator were in a lab observing all of the events that unfold. As a result, there is an extraordinary wealth of quotable material in this book that could fill a whole second edition of Please Understand Me (one of the seminal works of the Meyers-Briggs group).

Yet the narration, the crew, and the pacing are also the exact problems of this book. It is, beyond doubt, a rather torturous read for anyone who isn't in the field of psychology or a field related to it. There is a large crew and Flynn goes through it in exhaustive detail lending a certain amount of frustration and impatience to the read. Many, many readers will not have the patience to will themselves through it and will wonder, "Jesus! How long does it take to wreck a ship?"

Flynn also has some trouble with his character dialogue. There are some masters at dialogue who are able to display many different voices but Flynn is not one of them. In a book that relies so crucially upon characters there is very little differentiation in their speech patterns or modes such that the reader can easily discriminate between them. This, too, adds to the frustration as some characters become merged in the reader's mind and with that loss of familiarity comes a fatal loss of empathy.

Despite this, the ending is superb. In a genre notorious for weak endings, Flynn comes through brilliantly and suddenly reveals the allegorical nature of his novel that is truly breathtaking upon consideration. It well overshadows anything painful in the reading. It suddenly reveals the many levels upon which the story has been operating probably unconsciously for most readers until this moment. It is the kind of ending that will change the way people think about groups, star travel, and even the place of God in the world. What higher compliment is there than that?

River a fine addition the genre of speculative fiction and one that should be welcomed. It's one of the very few books that treat readers as educated individuals who are interested in something other than evil robots, black-robed magicians, and half-clothed women. It's a shocking departure from the normal patterns that one reads and forces the reader into a new mode of thinking. Not to be overlooked--Flynn's careful setting is superb. His concepts of how the colonization of the solar system will take place and the repercussion on the different groups of people is subtle, ingenious, and lasting. This book, while not perfect, will hopefully clear the way for other authors to dare other similarly inventive ideas and his ideas about colonization will certainly be emulated, reworked, and re-shaped as Flynn works his influence on future authors. For scholars and discriminating readers in the genre, River will be remembered for some time.

Readers who delight working out puzzles involving people, this is an excellent book. As a study of group dynamics and clashing personality types within a disaster setting there really is nothing else like it in the genre. A good segment of the reading public would be those people who enjoy reading mysteries not so much for the dénouement but rather for how the various parties think and act would adore River. Also, those readers steeped in religion will find the allegorical implications of people operating in the absence of God profoundly affected by the ending of this tale.

This book requires an incredible amount of patience. There will be times that even these most patient readers will be tempted to give up and move on. The detailed examination of each and every crewmember plus their motivations and desires is so exhaustive and so unrelenting that you've really got to be into this kind of thing to even venture into the River. The plot moves at about the same pace as the stars wheel in the sky. For those readers who have blazed through English Lit courses in college, River reads, for good or ill, very much like a Henry James novel--horribly trying but with immense rewards. If you are the sort of reader who looks for immediate payoff--and that, without being insulting, is certainly a large body of the speculative fiction reading public--then you should look for something else.