In The Country of the Blind (Mass Market Paperback)

The characters are engaging, but I'd have liked to have seen them fleshed out a little more thoroughly. They aren't ciphers by any means, but I almost feel like prior to the start of the novel, they were all loners with few personal interests. I wish that a little more detail had been included on cliology in the text. As it stands, cliology (by design, I suppose) remains largely mysterious. I was also expecting that Babbage machines and "steampunk" elements would play a larger role in the book; some readers may be disappointed to learn that they do not, Babbage machines are mainly just window dressing in the first third of the book. Also, though it's mainly set in the near future / modern day, some of the technology is starting to look a bit dated, an artifact of the book having been first published in 1990.

The setting and characters are crying out for a sequel, as there's a great deal left to explore and the book's finale was very open-ended with no real closure or resolution to the impending conflict. That said, I was satisfied with how things were left at the close of the book, but I would like to see more in a sequel (a prequel about the early days of the Babbage Society would be welcome as well).

This is the first Michael Flynn book that I've read, but it certainly won't be my last. He's an excellent writer with a real gift for plot, pacing, and natural-sounding dialogue.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I read a copy of the first edition of the book, which does not contain the final appendix on cliology which I understand is present in the current edition.)

The basic premise -- predicting trends in human events and then acting upon those trends, is fascinating, as is the underlying theme of how historically-significant events can trace back to focal points that would become far more important than they seemed at the time. The latter was the basis of James Burke's hugely successful Connections series. But whereas Burke connected threads in history, Flynn's direction is deliberate social engineering -- predicting a trend, finding the focal point(s) where a doable nudge in a different direction should result in a completely different, predictable result, and then making that nudge. You could drive human progress in any direction you want, either for benevolent reasons or otherwise, but in any case, amass a lot of money and power along the way.

I find a problem with this premise. Flynn's cliology (as he dubs his social engineering process, drawing from Clio, the Greek Muse of history) just doesn't measure up - not in reality, not even to support a novel. Flynn's cliology is fundamentally actuarial; i.e., predictions based on probabilities derived from intense statistical analyses. He takes it several steps further with the various laws, models, and theories he explains in his appendix, "Introduction to Cliology." He blunts critics who might decry humans' free (i.e., independent variables) will as defying such predictability with examples such as life insurance actuarial tables. These predict for the target population as a whole, not any given individual's death, but their inability to predict at the individual level does not lessen their accuracy and usefulness. I understand what he's trying to do, but I just can't get there. The collective actions of whole populations - millions, if not billions of people, depending upon the target group - over time are just too complex to model. Computational fluid dynamics would be child's play by comparison. Moreover, it runs counter to emergence theory.

He does show human frailty in how cliology would sooner or later rob its practitioners of their humanity, especially if they are a secret cabal, which leads to another shortfall. There are many secret cabals in on the action. I lost track after five had been identified (by page 271, with another 200 pages to go). Only a few played a direct role in the story, but all were there nonetheless. Some were ignorant of the others, some were not; others had died out. No telling how many more there might be since their existence could be predicted by cliologists.

This leads to yet another problem: operational security. These secret groups that manipulated the path of human progress could be extensive in size as well as number. The main group in the story was a coast-to-coast organization with dozens, if not scores, of people knowledgeable to some degree or another of its purpose. The Manhattan Project, certainly among the most secret projects in nation's history (if not THE most secret) was comprised early on. One has to wonder at the likelihood that these cabals could remain secret over time (well over a century in the book), especially since disgruntled members seemed to routinely split off.

Then there's the story's rhythm. Sarah Beaumont, the protagonist, is larger than life -- too many skills, too perceptive, too calm and collected no matter the danger -- and overacted. The book is too long-winded. Flynn's character development is overkill. He could have shaved 100 pages without harm to the storyline, starting with his flat, uninspired denouement. Even his "Introduction to Cliology" essay could have been trimmed. It was interesting at first, and appending it to the end of the novel should have been a nice technique, but it was tedious and by the time I got that far, my interest had flagged beyond the point of no return.

I've often wondered at turning points in history when events seem to inexplicably head off in a perpendicular (orthogonal) direction leading to subsequent events that the trend up to that point did not portend. Take Hitler's decision to halt his ground units from smashing through to the Channel and instead left it to Goring's Luftwaffe to reduce the Allied beachhead around Dunkirk. One can read about Hitler's rationale, but in retrospect it doesn't make sense. What really drove him to that decision? Similar situations abound in history. Flynn missed a great opportunity to take the story in the direction of cliology being a battleground between nations, religions, and ideologies (as opposed to the freelance groups that form the heart of his book), wherein his main characters could get caught up in the intrigues and machinations as these groups fight each other for control of the future.

The book is not without interesting nuggets. Again, his use of "historical turning points...[wherein] the events themselves were small -- few people involved -- but they had disproportionate consequences" (30) is fascinating. The way in which he brought Sarah Beaumont into the story was ingenious (38). His comparison of Lenin's Soviet Union with Henry Ford's corporation (29), if not unique, was new at least to me. He has a fascinating discussion (189-193) of what a "fact" is and isn't, even applying Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal to history (shades of John Lukacs, but used here as an anti-cliology argument). These tidbits were the strength of the novel, but unfortunately were just too few in number.

In the end, this book just didn't deliver. Firestar and Rogue Star had better story lines and are better written. If you're a real fan of Michael Flynn -- the type that just wants to read everything by him that you can get your hands on -- then have at it. Otherwise, you might want to pass this one by.