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5.0 out of 5 stars
First Winner of the Heinlein Award!, Dec 19 2003
As many writers that have been compared to Robert Heinlein only to fall short of The Master's works, Michael Flynn is the ONLY one to actually have the credentials to claim this exaulted place in Sci-Fi, having received the FIRST Heinlein Award for writings in hard Sci-Fi, voted this new honor by a panel of judges including some of the greatest authorial names in modern Sci-Fi Literature!(See at www.heinleinsociety.org)
I recall having seen Firestar(along with the other tomes in the quadrilogy) on the bookstore shelves for years, and am at a loss that I waited until learning of Flynn' Award to finally try his work. As Heinlein did, and all too few have done since, Michael Flynn has written about the near future as if he had his own Time Machine and is returning with reports of what he has seen himself!
To quote Dr. Charles Sheffield(nationally famous astro-physicist and author in his own right)"This is the best book ever written on the science, people, and politics needed to move us into space-to stay."This is a REALLY BIG book, not only in physical size, but in scope and entertainment, as well! It, far more than others, SHOULD have won an award, as it's author has!
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Liked it in spite of politics, Jul 10 2003
Like some other reviewers, I found the rightward-leaning politics a bit on the tiresome side. This is clearly somebody whose favorite books include "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged", but at least the author seems to have little patience with crony capitalism and nepotism.Good things about the book: The technology is believable, and the protagonists are fairly interesting characters. It's a reasonably well constructed novel and the prose does not drag endlessly; the plot is reasonably well paced. The writing is competent, but not particularly outstanding -- this man is more like Isaac Asimov than Neal Stephenson. Bad things about the book: Many of the antagonists are caricatures, especially any given liberal character. Liberals are either portrayed as hard-bitten cynics or else empty-headed, knee-jerk radicals with no real concept of what the world is like. He seems to lack a basic understanding of what motivates liberals who take well-considered positions, and conveniently ignores the fact that such people even exist. At one point, somebody who considered himself a "moderate lefty" discovers to his surprise that he has some basic values in line with "conservatives", read in this case as Rand followers. He's no Ann Coulter (thank goodness), but he's clearly somebody who is looking for a John Galt to lead the way to the next century. Having said that, at times he seems to be torn between wanting to talk about politics and wanting to avoid talking about politics, and so fails at both. I distinctly get the impression that he thinks politics of any stripe are a dangerous diversion from what we should really be thinking about, getting humanity into space to save us from extinction by asteroid strike, but nevertheless he seems firmly convinced that free enterprise, not a government program, is the only thing that will get us there. I did my best to put the politics aside as I read the book, not always an easy thing to do in light of his caricatures of environmentalists and progressives, but overall I thought it was good science fiction.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Right wing political ramblings disquised as SF, April 17 2002
This book could have been very good, but it falls very short of it's potential.First the good: 1)the protaganists (there are several) are interesting, three dimensional charectors. They have strenghts and weaknesses, and often do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Very believable. 2)The plot is fairly interesting, though this book is much more charector driven than plot driven. 3)The science, though there is not a lot of it, is accurate and plausable. These things gave it the makings of a very enjoyable read. Unfortunately it wasn't because of: Tha bad: 1)the antagonists were one dimensional charecatures. Not real people at all. This was much more pronounced than usual becuase of the well rounded protagonists. The bad guys were just bad because that's what they did. 2) Right wing politics. If you are far to the right and enjoy being preached to, you may really enjoy this book. I'm middle of the road, and I hate being preached to be either the left or right. This book is basically an excuse to make up situations and show how the government or enviromentalists would ruin everything. As portrayed here, large multinational corporations are looking out for the good of the earth. If they happen to make money, that's a happy side-effect, but they are really trying to better humanity. All would be good if these companies could be left to their own devices, but the evil government wants to regulate them and put barriers up to stop them from helping humanity. And enviromentalists are even worse. They want to stop any progress at all costs. They throw up legal hurdles and when that doesn't work they resort to violence. Public schools are attacked too. They are filled with teachers who are not interested in teaching and are just out to ruin the children. But once a corporation buys a school district and starts teaching the kids how to run a business, everyone turns into a genius. Oh please. I actually agree with some of the political philosophy that is in the book. Unfortunately, it is so heavy handed and pounded into you again and again and again, that it really ruined the book for me. The fourth or fifth time an antogonist throws a spanner in the works FOR NO REASON, I had to shake my head in disbelief. It's too bad that the author had sucha n axe to grind, because he is a talented writer. The parts of the book that didn't deal with the evil government were quite entertaining, it's just that they were few and far between.
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