Customer Reviews

Eifelheim

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

EIFELHEIM starts out as a puzzle; why did residents in Germany abandon their village after the 14th century and why hasn't the area ever been resettled? Cliologist (a math historian)Tom Schwoerin tries to crack the mystery at the heart of this hard SF novel by Heinlein Award winner Michael Flynn. A parallel story set in the 14th century details the events that led to Eifelheim being abandoned. We meet Pastor Dietrich an enlightened priest of the village, Brother Joachim a Franciscan friar who has issues with the wealthy and the various villagers of the city of Oberhochwald (as Eifelheim used to be called). We discover that somehow the town's disappearence may somehow be attributable to the Black Death that was roaming the countryside of Europe or something...far different. Somehow it may be tied into the accidently first contact between humans and aliens from another world.

Well written with the rich tapestry of the 14th century as its background (as well as the present day), EIFELHEIM may at first put you off because the hard science aspect of the novel really begins on the very first page. If you give it a chance, however, you'll discover a thoughtful, compassionate story with a rich mystery at its core.

Some readers may find the style to be a bit stiff and formal. I wouldn't say that Flynn has a breezy style as a writer but what he lacks in that area he more than makes up for in creating a detailed world for his characters to inhabit. I hadn't read much by Flynn before this novel but immediately dived into one of his earlier novels that I had purchased but didn't quite get around to reading.

Like in his much-acclaimed "Wreck of the River of Stars", Flynn again displays his literary talent to blend plausible "hard" sf with humane themes, all with sophisticated, well-crafted prose. This time Flynn turns his considerable skills to historical fiction meshed with satisfying, complex speculative science. I was truly impressed how Flynn handled the sometimes incomprehensible world of the medieval with the deftness of Umberto Eco, and thoroughly managed to preserve the authenticity of historic characters faced with extra-terrestrial events. One of the best, most believable and unconventional treatment of a first-contact situation I've read. Flynn obviously did considerable and respectable research for this work, and the result is thought-provoking and intellectually satisfying. If you like shoot-em-ups, look elsewhere. Flynn writes for a different SF audience, and I'm glad he does.

This is a fabulous book. It's part scifi, part historical fiction. Set in a small town in Germany in 1348, there's a bit of plague, a bit of aliens, and a whole lot of interesting history. I really recommend this book, even if you're not a fan of aliens (which I am not.) I got the book because I love historical/plague fiction. But it really all comes together in a very rational way. This book really captured me and took me vividly into small town Germany in the middle ages.

The aliens are brought into the story in a very natural way. And they end up...well...I don't want to spoil it. Some turn out to be very sympathetic, some not. The author really lets each alien being become their own "person", and that's a huge part of the charm of the book. It's not your usual "alien" story. Again, I am NOT a fan of alien stories, but these folk are made very "human", most of all through the wonderful narration of the local priest, Dietrich. He's the heart of the story, and combining a holy man with aliens from a distant world seems odd, but by this author's hand, it is made marvelous and believable.

If you enjoy historical fiction, and you enjoy stories about alien visitors, with a difference, I highly recommend it! It's extremely well written. I kept a German dictionary with me while I read, however I think a medieval German dictionary would be more to the point.

Definitely an unputdownable read, for me.

Aliens visit a medieval German village? Sci-fi meets historical fiction, my two favorite genres? How could I pass this one up?

Unfortunately, mashing together two completely different books works better in theory than in execution. It's like the time on 'Friends' when Rachel made the trifle - you know, lady fingers, yum, shepherd's pie, yum, together? Gag. "Eifelheim" isn't exactly bad, but it's not really very good, either.

The action is intercut between the present, during which passive-turning-aggressive couple Tom (historian) and Sharon (physicist) complain and aggravate each other over the frustrations in their respective research fields, only to discover that they each hold the key to solving the other's problems (and let's hear a cheer for having the hard-scientist in the couple be the woman, for once!), and the fourteenth century, where the priest of a small German village finds his faith tested by the arrival of strange beings from beyond the stars. The 'now' portions of the book constitute only about a fifth, with the remaining 80% focusing on the drama taking place in Oberhochwald, which will eventually be abandoned and renamed "Teufelheim," or "Devil's Home," before being corrupted into the titular "Eifelheim."

The aliens themselves remain enigmatic throughout; we learn very little about them or where they come from. That's partly because, with the exception of Father Dietrich, few of the villagers they come in contact with particularly care about where the aliens come from - besides Hell, of course. Most are convinced - and can you blame them? - that the aliens are demons, and the only controversy is whether they present a danger to the village, or a chance at salvation. This being the mid-1300s, history buffs know what comes next, and it ain't pretty. (Hint: It's black, and it's deadly.) Are the aliens to blame? Will they save themselves, or commit the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of their new friends? And is the plague the best literary inspiration ever, or what?

Some of the best parts set in Oberhochwald come in the bizarre, lost-in-translation conversations between Dietrich and the alien he names Hans. The alien tries to talk quantum physics, Dietrich can only understand and reply in the context of theology and natural science - and many of their conversations make a weird, trippy, mind-blowing kind of sense. At other times, you can sense the huge wall that stands between these two - the aliens have little concept of metaphor, and that's pretty much all Dietrich has to work with, which makes a far greater bar to mutual understanding than the discrepancies between their respective technological sophistication.

Flynn does a great job giving us a feel for life in medieval Germany; unfortunately it's often at the expense of story and character. The less said about Tom and Sharon, the modern couple, the better. These two haven't gotten around to realizing they can't stand each other, and the great revelation of their supposed collaboration comes more through mutual nagging than anything else. Moreover, parts of their story felt remarkably incomplete. For instance, the narrator, who is apparently a friend of theirs but about whom we learn next to nothing. Flynn never manages to give us a convincing explanation of Sharon's "Nagy Space" which supposedly makes interstellar travel possible; meanwhile Tom's purported research skills are so inept it's laughable (although it does provide an excuse for a shout-out to every historian's best friend, the research librarian).

"Eifelheim" is wildly uneven, and not just because of its two vastly different genres. It teeters back and forth between engaging and tedious, complex and incomprehensible. It's one of those books you like when you're finished, but which can be a chore to actually read.

What if, in the mid-fourteenth century, extraterrestrials resembling medieval monsters -- "buffered" in an intense electrical shock wave -- unceremoniously landed within walking distance of a humble town in the German Rhineland?

What if history had buried such a momentous materialization under the Black Death "shock wave" that struck about the same time, leaving uncovered only a few tantalizing clues such as the abandoned location where the town once thrived being labeled as a demon place in obscure, handed-down references?

What if in the here and now an enterprising cliologist (someone who studies history mathematically) and his physicist girlfriend began unraveling threads that could lead to broad exposure of this secret?

And what if while they were busy unraveling, the reader could transport back in time and look over the shoulders of the villagers of then-named Oberhochwald and of their otherworldly neighbors?

If so, then presto, Michael Flynn's astounding new book, EIFELHEIM.

Flynn's attention to detail and his creation of believable human and alien characters commands reader attention as the author inexorably counts down to Oberhochwald's sad extinction. Dietrich, the village priest, possessing a violent past and a natural philosopher's intellectual inclinations, struggles, along with the Herr/Lord and the other humans in the community, to understand the foreign interlopers who resemble giant, scary grasshoppers. Despite head gear that permits a level of language translation, the conversations between the man of the cloth and his scientifically light-years advanced friends hover on different planes, seldom truly connecting. Yet, the "Krenken" and the humans manage to hone a wary comradeship -- at least for a while. The losses both sides sustain in the end binds them and sympathetically immerses the reader in their parallel, hopeless survival situations. No pagan magic, Christian miracle or Krenkish technology can save them, and the tragedy bitingly inflicts itself on the sensitive reader.

Meanwhile, twenty-first century Tom (who regularly vociferates in untranslated German and other tongues) researches all data and documents he can find about Oberhochwald-later-Eifelheim, while somewhat short-tempered Sharon step by step invents a convincing new cosmology that could eventually reveal how extraterrestrials might have shot to earth in the Middle Ages...and how we might make a reciprocating house call to them!

EIFELHEIM is superb science fiction, the type that draws one in so convincingly that one almost thinks perhaps the tale isn't fiction. The aliens are fascinating. And readers become immersed in the daily life of pre-plague Germany and the horrors of the plague-infested land, Krenken notwithstanding. The book bursts with profound deliberations about the nature of belief, faith, truth, social convention and organization, genetic constraints, friendship, communion, love, honor, altruism, medical boundaries and ethics, organized religion, science, life, and death. It is a grand "tour de force."

In words character Tom might use: Grossartig, Herr Flynn, ausgezeichnet! [Wonderful, Mr. Flynn, excellent!]

I read and loved the original short story in Analog magazine back in the 80's, so I was eager to see what a novel-length version would be like.
While I miss the original closing sentence (which was beautifully written and nicely balanced the opening), and the characters in the present have seemingly become a pit pricklier and less likeable in being fleshed out, the work Flynn has done with his aliens in medieval Germany is a masterpiece.
I was impressed by the way humans and aliens were shown as simply very different, without one being superior to the other, and yet still able to connect as sentient beings capable of sorrow, humour and compassion.
I was equally impressed by the fact that Dietrich is portrayed not as a modern man in the body of a medieval priest (as many writers would do and have done) but as a man of his time, carrying the assumptions and prejudices (but also the virtues) of his time, and giving us a credible glimpse into the mind of an educated and decent man in a time so far removed from our own.
Flynn rescues the Middle Ages (and its respect for logic and reason) from the caricatures that have been applied to it by later ages anxious to distance themselves from their own past, and handily shows how the science of any given age can be completely wrong about many things while at the same time perfectly internally consistent and logical (a useful warning against over-cockiness on our part). The portrayal of the complex and nuanced relationship between the lord of the manor and the peasantry is fascinating and convincingly human.
I have to admit that I found the final part of the book harrowing, because the author had done such a masterful job of bringing his aliens, clergy, villagers and others to life that when the long-expected tragedy strikes it is as if it were happening to people that we know.
Another aspect that struck me was the realistic way the characters in the present (or near future) only ever acquire an imperfect and incomplete understanding of the events that transpired in the past - there is no magical total revelation, as evidenced by the fact that a character who appears from evidence available in the present to have been Dietrich's fanatical opponent was in reality in a strange but sincere way actually his friend.
The triumph of the book is its respect and compassion for people separated from the modern reader by gulfs of time and culture as well as the vastness of space - qualities we will need if we ourselves should ever come face to face with the alien.

Seldom do the worlds of SF and Christianity meet and often when they do it is in a condescending manner. There are few books on the level of "A Canticle for Leibowitz" that intersect religion and SF. Now I don't require my SF reading to be overtly religious. I require it to be good SF, but it is always nice when you read a novel that is both great and also takes seriously the Catholicism of some of its characters.

One such novel is Eifelheim by Michael Flynn.

The novel has two storylines taking place in the present and in a small German village, Eifelheim, during the Avignon Papacy. Thrown into the mix is a group of aliens who have crashed in the Black Forest. Father Dietrich the village priest and his and the villages interaction with the aliens provides the major plot line of the book. What is so refreshing about this book is that Father Dietrich is not cast as the idiot fundamentalist that reacts negatively to the presence of the aliens. Instead he is quite positively portrayed and his interaction with the aliens is enhanced both by his faith and theology. At the same time he doesn't make the mistake of making Father Dietrich too advanced for his time and you see the priest grappling with understanding the aliens and their technology and putting it into terms and concepts he can grasp.

The characters and the historical background are quite believable. I really got the feel of living in a village in medieval and the reaction of the village to these circumstances seems quite plausible. I only had a couple of minor quibbles with some of the theology in the book, but these are minor indeed and in no way distract from the plot. For the most part though it is obvious that the author made great pains to get things right. One part though that he got wrong was a discussion of the Holy Office. The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition was not established until 1542 in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation which is long after the year 1348 where most of the book occurs. Though in the parallel storyline in the present the characters do discuss the Inquisition and there is a discussion of the myths surrounding it. The mention of the Holy Office (which it was renamed in 1908) though is not really an important plot point in the book. At the end of the book he does discuss how some of the historical events mentioned were compressed to fit the plot of the book, so maybe he did the same with the inquisition.

Regardless though Eifelheim stands totally on both its plot, characterization, and the quality of the writing. Mark Shea called it the "best fiction read I've had in years." I wouldn't go that far, but I would place it highly and place it into the category of a book that I will most likely reread. Eifelheim was originally a novella written in 1986 and had received a Hugo award and his current and his book length version of it has been nominated for Best Novel Hugo Award, 2007.

Other reviewers have pretty much detailed the plot already. So, how well does it all come together?

Very well, mostly, but not without some drawbacks. I found the medieval village life very insightful in general and heartbreaking as the plague arrived (echoes of Doomsday Book by Connie Willis). Michael Flynn has really succeeded in showing one interpretation of medieval times - though I find Dietrich, the priest, perhaps a tad too clever to be believable. The aliens are really alien, in their thought processes as well as their appearance, all the more so as they are so much more advanced than the villagers. I wish that their tech and appearance had been more elaborated upon, but that wouldn't fit well with the limited comprehension of their medieval observers.

The treatment of Christianity is fascinating as well and shows, believably, the good that is inherent in it, when people (and aliens in this case) pay attention to its basic principles of charity, tolerance and non-violence. Some of the Kranken really rise above their innermost nature because of its influence. If aliens can manage it...

Dietrich is very much the main character and Mr. Flynn spends much time trying to get us to understand his worldview, nature and philosophy. As well as explaining indirectly how such a clever fellow ends up stuck in a village in the boonies. Personally, I find that Flynn is a craftsman, rather than an artist, when it comes to character development. He works at it, hard, and rarely achieves the effortless prose managed by the best writers. But he persists and he definitely deserves praise for succeeding, in a genre where cliches and one-dimensionality often rule. Strangely enough, some of his cleverest turns of phrase are found in the generally uninspiring 21st century thread, describing the two scientists' relationship.

The 21st century story? Both characters are (probably intentionally) annoying, especially Tom. And, no, there is no such word as 'cliologist', dear fellow reviewers. The thread seems pointless for most of the book. But, at the very end, it redeems itself by tying it all up neatly together, in a finale that, worthy of the best scifi tradition, inspires wonder.

I really recommend this book, but it is slow-moving at times, albeit in a thoughtful and deep manner. I would give it 4.5/5, but not quite 5/5.

This was a wonderful, wonderful story. Actually, two stories in one. In my opinion the 14th century portions could have stood on their own, they were so rich, compelling and beautifully crafted, but the modern-day inserts were amusing and added the "hard" science some people read sf for. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't read Michael Flynn before, but as soon as I click out of this review I plan to order his River of Stars book. This is a writer who appeals to me on every level: brain, heart and funnybone.

This is one of the most original first contact stories I've ever come across, and as an avid sf reader, I have encountered quite a few. I also happen to be a professor in German and have taught medieval Germanic texts in a number of courses. After reading the back flap, I have to say I approached this book with some skepticism. However, I can say without hesitation that most of the depictions are spot-on. Flynn is also clearly proficient in the German language (and in linguistic concepts generally) because - contrary to some negative comments by reviewers on here - the so-called "awkward" language is completely intentional. In fact, Flynn has often impeccably preserved German syntax and quirky turns of phrase in a very original way that comes across as quaint and "medieval" when rendered in English. This relates to the Saxon roots of both languages, which are more apparent in modern German than in modern English. Yet, even if you're not familiar with German or have a linguistics background, if you bother to read the "language notes" at the end of the book, you will realize what he was doing and maybe appreciate it more than some of the hasty reviewers on here.

Besides the accuracy of historical/historiographical and linguistic references, the musings on various philosophical and scientific concepts relate very intricately to the narrative and are in no way superfluous or amateurishly didactic. I was on high alert for the dreaded "info-dump" or any preachy passages, which often mar even some good sf. It all worked in the context of the story. Flynn brings wide-ranging knowledge to the table with this novel, all impressively researched and woven into a compelling tale.

While not exactly a huggable character, Father Dietrich is a fascinating personal study in the longstanding "faith vs. reason" debate among Christian thinkers.

All in all, this is one of the brainier sf novels I've read in a long time, comparable to Carl Sagan's _Contact_ in its attention to "real world" detail. It's so good, I may even teach it in a class someday.