Customer Reviews

Firestar (Firestar Saga)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

To a lot of folks, Firestar may look intimidating. It's 960 pages long. It's labelled "Hard SF." It has three pages of Dramatis Personae. The listed 1.5 inch thickness was certainly measured in a vise (mine was almost 3 inches thick by the time I finished with it). It's yet another story about the collision of the Earth with another heavenly body... are you yawning yet?

Wake up! That means nothing for Firestar. It sucks you in from the first page, where heiress Mariesa van Huyten witnesses a giant meteor hurtling through the daylight skies over the Rocky Mountains. The characters and plot threads of this riveting, complex epic all revolve around Mariesa, and her reaction to witnessing this event.

What if it had struck? Why don't we do something about it? Well, over the next 3000 pages of Firestar, Rogue Star, and Lodestar, Mariesa does. And she has to build everything from scratch, including her allies and experts. (The enemies, of course, don't need any help.)

For a while, I couldn't put my finger on what drew me back to this book so strongly. The science and speculation aren't very deep. The central conflict is at first nebulous and later, a bit counterintuitive. And Mariesa, the main character, is difficult for most of us to identify with. Mareisa and the other players are all very skillfully characterized, but few are compelling. But eventually, I realized it was the execution - like the way addictively good fresh bread can be made from simple ingredients. Each character has his or her own conflict, and the stories are entwined to relate each conflict to the central one.

I personally seek out complex novels with multiple threads and page counts in the thousands. I like getting lost in a story that's so big I can't see the boundaries. And Firestar has just raised my standards.

This is easily one of the best novels I've read in a long time. Firestar has a good story filled with real people. It faces up to moral ambiguities. The characters struggle and in the process grow or sometimes fail. There were no stereotypical good guys or bad guys, just people.

I'll also say that Flynn is one of the few authors with a clue about business. The interplay that could lead to the commercialization of space is very well done. The obstacles and in-fighting are painfully realistic.

I thought this book had a perfect ending. Like life, there are lots of loose ends. I'm actually disappointed to hear that there's a sequel. It should have been left as is.

Overall, this is science fiction some real meat. Agree or disagree with the content - it makes you think.

Will begin when it becomes profitable to go into space. Period. Anything else is simply propaganda.

Having said this, Flynn does a pretty good job of describing how this transition is going to occur, although he is somewhat optimistic about the technical issues involved with SSTO flight. His books are very grand in scope, encompassing a vast number of issues that go far beyond simply putting a rocket in LEO. This obviously helps to account for the great length of his novels. Firestar is a great book because it takes an honest look at the state of society in America today and shows how fundamental changes are necessary to allow mankind to move to the next stage of history. This is something I find contemptibly lacking in contemporary modern literature.

BTW I started reading this book the first time around at 7 PM on a friday night, and was unable to sleep until I finished it nearly 30 hours later. I do not recommend reading 980 pages in a single sitting unless you have a bountiful supply of highly caffeinated substances, so stock up on Jolt cola and nacho chips before buying this one.

I first read this book several years ago, when it was originally released in hardback, and enjoyed it enough that I eventually bought the other books in the series as they came out. But recently, I began reading this book aloud to my wife, and we've both found it to be an enjoyable experience. Flynn does the science part better than almost all of his contemporaries, and he does the fiction part well, too. His characters are some of the most well-fleshed-out I've come across in a long time. And the plot is enjoyable, particularly if you're a space enthusiast.

I've read the critiques that knock Flynn for having some seemingly important events happen "off stage," and for having his characters remember one another a year or more after meeting only briefly. The critiques are right; those things really do happen. But, I've yet to find a perfect book, so these things don't bother me overmuch.

Instead, my wife and I have enjoyed learning about the characters and organizations in the book. By the end of this satisfyingly long book, you feel like you actually know the characters, and you almost expect to see the company names on the Nasdaq exchange.

If you like near-future hard sci-fi, do yourself a favor and read this book.

This is a potboiler masquerading as science fiction, with amazingly clumsy relationship development. Most of the men are juvenile. The women, excepting Mariesa, our heroine, are naive, nasty, foolish, or angst-laden. Mariesa comes across as an adolescent's vision, beautiful, tough but vulnerable, obsessed, and naive. If you're an adult, you'll probably find much of the book tedious and predictable.

Several times I found myself going back to the title page to confirm the copyright date. I have to wonder if much of this book was actually written in the 70s or 80s, since it's full of assumptions that had been proven wrong well before it was published. That it won the Heinlein award may say more about the award panelists than the book, since it's an amalgam of Heinlein and Ayn Rand's work, but not as deftly written as theirs. (Few would label Rand as a deft writer, but even standing on a soapbox, she's better than Flynn :) Though I am somewhat libertarian, I found the politics of the book to be laughable. Ayn Rand justified her positions, but Flynn takes the perfect goodness of capitalists, and the perfect evil of governments for granted, with no substantiating philosophy or social science to back it up.

I can't fault what hard science there is, though it all seems lost in the cold war, remaindered from Asimov's and Clark's early work.

I'm about 400 pages into this 900 page book, and I'm so bored with it I may not make it through. For some good libertarian storytelling, try Ayn Rand if you like a long read with a dose of philosophy, or early Heinlein if you prefer crisp plotting.

As a fan of realistic sci-fi that doesn't just involve humans and aliens shooting at each other, I thought this book was excellent. It displays an alternative vision of how humanity can reach for the stars in spite of our flaws. Also a well-written critique of the current establishment, it offers suggestions as to how we can recreate education and business to serve the human species, rather than the wealthy and powerful.

One of the best reads I've had in years! Good story line development with reasonable extrapolation of technology rather than the fantasy tales of many other authors. Liked especially the detailed character development and the interaction between them and our central visionary, Mariesa. She was at times a bit vague and removed on feelings toward others (somewhat unrealistic) but "Dreaming the Vision" of what our future in space could be is what makes this book so real. For those of us who lived through the excitement of the early lunar landings and the ultimate rise and fall of high technology in aerospace during the mid sixties to the early eighties it provides a renewed enthusiam for sustained development of the high frontier. I also felt that the approaches for education are refreshing. As any parent with college age children can attest, our high schools need encouragement to develop a more challenging approach to nuture stronger values and problem solving. Would definitely recommend this book for highschool through adult ages. I am sure you will find yourself, as am I, waiting with high expectations for the sequel. Give this book to your children to stimulate them about the future that is there if they reach for it! A great gift.

I have been a fan of Michael Flynn since I read his first story in Analog. Firestar did not disappoint me. I found it hard to put down. Flynn made me care about his characters and share in their triumphs and disappointments.

I gave this book to my wife to read. She is not a big sf fan, but tolerates the odd book if she considers them well written. She cursed me for inflicting it on her. She likes to read herself to sleep at night, but Firestar was too gripping for her to nod off.

I have been told to buy the sequel.

. . . example of "not too distant future" hard Science Fiction.

In "Firestar", Michael Flynn has written a rare book: one which combines some fairly scathing social commentary, believable and realistic (and, I suspect, doable) science, and a truly amazing cast of characters which are more human -- and more developed -- than the vast majority of science fiction and fantasy writers today.

Written in the mid-late 1990's and set in the immediate (end of 20th, beginning of 21st century) future, Flynn presents us with a nation in educational decay, political incompetence, and economic chaos -- but a nation in which great men and women can still be found -- as both heroes, villains -- and sometimes as a combination of them both. In Ned DuBois and Barry Fast, one finds people who are real, flawed, and likable in spite of those (very real) flaws). In Marisa von Huytens, one finds a character in which there is much to admire -- but overwhelmed by an obsession, which the reader doesn't know if she can overcome. In Styx, one finds a "lost child" of a "lost generation" -- who has important things to say . . . but is unsure, in her anger, insecurity, and angst, just how to say them.

And the premise? Private industrialization of space? We're all ready beginning to see it. In the novel, what the government won't (or can't) do -- corporate industry is doing. Is this a reality "just around the corner"?

I could go on, but I think I've made my point.

A truly fine read, but not for the faint of heart. The sheer number of major characters and the many intertwining plot lines are an effort -- and occasionally, the author himself gets a bit bogged down. But, in the mind of this reviewer, it is an effort well worth making.

I shall be most interested in the three sequels, to see if the author is truly able to bring this immense story together.

Highly Recommended.

FIRESTAR(1996) was a novel of very near future SciFi, when published in 1996. By 2006, it becomes more of story of alternate reality than science fiction, and it reads very similarly to Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED(1957), both in theme and presentation - only this time it is spaceflight, not railroads, which is the "supertech" at the center of the story.

Like ATLAS SHRUGGED, FIRESTAR has a very optimistic technological/capitalistic theme, and has a strong-willed corporate executive woman at the center of the story - with Mariesa Van Huyten replacing Rand's Dagny Talbert. But, this time around, the cadre of govt. foot-draggers and "looters" is expanded to include the under-performing school system, various federal govt. agencies doing the will of the "current liberal administration" (until they get voted out halfway thru the book), and then left-wing activists funded mainly by anti-change businessmen who are also willing to resort to violence to stop THE GOAL. Also like ATLAS SHRUGGED, FIRESTAR is a HUGE book - coming in at 896 paperback pages. Unfortunately, FIRESTAR is less well-edited than ATLAS SHRUGGED; and, annoyingly, every few pages you will encounter a typo.

Reality in the year 2006 is depressing, when compared to the achievements made in Firestar by the year 2000... we are nowhere near Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO) and orbital-launch railgun technologies acheived in the book - indeed, at present, it is a 50/50 tossup whether the remaining Space Shuttles will (or even should) ever fly again - and, it looks like SSTO is something that we won't see until 2030 (if ever). Yet, maybe if something like the revamping of the US educational system described in FIRESTAR could be acheived, then maybe we could start dreaming of an exciting space exploration program again. Heck, I actually REMEMBER 1969, as a 10-year-old boy, looking up at the moon with my dad, after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went back into the LEM to "sleep"... but to too many of our young students in this country, that achievement is viewed as fiction or a "hoax"... sad.

But, space exploration isn't the whole reason for the space technology push in FIRESTAR - there is also the very real threat of Asteroids or Comets striking Earth and destroying civilization... and that mankind needs to be able to get to a point of space technology where we can defend ourselves, or eventually be destroyed like the dinosaurs.