Falling Stars (Firestar Saga) [Paperback]

Firestar (1996) is the first novel in the Firestar Saga series. Mariesa Gorley van Huyten is the teenage heiress of an old and very rich family. She is eager to take over the management of the family business from her grandfather and has decided to obtain a degree at Chicago to learn the basics of administration and management. During the summer before leaving for college, however, she has a vivid vision of a large meteor strike and resulting destruction which haunts her for the rest of her life.

In the following years, Mariesa concludes that the only protection against human extinction from meteor strikes is an active and prosperous space industry throughout the solar system, providing both defense capabilities and dispersal of the population in self-sufficient habitats. Since very few others are concerned with the meteor risk, she determines to promote such industry by means of Van Huyten Industries.

Christian van Huyten III had begun naming his companies after mythological characters in 1873, so the space initiative adopted by Mariesa shortly after she takes over is named the Prometheus Project. She recruits several of the VHI executives into the Prometheus Steering Committee. Development of a single-stage to orbit prototype for the project is performed by Daedalus Corporation, a Brazilian subsidiary, with materiel and expertise provided by other VHI companies. Daedalus hires Ned DuBois and Forrest Calhoun as test pilots for the new "Plank" SSTOs.

Mariesa also sees better education as a necessity to support Prometheus, so she acquires Mentor Academies, a private education concern, and expands it to manage public schools, under contract with the states and local school districts. One of the first managed public school districts is North Orange, New Jersey, near her home. Barry Fast, a teacher within the North Orange district, becomes a Mentor Institute Fellow and confidante of Mariesa.

As Mariesa begins to build an autonomous space industry within VHI, she finds both supporters and opponents within VHI, in the other aerospace companies and in government. She also finds herself developing a special relationship with a group of students within the North Orange district.

This novel spends a great deal of time attacking the current education establishment. It doesn't take any position on the dogmatic issues, but rather supports an eclectic approach that enables teachers to control their own presentations and relegates much of the administration to the managerial staff. Success is measured by the degree to which the student body achieves stated objectives. As someone who has been exposed to the education curriculum, I tend to agree the author in that the style of teaching must vary according to the student, but current public education thinking seems to consider such an approach to be too expensive. However, my reading in psychology suggests that the evidence tends to support the author's position: lockstep teaching is too expensive as well as also ineffectual.

This novel lays the foundation for a provocative series. It has been much compared to Heinlein's works -- i.e., The Man Who Sold the Moon -- but it is much longer and thus more detailed. Moreover, it has more room for character development and uses it aggressively.

Highly recommended for Flynn and Heinlein fans and for anyone else who enjoys hard science fiction with believable characters and excellent plot development.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Michael Flynn concludes the near-future "Firestar" series in style. In the year 2017 the varied cast comes together to try to save Earth from impending disaster - an asteroid has somehow changed course and is now on a collision course with earth. The machinations of the previous novels all finally make sense, as there is now a team of dedicated, well-trained professionals perfectly equipped to attempt an intercept and diversion of the asteroid. This novel ties up all the political and industrial loose ends, and gives closure to the character development (although it must be noted that not all endings are happy ones). Flynn embraces the near-future genre with all the deftness and imagination of Heinlein while adding a very definite hard technical slant. This series may not be great fare for those readers who despise techno-babble, but for the rest of us it's a satisfying feast.

The fourth book of the trilogy...

Maybe if the third book in this series had not marked time so badly, Flynn wouldn't have had to cram as much material into the fourth. And maybe he wouldn't have had to leave so many major plot elements (Most notably: Who Threw the Rocks and Why?) dangling. Just from the viewpoint of plot mechanics, "Falling Stars" is unsatisfying -- and that makes the whole series frustrating.

From a viewpoint of characterization, all the major characters dig down to the clockwork in their souls -- and somehow it's just not very interesting. Possibly that's because it's the male characters getting in touch with their inmost selves in "Falling Stars," where the women went through this process in the earlier books. Flynn has written some of the most unpleasant, manipulative, driven female characters I've read in years -- but they're capable of better than their clockworks would indicate and they're always interesting. The males, on the other hand, don't seem to get beyond overripe adolescence.

I'm glad I read the "Stars" series -- Flynn is hugely inventive and his style is pleasant -- but I doubt I'll ever feel drawn to re-read it.