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here was a time, decades ago, when magnetic sail ships ruled the solar system. Wafting from planet to planet, the ships spread superconducting loops kilometers wide to catch the solar wind, and they shimmered with bright aurorae as they sailed. The River of Stars was the jewel in the magnetic sailing crown, a luxury cruise liner that carried the wealthy, famous and elite across the gulfs of space in style. Solar sailors were the heroes of the day, larger-than-life figures who became the subjects of song and story.
Those days are over. Faster fusion drives made magsails obsolete. The River of Stars turned to transporting immigrants, then harvesting hydrogen, and finally hauling freight. Even fitted with fusion engines of her own, she can barely compete. A shell of her former self, the ship has accumulated a ragtag crew of questionable ability. Some are talented, but have trouble following orders or keeping a schedule. Others have landed on the River in disgrace or desperation. It's not a happy crew, nor is it an unhappy crew. For the most part everyone's just trying to get by.
Their fragile equilibrium is upset when a collision with a small rock knocks out two of the ship's four engines. If the engines can't be fixed in time, the ship won't be able to slow down enough to enter Jupiter orbit as planned, and will either careen into deep space or swing back around long after the crew has starved. It's a time when everyone needs to pull together, but part of the crew decides to repair the magnetic sail system and use that to decelerate, snubbing the fusion-lovers with a gesture that will invoke the ship's glory days. Soon everyone's working at cross purposes, even though their own lives are at stake.
A dark and pessimistic yarn
Sounds like quite an adventure, doesn't it? It's not. This novel is a tragedy, as the title bluntly states. Overall, it's a grim book that slowly winds out the destruction of the ship. Anyone expecting to find an action tale will be disappointed. Most of the book is devoted to interaction between the dysfunctional crew members as they collide with one anothers' raw emotional needs and bounce away hurt, confused and uncomprehending. The suspense picks up toward the end as the River's doom becomes ever more inevitable, yet by then the crew's true nature is clear, and only the most optimistic reader will hold any hope of a happy ending. This creates a certain car-wreck fascination as we watch it unfold.
Author Michael Flynn is often compared to Robert Heinlein because he writes about space travel in the near future, but his style is worlds apart. His writing is self-conscious, frequently wry, sometimes precious. No one's going to accuse him of having invisible prose: "The form of The Lotus Jewel had an intentional existence in the mind of Eaton Grubb that was wholly distinct from, though no less real than, the extensional existence of her matter floating there in the deserted Starview Room. And if this form were stripped of whatever flaws her matter may have possessed, why then who is to say that the flaws mattered?" Flynn's aggressive, independent style will be a pleasure for those who enjoy a challenge. Anyone looking for a quick, light read is in for a shock.
This is a character-driven novel, and the characters are quite distinct and fully realized—even the ones whose primary features are indecision and lack of affect. Still, they aren't much fun to be around. Frankly, there's not a lot of fun in this book, but I'm not going to call it to task for not satisfying my needs for an upbeat space opera. If science fiction truly is a literature of ideas and not just escapism, then some of those ideas must include pessimism and failure.
If anything, Flynn's work resembles David Feintuch's for the tortured characters and C.J. Cherryh's for the hardscrabble, unromantic future. — J.B.
Also in this issue: The Wellstone, by Wil McCarthy
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