Reviews

A beautifully told story with colorful characters out of epic tradition, a tight and complex plot, and solid pacing. -- Booklist, starred review of On the Razor's Edge

Great writing, vivid scenarios, and thoughtful commentary ... the stories will linger after the last page is turned. -- Publisher's Weekly, on Captive Dreams

Monday, March 6, 2017

Nexus

The estimable Joseph Moore has posted a review of TOF's novella "Nexus" on his blog, Yard Sale of the Mind.

A: Review: Michael Flynn’s Novella Nexsus in this month’s Analog

A reconstruction of a conversation taking place around 12:30 a.m. last night, as my wife is entering the bedroom where I am just putting down the latest issues of Analog:

“Reading Mike Flynn?”

“Just finished. It has about every ridiculous pulp science fiction idea you’ve ever heard of in one place: time travel, appalling space aliens, space aliens that can pass for human, telepathy,  faster than light travel, transporter beams, androids…”

“What’s it about?”

“Aristotelian causality.”

 There is a woman who can’t die, a weather balloon cover story, ninja space cops, weird alien necrophilia (PG-13), alien invaders, aliens working under cover to protect earth from alien invaders. There’s Theadora the hooker-Empress, conflicting time-lines, the need to keep the cops and the military out of it, and super-ninja space cops.

Trying to remember if Area 51 gets a shout out.

And, yes, it all hangs on what Aristotle would call in Greek a ‘walking together’ – a series of coincidences – the component events of which are most definitely caused (they literally could not not be) but the walking together itself is just Fate, which takes the blame but is not, strictly speaking, a cause.

To sum up: Totally awesome. Mr. Flynn has made no direct comments on the whole Pulp Revolution stuff of which I am aware (wise man) – but, based on this, he’s down with it, at least conceptually.
++++++++++++++++

TOF would be a great fool to dispute this review.
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8 comments:

  1. jmhenryMarch 7, 2017 at 12:09 AM

    I finished reading it earlier today. Really great story.

    ReplyDelete
  2. thefederalistMarch 7, 2017 at 10:35 AM

    I am not a great fool, you would have been counting on it, so I can clearly not trust the wine in front of me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Joseph MooreMarch 7, 2017 at 10:58 AM

    Can't believe I failed to mention the indeterminately sexed creature that would kill us all without a thought, yet must not be judged! If only we were telepathic, we'd know he/she is just a misunderstood giant 5-legged homicidal maniac planning our extermination. And who is just scrounging for parts to repair her/his spaceship - what any reasonable person would do! - so he/she can get back to the nest and launch the earth-ending Apocalypse. But it, like so many human-launched genocides, is nothing personal, just business.

    Nyuk.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TheOFloinnMarch 7, 2017 at 2:25 PM

      He/she is not to repair his/her ship. It is trying to repair its ship. You anti-third declension bigot, you! Generally speaking whenever Jim-7 is doing anything involving engineering et al. he is "it." When obsessed with protection and self-preservation, it is "she." And when acting on the outside world, she is "he." I may have slipped here and there. But nothree is perfect. :(

      Delete
    2. jmhenryMarch 7, 2017 at 2:55 PM

      I noticed that! But not until I was almost done with the story. I slowly realized that the pronoun changes weren't just random, then I quickly went back over the Jim-7 sections to see if there was a pattern. What I suspected more or less matches up with what you wrote above. Nicely done.

      Delete
  4. UnknownApril 19, 2017 at 4:19 AM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete

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