Book Review: Wreck of the River of Stars

Joseph Moore at Yard Sale of the Mind has posted a review of The Wreck of 'The River of Stars'. He thinks it's pretty good.

All the characters are loveable in some way, even those who seem harsh or cruel. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and many hold grudges or other hurts. These are revealed over time and become factors in the ultimate fate of the ship and its crew. Moments of great beauty and heroism, of the least likely coming through big, of tragic loss – it’s a modern Greek tragedy.

Retroview: The Wreck of "The River of Stars" -- Dritte Teil

THE REMAINDER OF THE FIRST CHAPTER, now on the Excerpts page, introduces several characters, one by one:

• Fransziska Wong, MD, the ship's doctor
• Ramakrishnan Bhatterjee, chief engineer
• Mikoyan Hidei, engineer's mate
• 'abd al-Aziz Corrigan, the second officer, soon to be acting first
• Timothy "Moth" Ratline, cargo master
• Nkieruke Okoye, first wrangler
• Ivar Akhaturian, least wrangler
• Eugenie Satterwaithe, third officer and sailing master
• The Lotus Jewel, sysop

The POV dips into the heads of or close-focuses on the bold-faced characters. 

Retrospective: The Wreck of "The River of Stars" (INTJ)

From the notes compiled for The Wreck of "The River of Stars" lo these many years hence.  All were copied from various M/B sources with "Gorgas" replacing "INTJ." 

Retroview: The Wreck of "The River of Stars" -- Part Dieux

LAST WEEK, YOU MAY RECALL, TOF began his rumination on the recursively-titled The Wreck of The River of Stars.  Recusive, because there is a title (the ship's name) within the title (the book's name), throwing down the gauntlet for typographers everywhere.  How much and which portions are to be italicized?  Great minds must ponder this. 

Meanwhile, we shall occupy ourselves otherwise.  





Previously, we discussed the title, which derived its ancestry from such as "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and the desire to write a story of a tragic shipwreck.  Since TOF writes in the genre SF, the ship wrecked would be ipso facto a space ship.   

We also discussed Where do you get your ideas, and saw the idea for The Wreck came from a confluence of several things:

• The aforesaid desire to write of a tragic shipwreck.
• The desire to use Mayer-Briggs personality classifications to define sixteen distinct characters, just to see if I could pull it off.  
• The notion in William Trevor's The Boarding House of a landlord who deliberately sought out misfits to rent rooms to. 

Kick-Off

Retroview: The Wreck of "The River of Stars"

Apologia pro blogpost sua: An earlier, incomplete draft of this may have posted temporarily before the gods of BlogSpot obliterated it by freezing up the Insert Picture tool.  This is a re-draft from scratch. 

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Ain't TOF cute?

Taking a break from the heavy Ptolemaic lifting, TOF has decided to ruminate on his "critically-praised" but commercially orphaned novel, The Wreck of "The River of Stars," the title of which is the despair of orthographers everywhere.  To do so, he will abandon his cute affectation of referring to himself in the third person.  This does not mean he will cease being cute, however.  

The Wreck, if we may call it by its nicktitle, was called by one reviewer "the best hard-SF tragic novel of character yet written," adding "though this is an uncrowded niche."  Uncrowded, indeed.  Run out and buy a copy.  I'll wait.  

Eugenie Satterwaithe

Another excerpt from The Wreck of "The River of Stars"
This one is a retrospective on the career of Eugenie Satterwaithe, sailing master on the Riv'. 

The Wreck of The River of Stars

Tor has brought out a trade paperback edition of The Wreck of The River of Stars.  This was the critical and literary success that disappeared in the sales figures.  It is not everybody's cup of tea.  Some have been disappointed it was not an action-adventure or that it was too literary, had too much characterization.  Others found the omniscient narrator, rare within the SF genre, hard to follow.  But others rather liked it.  Not enough others, but still.  You now have another chance. 

The book is also available as an Audible audiobook and as a Kindle.  Also on Barnes&Noble in book and nook.

Some reviewer comments:

"Flynn's fully realized characters, easy mastery of technical detail, and meticulous, consequential style perfectly matches the theme of this long, dense, spellbinding, brilliant work."

-- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

One of the Best SF Movies Never Made, Sort Of

The Register (UK) polled its readership for good SF movies that were never made.  In practice, this meant nominating books that had never been moviefied.  They narrowed the list down to fifty (heavily British); then picked the winner.  This was Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks.  Placing second was Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye.   

However, buried in the fifty "also-rans" was The Wreck of the River of Stars, by yr. obt. svt., which surely indicates that someone once read the book. 

It does make some sense.  The whole thing takes place inside, or on the skin of, a large ungainly tramp ship; and all of the small cast of characters are human, more or less. 

In the interests of assisting Hollywood in their decision-making, we are asking for nomination for which actors ought to play the various rolls. 

1. Evan Dodge Hand (captain)
2. Stepan Gorgas (first officer)
3. ’Abd al-Aziz Corrigan (second officer)
4. Eugenie Satterwaithe (third officer and sailing master)
5. The late Enver Bey Koch (engineer)
6. Ramakrishnan Bhatterji (engineer)
7. Mikoyan Hidei (engineer’s mate)
8. The Lotus Jewel (sysop and purser)
9. Eaton Grubb (biosystems/life support/cook)
10. Fransziska Wong, M.D. (ship’s doctor)
11. Timothy “Moth” Ratline (cargo master)
12. Nkieruke Okoye (first wrangler)
13. Raphael “Rave” Evermore (second wrangler)
14. Twenty-four deCant (third wrangler)
15. Ivar Akhaturian (least wrangler)
16. Bigelow Fife (passenger)