Winning literary awards and receiving rave reviews can boost the careers of novelists, by raising their visibility and enhancing their reputation. That’s sadly no longer fully possible for the late great Michael Flynn.
Flynn, who died in 2023 at 75, recently was announced in an LFS press release as the 2025 winner of the Prometheus Award for Best Novel for In the Belly of the Whale.
His epic social novel, a sobering drama about challenges and conflicts among the crew on a vast colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to settle Tau Ceti, was the last novel Flynn wrote before his death.
Published in 2024 by CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, Flynn’s novel has garnered some attention – especially an extraordinary review in Locus magazine (excerpted below) that amounts to a mea culpa for previously overlooking and underestimating Flynn.
Yet, both during his five-decade writing career and after his passing, Flynn has not garnered as much attention and appreciation from other critics and mainstream publications as I think the author and his last book deserve.
Shahid Mahmud, CAEZIK founder-publisher and a huge enthusiast for Flynn’s fiction, agrees. Mahmud tells me that he considers Flynn one of the most underestimated science fiction writers of his generation.
MICHAEL FLYNN’S IMPRESSIVE TRACK RECORD
Flynn first won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel in 1991 for In the Country of the Blind . An early “steampunk” novel framed as a “secret history” about lost freedom of choice, manipulated conformity and the temptations and corruptions of power, Flynn’s remarkable first novel works as a suspenseful adventure story, a love story and an ingenious satire on conspiracy theories that asks disturbing questions about historical trends in our own society over the past century.
Flynn won his second Prometheus for Best Novel in 1992 for Fallen Angels , co-written with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The novel imagines a heroic struggle for survival and civilization by stranded astronauts and other individualistic misfits in a dark future where government has turned anti-science and anti-technology as the United States and other countries fight a losing battle amidst the global cooling of a new Ice Age.
Ultimately one of the most frequently recognized authors within the 46-year history of the Prometheus Awards, Flynn wrote a wide variety of books that have been nominated nine times for the award, with eight novels honored as Best Novel finalists – a track record equalled or exceeded only by Ken MacLeod, L. Neil Smith and F. Paul Wilson.
Coincidentally, Flynn also was nominated seven times for a Hugo award between 1987 and 2015, mostly for his novellas and novelettes but also for Best Novel (Eifelheim).
Yet, sadly, Flynn never won a Hugo, widely recognized as the top sf/fantasy award voted by fans worldwide. Nor was he nominated for a Nebula award by his peers in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), the nonprofit association of professional science fiction and fantasy writers.
THE LOCUS REVIEW OF FLYNN’S FINAL NOVEL
Perhaps most notably, outside of the Prometheus Awards, In the Belly of the Whale received remarkable attention in Locus magazine, the leading magazine of news and reviews for the sf/fantasy field.
Paul di Filippo, a regular Locus reviewer/columnist, didn’t just give In the Belly of the Whale a rave review.
Filippo, himself a prolific sf novelist (Fuzzy Dice, Cosmocopia, The Big Get-Even), also expressed surprise at just how good Flynn is/was as a novelist. He framed his Locus review with what amounts to an apology for having previously overlooked and underestimated Flynn’s fiction.
Visit Locus magazine (worth subscribing to, especially for LFS members and Prometheus judges eager to discover works that might deserve our awards-related scrutiny) to subscribe and read the full review, but here’s how Di Filippo begins:
“Why is the field of fantastika like Walt Whitman? Because both are ‘large and contain multitudes.’ (And also, parts of it contradict other parts.),” Filippo writes.
“Seriously, though, for at least the past twenty years or thereabouts, the output of fantastika has been so large that no single reader can keep up with everything. It’s not humanly possible. And so today I find myself in the reprehensible position of confessing that I have never read any works by Michael Flynn, despite the fact that he debuted in 1984, and has had a copious, well-regarded career since. But I’ve now remedied that deficit by reading his newest, and I see that I was almost certainly starving myself of some great SF.”
A FRESH APPROACH TO THE COLONY-SHIP SUBGENRE
Di Filippo understands the distinctive nature of Flynn’s last novel, which takes a fresh approach to the now-overly familiar, recurrent and oft-cliched sf subgenre of novels and stories about multi-generational voyages from Earth to reach and settle planets in other solar systems.
“In the Belly of the Whale is a generation-ship tale, deploying one of SF’s big ‘power chords.’ But I think it’s safe to say that Flynn’s presentation is pretty unique,” Di Filippo writes.
“The majority of such stories seem to focus on the generation ship citizens as forgetful, lost, degenerated, unaware of their reality. Flynn instead gives us a ship that is two hundred years into its thousand-year voyage, wherein everyone knows quite clearly where they came from, why they are there, and where they are going. The focus thus becomes: what kind of society can sustain such a voyage, what kind of dangers threaten its existence, and how do you stop this nugget of civilization from crumbling. And these themes will be explored through a huge cast of characters having some wild adventures.”
The insightful review also grasps the manifold implications of the ambitious novel’s vast and kaleidoscopic scope.
“Because the Whale is gigantic, the usual claustrophobic parameters of most gen-ship novels do not apply. It’s more as if the narrative is being enacted in a sizable village, with neighborhoods, not in corridors where you can reach your arms out and span the width… (and with) a lot of factions and individuals, some noble, some craven, some altruistic, some greedy, some content and some angry,” Di Filippo writes.
A VAST RANGE OF SHIP CHARACTERS
Although Di Filippo honestly points to the many characters as one of the novel’s biggest challenges, especially in reading the early chapters, he counsels patience, noting that readers will be well rewarded.
“Flynn intends to show us every level of the Whale’s society from top to bottom, and to do so, he has created a cast of dozens and dozens. Initially, because relatively short chapters come and go at lightning speed, with a shift in POV every time, I had a little trouble sorting them out in my head (an up-front roster of names helps), but within a few cycles, they emerged from my brain fog as very distinct individuals, each with their own speech patterns and sensibilities,” Di Filippo writes.
“If you loved similar big-screen, Cinemascope productions such as Ian McDonald’s River of Gods or Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora (certainly a resonant comparison, since it’s also about a gen-ship headed for Tau Ceti!), then you will revel in the multitude here.”
The review praises the results – albeit with a caveat:
“Flynn charts unforgettable and unforeseeable paths of ambition and treachery, duty and sacrifice, as well as a handful of truly touching love affairs. (Be forewarned: he’s not above killing off folks you regard as major players.)”
HOW FLYNN EVOKES THE BEST OF CHERRYH & HEINLEIN
Intriguingly, from the perspective of the Prometheus awards, the Locus review compares Flynn positively to two well-known and acclaimed science fiction writers who have won Prometheus Awards: C.J. Cherryh and Robert Heinlein.
“Over two centuries the traditions and usages have blended into a hitherto-unseen syncretic form, and Flynn has a great time conveying this novel blend, almost in the manner of C. J. Cherryh limning one of her alien cultures,” di Filippo writes.
“Flynn’s prose is top-notch, possessing a Heinleinesque clarity: never cluttered or precious or fusty, muscular and straightforward, but still rich with great neologisms, dialogue and snatches of poetic description.”
Di Filippo ends his review by quoting one of the key passages in Flynn’s novel, a revealing and wise observation by Peng, an older character who understands the very human and tragic cycles of politics and changing social orders.
I won’t quote that here, since the same passage appears in the Prometheus Blog review of In the Belly of the Whale. That review may be timely and worthwhile to reread and compare to the Locus review, since both arrive at many of the same conclusions about the book and Flynn, albeit from somewhat different perspectives.
PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY’S REVIEW
Meanwhile, Publishers Weekly magazine, the leading book-industry trade journal, had a similarly positive (although much briefer) response to In the Belly of the Whale, describing it as a “meditation on human corruptibility within a hollowed-out asteroid.”
“The thought-provoking final novel from Heinlein Medalist Flynn (1947–2023) speaks volumes through its formidable application of hard science fiction principles to softer sociology,” according to the capsule review.
“Flynn’s rapid cuts between his main characters—an upright detective, doomed young lovers, unscrupulous politicians, a resourceful NCO—provide a captivating human panorama of this city-in-a-ship, while his convincing scientific lore reveals fascinating what-ifs about space travel and colonization. Pursuing humanity’s redemption to its final interstellar frontier, Flynn delivers an impressive and original epic.”
Coming up: The 2025 Prometheus Awards ceremony. Michael Flynn’s publisher Shahid Mahmud will appear via Zoom during this year’s Prometheus Awards ceremony, when he will have more to say about Flynn and his work. Astrid Bear, daughter of Poul Anderson (the 2025 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner for his novel Orion Shall Rise; LFS President William H. Stoddard, LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg and Mahmud are among the speakers now being confirmed to speak during this year’s Prometheus Awards ceremony honoring our 2025 winners for Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (the Prometheus Hall of Fame).
Check back with the Prometheus Blog for news updates about the 45th Prometheus awards ceremony, once all the speakers and the specific date and time of the hourlong online event are confirmed. Pending that announcement, the LFS anticipates the awards show to take place most likely on a weekend afternoon (Eastern Standard Time) in late August or early September.
ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS AND THE LFS
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Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
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* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
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Good suggestion! I just bought Flynn’s The Wreck of The River of Stars to read – and hope to get to it soon (after finishing several current candidates and nominees for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.)
To my mind, one of Flynn’s outstanding works is The Wreck of The River of Stars, the story of the final voyage of a lightsail spacecraft; its narrative can be read simultaneously as a diagnosis of industrial or technological failure and as a kind of Greek tragedy. I never nominated it for the Prometheus Award, as its story is not politically focused, but anyone who enjoys Flynn’s writing ought to give it a look.