Two-time Prometheus winner Michael Flynn has become a Best Novel finalist again this year for In the Belly of the Whale, an epic work illuminating the complex lives, work, challenges, conflicts and threats to liberty aboard a large colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to Tau Ceti.
Flynn previously won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel for In the Country of the Blind (in 1991) and Fallen Angels (in 1992), co-written with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
One of the most frequently recognized authors within the 46-year history of the Prometheus Awards, Flynn wrote works that were ranked Best Novel finalists seven times – a track record exceeded only by Ken MacLeod, L. Neil Smith and F. Paul Wilson.
Sadly, Flynn, who died at 75 in 2023, is no longer around to do interviews about his final, posthumous novel.
But in Part Five of our ongoing Prometheus Blog series documenting how each of our 2025 Best Novel finalists have received broader cultural recognition for their fiction, talent and imagination, we offer the next best thing: One of the best and last interviews Flynn gave before he passed.
For the Intergalactic Medicine Show website, sponsored and launched by multiple Prometheus Best Novel finalist Orson Scott Card, Darrell Schweitzer interviewed Flynn in 2019.
“My idea of science fiction was likely formed in the 1950s, by Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Norton, de Camp, Leinster, van Vogt, Anderson, and others,” Flynn told Schweitzer in one of the last interviews published on the website.
FLYNN’S AWARD-WINNING BODY OF WORK
In his introduction to the interview, Schweitzer describes Flynn’s work as falling “squarely” within the category of ‘hard-SF,’ which means he pays attention to the science.”
Schweitzer noted that Flynn has been nominated for the Hugo five times, has won the Prometheus Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and was the first author to win the Robert Heinlein Medal, a lifetime achievement award given by the Heinlein Society for encouraging the development of human space travel.
Among Flynn’s many works of fiction, Schweitzer singles out for special mention Eifelheim, winner of France’s Prix Julie Erlanger and Japan’s Seiun Award and a Hugo finalist; Fallen Angels, a Seiun Awardwinner; his four-volume Firestar series, and the Spiral Arm series, as well as the stand-alone novels In the Country of the Blind and The Wreck of The River of Stars.
Of the above, it’s worth noting that each book in Flynn’s Firestar series – Firestar (1997), Rogue Star (1999), Lodestar (2001) and Falling Stars (2002) – were recognized as Prometheus Best Novel finalists.
IS THE PRO-SCIENCE FIRESTAR SERIES OLD-FASHIONED?
Schweitzer asked Flynn about the Firestar series in a question exploring deep shifts in social attitudes about science, technology and progress.
“I am reminded of a certain magazine editor, whom I shall not name, who, when asked why there were no spaceships and planetary scenes on his covers, remarked, “That would make people think the magazine was devoted to nostalgia.” I think the perception that Firestar is “old-fashioned” is similar to this,” Schweitzer said.
“That is, the positive, Campbellian vision of a bunch of can-do guys in spacesuits conquering, first, the Solar System, then the Galaxy, seems to be based on the SF of the 40s and 50s, exactly what you and I read when we were growing up. This gets back to the question of “What happened to ‘the future’?” Is this consensus future something we still believe in?”
“It goes back deeper than Campbell. It was the core of the Scientific Revolution, articulated by Descartes and Francis Bacon and the rest, that science would henceforth be dedicated to expanding Man’s “mastery of the universe,’” Flynn responded.
“Look at Boyle’s list of the great problems facing science (one is tempted to write Science™). It reads like a summary of Golden Age SF. In effect, this was the basic idea of Science that defined the Modern Ages. It was quite different in intent from medieval science.
“I think there has been a genuine turning away from the future in Late Modern culture. Science is being perceived more and more as a burden on the planet. For example, in 1989 the American Chemical Society commissioned an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History to be called “Science in American Life.” The result was ‘an exhibition that presented American science as a series of moral debacles and environmental catastrophes: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Silent Spring, Love Canal, Three Mile Island, and the explosion of the space shuttle.’ ”
“We are now more likely to anticipate what can go wrong than to anticipate what benefits might accrue from new science and technology. There have been serious proposals for a board to screen proposed scientific advances before they are allowed, lest they lead to whatever it is that people fear they may lead to. The fading of the ‘can-do guys in spacesuits’ is not due to a lack of spacesuits,” Flynn said.
WHAT INSPIRED FLYNN’S IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND?
Another interview question prompted Flynn to reveal how he conceived the idea that inspired his Prometheus-winning novel In the Country of the Blind.
“I do love to turn things backward and upside down. The first time I had lunch with (science fiction magazine editor) Stan Schmidt, he asked me if I was working on a new story and I turned my mind blank and blurted out “psychohistory was invented a hundred years ago.” I don’t know where that came from, but I know where it went to: In the Country of the Blind,” Flynn said.
“I guess, what it means is that to someone from 1920, 1970 would have been Gosh-Wow but not utterly shocking. But to someone from 1870, 1920 would have blown him away. When my grandfather was a kid, the Wrights flew at Kitty Hawk; before he died he watched a man walk on the Moon – on TV, in his living room. One summer he took care of horses at the rental stable. The next summer, there was a rental car, too. The summer after that, there were no horses. We now think rapid change is the norm. We expect it; and to some extent we envision it,” Flynn said.
FLYNN’S SPIRAL ARM SERIES
Flynn’s other Prometheus Best Novel finalist was The January Dancer (2009), the first novel in Flynn’s acclaimed Spiral Arm series, which continued with Up Jim River, In the Lion’s Mouth and On the Razor’s Edge.
Flynn’s Spiral Arm series was referenced when Schweitzer asked Flynn if Americans have lost the can-do attitude that propelled earlier generations of progress – and if so, “does that mean the Moon and Mars will be colonized by the Chinese or the Indians?”
“Good question. The Spiral Arm series implicitly supposes that interstellar culture was dominated first by the Chinese, then by Indians. The lingua franca of the Commonwealth was for many centuries Tamil and people often have names like Krishna Murphy and Teodorq sunna Nagarajan. The old cultures that stifled China and India and prevented the rise of modern science there may yet reassert themselves and quash the future; but it may also be that they have been sufficiently Westernized — which is to say “modernized” — that there is no going back,” Flynn said.
“A fire may die out in one locale but spring up in another. Both civilizations have begun making their marks in science. And they may see the future in th
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PROMISED SF FUTURE?
Among the most interesting questions that Schweitzer asks in the interview is “where the future went.”
“Many commentators… have suggested that science fiction is turning away from the future, or that it is dealing with yesterday’s tomorrow, in that the typical SF vision of the future stands on Campbellian SF, the Foundation series, maybe even the Lensman series, and other rather aged constructions. Any thoughts on this? Do you think that SF is eventually going to have to jettison a lot of its traditional baggage to remain relevant to younger readers?,” Schweitzer asked Flynn.
“I’m going to suggest that it doesn’t matter, since the younger readers have never read any of that stuff… So old-fashioned tropes can seem new to the virgin reader. But then, the experienced reader likes to see something new and different, too,” Flynn replied.
“I would be happy if younger readers existed, as opposed to younger gamers and younger watchers. Logos has been fighting a losing battle with Icon – words vs. pictures – for some time now. Visual media are now more important than print media. And the medium really is, to some extent, the message,” he said.
“There are things you can do in print that you cannot do in visuals. (And vice versa, of course.) Images and poses matter more than plots or scientific plausibility; excitement and immediacy matter more than textual depth, or the wordplay that New Wave was supposedly known for. There has been an ongoing loss of attention span in large segments of the population, and reading requires quiet reflection, not a controller and quick reflexes. In other words, the competition is not between today’s Future and yesterday’s Future. Both are allies in competition with the everlovin’ Now.”
A BOYHOOD LOVE OF SCIENCE FICTION – AND WRITING STORIES
Part of the interview serves as a de facto autobiography – a good thing in retrospect, since Flynn never had a chance to write one.
In his interview answers, Flynn wove in wonderful and amusing stories about his family background in Germany and Ireland, his many different teen and early-adulthood jobs that gave him a visceral sense of many different areas of society, and his boyhood. Flynn was the oldest of five brothers, including Dennis, who shared his love of science fiction.
“Science Fiction came to me when I was a child. My father used to tell bedtime stories to my brother Dennis and me. One was about aliens who came to Earth “to serve man.” It turned out to be a cookbook. Good night, sleep tight. After a story like that? Good luck,” Flynn recalled.
“Another I remember turned out to be a Ray Bradbury story. The Old Man, which my math skills tell me could not have been that old at the time, had gotten similar bedtime stories in his day, from an uncle who also illustrated them with cartoons. “Mongo of the Moon” was at least original. Later we discovered Dad’s stash of IF and Galaxy.
“So Dennis and I devoured every science fiction book in the local children’s library. My first book was Space Captives of the Golden Men. Lucky Starr, the Heinlein juveniles, and all the rest soon followed…. When we ran out, we went to the librarian and asked if we could check out the adult books. The librarian selected an adult science fiction book, asked Dennis to read a passage and then explain it. (Dennis was younger by a year. If he could do it, it was reasoned, so could I.) He did, of course, and we were given special privileges. It’s a good thing Samuel Delany hadn’t written Dhalgren at the time,” Flynn said.
Through their shared love of reading and science fiction, Michael and Dennis began writing their own stories together.
“We did the Grand Tour, with an adventure on each planet, the natures of which were then quite unclear to us. We recruited two other kids and the four of us created what is now called a “shared universe.” We made a list of stories for a future history out into the far future and parceled them out for the scrivening. (My mother saved them, and my youngest brother one day stumbled upon them.),” Flynn recalled.
“All this came to the attention of a local news columnist who did an interview with my brother and me. The space-writing Flynn brothers. I think we were in 8th and 9th grades or thereabouts. My one greatest regret is that I will never co-author any stories with Dennis. He died in high school. For sixteen years, everything we did, we did together,” he said.
For further reading: Check out the previous Prometheus blog posts in this series excerpting and linking to interviews and podcasts with the 2025 Best Novel finalists. Part One focuses on Lionel Shriver (and her novel Mania), Part Two, on Danny King (and his novel Cancelled), Part Three, on Wil McCarthy (and his novel Beggar’s Sky), and Part Four, on C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher (and their novel Alliance Unbound.)
Editor’s note: The Prometheus Blog strives to report widely with updates on all Prometheus-recognized fiction and authors, especially if and when their works are referenced in popular culture and international discourse, whether in newspapers, magazines, books, columns, podcasts, interviews, commentary and debates. Whenever and wherever you come across such references, please bring them to our attention right away, so we can highlight them in a timely fashion and underscore the influence and impact of Prometheus-recognized fiction on our world today.
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