In the Belly of the Whale, the 2025 Prometheus winner for Best Novel, was Michael Flynn’s last, posthumous novel and one of his richest and most resonant.
Exploring the complex lives, jobs, relationships, challenges and conflicts aboard a large colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to Tau Ceti, the epic 472-page novel takes some time to fully introduce its large cast of characters among 40,000 people who live in the hollowed-out asteroid ship dubbed The Whale.
Yet, patience is amply rewarded with Flynn’s plausible and intricate world-building, deep insights into social psychology and wise grasp of human nature.
In the Belly of the Whale, Flynn’s 14th and final novel, builds dramatic intensity coupled with rich and revelatory insights that freshen this seemingly familiar SF subgenre of the long colony-ship voyage. Flynn raises deeper questions than most SF writers, scientists or space-colonization enthusiasts have considered about the prospects and costs of such generations-long voyages.
