Eifelheim - Intelligent Science Fiction as High Art
4:35 Feb 27th, 2012 | 0 notes
Eifelheim by Michael Flynn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Michael Flynn’s Eifelheim is speculative fiction as high art. It is science fiction as literature and it’s no wonder that it earned a place as a Hugo Award Finalist. In the hands of Flynn’s deft imagination we are presented an intelligent story of first contact that fills you with wonder leaving your pulse quickening in the wake of its thundering moral explorations.
What amazed me with this story is how Flynn brought the texture of Middle Ages Europe to life. The superstition, the politics, the hard life and the harsh realities of a world being devastated by the plague roused sympathy. I was filled with the sensation of experiencing life in this seemingly strange town that, while separated by time and fiction, seemed as real to me because of the realism of the characters. These people could be anyone we know today. Their psychology is still true in our present world.
Flynn is a careful researcher who couched the experience of humanity’s contact with a strange alien race in the superstition, theology and scholasticism of its time. I gained a deeper and illuminated appreciation of this period in history which, despite its cruelties and the harshness of life, still teems with human compassion, joy and humor.
Father Dietrich is one of the most interesting characters in anything that I have recently read and I appreciated his struggle to balance his experience with natural philosophy and reason instead of rank superstition. Even the most seemingly mundane conversations revealed truth about the human condition and reveals something of how we might actually deal with the experience should we someday actually encounter an alien race from beyond the stars.
Eifleheim’s genesis started with a 1986 novella published in Analog magazine. Flynn’s publisher requested that he flesh out the story and the experience of Fr. Dietrich and his parish town is what resulted. Eifelheim is a novella within a novel that deepens our experience as Tom, a statistical historian, and Sharon, his theoretical physicist girlfriend find their disparate researches colliding with each other one long summer.
Flynn treats the reader to mind blowing theoretical physics that could set Einstein’s theory on its ear and the staggering realization the two young scientists reach about interstellar travel is breathtaking in its implications.
Eifelheim is that science fiction novel that leaves you feeling, “it could happen,” when you read the final word. I will remember this one for a long time to come. I may even dream about it.
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