Michael Flynn (1947—2023) was an American SF writer whose work is mostly hard science fiction. His works include the near-future Firestar series, The Wreck of the River of Stars, Eifelheim and the Space Opera Spiral Arm series.
He also wrote The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown, an account of the Galileo Affair.
Works by Michael Flynn:
Michael Flynn's works include examples of:
- Ancient Conspiracy: In Country of the Blind, the 19th century produced a crop of competing conspiracies based on the use of "cliology" (substantially similar to psychohistory in Asimov's Foundation Series), a mathematical discipline which can be used to reliably predict and manipulate the course of historical events. One such group prefers to play the Ancient Tradition role of usually passive observation (while making killings in the stock market), while others seek power for its own sake.
- Obliviously Evil: In "The Promise of God", using magic erodes away a person's moral sense, so every magic user has to have a chaperone to constantly ride herd on them and stop them from, say, solving people's problems by simply killing them.
- Space Western: "On the High Frontier" deliberately transplants Western cliches into space and gives them a hard-science spin.
- Space Whale: In "On The High Frontier" there are spacefaring creatures that resemble in part jellyfish, whales, and cattle, and are "herded" around the outer Solar System.
- Starship Luxurious: In The Wreck of The River of Stars, the starship The River of Stars started out as a luxury spaceliner.
