MIchael Flynn (1947-2023)
SF writer Michael Flynn died September 30, 2023 at home in Easton PA.
Michael Francis Flynn was born in 1947 in Easton PA and attended La Salle University, where he earned a BS, and Marquette University, where he got his Master’s degree in topology. He worked as an engineer and statistician, and lived in Colorado and New Jersey before returning to settle in his hometown.
He began publishing short fiction in 1984, and soon became a regular in Analog, as well as publishing widely in other venues; some of his work appeared under the name Rowland Shew. Notable stories include Hugo Award finalists “Eifelheim” (1986), “The Forest of Time ” (1987), “The Clapping Hands of God” (2004), and “The Journeyman: In the Stone House” (2014); Hugo and Sturgeon Award finalists “Melodies of the Heart” (1994) and “Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth” (2006); Sturgeon Award winner “House of Dreams ” (1997); and Sidewise Award winner “Quaestiones Super Caelo et Mundo” (2007). Some of his short work is collected in The Nanotech Chronicles (1991), The Forest of Time and Other Stories (1997), and Captive Dreams (2012).
Debut novel In the Country of the Blind appeared in 1990, and won Prometheus and Compton Crook Awards. Other standalone novels include Campbell Memorial Award finalist The Wreck of The River of Stars (2003) and Hugo Award finalist Eifelheim (2006), the latter expanded from his Hugo-nominated novella from two decades earlier. His Firestar series is Firestar (1996), Rogue Star (1998), Lodestar (2000), and Falling Stars (2001), and the Spiral Arm series includes The January Dancer (2008), Up Jim River (2010), In the Lion’s Mouth (2012), and On the Razor’s Edge (2013). He co-wrote Fallen Angels (1991) with Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle.
Flynn received the Robert A. Heinlein Award for hard SF inspiring space exploration in 2003.
For more, see his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
