I’m at a loss from the beginning, as Flynn enjoys (as evidenced in his blog) statistical analysis and philosophy and the animated discussion thereof. This doesn’t help me with my “something to talk about at the convention” quest. If I find in my hands something  like a random bead box, I’m much happier arranging the beads into patterns, or wondering who made them and how they got here, than I am forming arguments about them. I’d even enjoy just watching the light play over the beads. So if I happen to meet Michael F. Flynn at Balticon, our natural tendencies in discourse will be very different.

Fortunately for his fans, his very analytical thought processes are not mutually exclusive with an ability to imagine and create. Michael F. Flynn’s many works include subjects as diverse as time travel, alt history, and quantum foam (the drawing above is a joke about that, referencing the story mentioned in the last post). He works in both novels and short stories, committing himself to extensive research when needed to create authoritative prose. Most readers consider his extensive catalog to be “hard” science fiction.  Michael A. Ventrella interviewed him; between this interview and Flynn’s extensive blog, you can get a pretty good picture of Flynn’s thoughts. And they are many, and wide-ranging.