Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Firestar

By: Michael Flynn
Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £25.99

Buy Now for £25.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

It is the dawn of the 21st century, and America is in trouble. Public schools breed apathy and ignorance, and politics has become the art of the quick fix. There is one woman, though, who has both the vision and the money to leverage change. Mariesa Gorley van Huyten, heiress to one of the great American fortunes, founds an educational subsidiary called Mentor Academies and begins to subcontract public school systems in order to raise a new, less cynical generation. But her clandestine program is much larger than that: it also includes the founding of a private space program, the eventual construction of an orbital power station, and the revival of technological innovation on Earth.

Firestar is a chronicle of private enterprise and individual initiative—the story of one woman’s quest that becomes the focus for a whole new world. Mariesa’s program lets teachers strive to teach, hires astronauts who have no government space program to fly for, and provides productive outlets for the idealistic desires of the rich and powerful—at least those who remain sane enough to have such desires in the face of a crumbling America. And it just might work.

Michael Flynn lives in Easton, Pennsylvania. He is the winner of the Robert A. Heinlein Award and was a Hugo nominee for Eifelheim.

©1996 Michael Flynn (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Eifelheim cover art
Children of Time cover art
The Singularity Trap cover art
Hard Magic cover art
Fluency cover art
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) cover art
Hyperion cover art
Artemis cover art
The Shadow of What Was Lost cover art
Elantris (3 of 3) [Dramatized Adaptation] cover art
Red Rising cover art
Fear the Sky cover art
14 cover art
Sufficiently Advanced Magic cover art
The Cycle of Arawn cover art
Live Free or Die cover art

Critic reviews

"As Robert A. Heinlein did and all too few have done since, Michael Flynn writes about the near future as if he'd been there and was bringing back reports of what he'd seen. A splendid piece of work." (Harry Turtledove, New York Times best-selling author)
" Firestar is a knockout…. Blurbmeisters, comparing him to Heinlein, may be shorting his talent…. By any measure, this is the best book I've seen this year." ( San Diego Union-Tribune)

What listeners say about Firestar

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    8
  • 4 Stars
    8
  • 3 Stars
    4
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    10
  • 4 Stars
    6
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    8
  • 4 Stars
    6
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

epic

this book is gloriously long. it's quite dry and serious, except every now and then, you're side-swiped with some unexpected humour. Enjoy.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!