Who Goes There?

Michael F. Flynn was arguably one of the last major discoveries to first appear in Analog Science Fiction, debuting relatively late (he was already in his thirties) in 1984 and quickly becoming a resident of that magazine. He was a generation younger than the likes of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, but his politics and hard-nosed approach to SF aligned with theirs enough that they would collaborate on occasion, and indeed my first run-in with Flynn was the novel Fallen Angels, co-written with Niven and Pournelle. (This novel is rather infamous among older SF readers, and yeah, it’s not good, but I found it too silly to be offended by it. It’s at least marginally more enjoyable than Fritz Leiber’s The Wanderer, but then so are most novels.) I didn’t read my first solo Flynn until last year, incidentally not long before his death, but I figured quickly he was someone to keep an eye on.

Unfortunately Flynn died in September 2023. I actually work in the same town he lived in, but we never crossed paths—probably not even close. He was, from what I’ve heard, a very affable man despite his conservatism, and surely the field will not look quite the same henceforward. I wanted to review something of his, sort of in memoriam, and ultimately I went with what seems like an uncharacteristic story of his. “House of Dreams” is a rare case of Flynn appearing outside of Analog, and it even won a major award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. This is one of the few Sturgeon winners to not get a Hugo or Nebula nomination (only a Locus poll spot), and—well, there might be a reason for that.

Placing Coordinates

First published in the October-November 1997 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, which is on the Archive. Unfortunately this is the only way you can read “House of Dreams”; it has never been reprinted in English. If you wanna read it then you’ll just have to read that PDF of the issue, or find yourself a used copy if you’re the collecting type.

Enhancing Image

We know this is a story about parallel worlds because the narrator tells us right away, about “worldlines abutting” and “the walls of the universes.” The action is framed as a sort of cautionary tale, told by an elder to some villagers around a bonfire—or so that’s how I see it. We’re immediately met with the most contentious part of “House of Dreams” (or rather one of two very contentious points), which is the manner in which Flynn decided to tell his story. This is not just a first-person narrator; it’s a first-person narrator with an attitude. The narrator both is and is not a character, being outside the action of the story but still conveying his own personality to the reader. Like I said, it’s framed as if we the reader are a listener at a bonfire, and the narrator is a flesh-and-blood storyteller. I’m not very fond of this, although it could be more the particular voice Flynn decided to use: a kind of jokey but not necessarily funny tone that can strike one as condescending. It does, I suppose fittingly, sound like emulation of one of Sturgeon’s own attempts at narrative voice, but unfortunately it’s an emulation of one of Sturgeon’s unsuccessful attempts.

The actual protagonist is Ted, an academic type with a wife and son who’s in the process of buying a house. The purchase has not been finalized and so the family hasn’t moved in yet, but that doesn’t stop Ted from loafing about in the place for days on end, by himself, with tragic consequences. The house has not been cleared out yet, which allows Ted to go poking around, and at one point he discovers a bulky and weird-looking flashlight—a device that doesn’t illuminate areas in the conventional sense but, as it turns out, does shed light on parts of the house otherwise unseen. This all sounds somewhat detached, for one because of the narrator’s voice and also the fact that there’s basically no dialogue. It’s almost a one-man show. Ted doesn’t interact with other characters in conventional sense, although we do get a line into his thoughts and there is one other character of note. As for the flashlight, we never learn where it came from or who built it, but we do find out quickly that it can show a different plane of existence in the house that works in parallel with what the naked eye can see.

Ted, using the flashlight, discovers a stranger in the house—a woman who can’t see him, although he can see her. The meeting is ass-first. “He didn’t see her face, not then. The view was strictly from the rear.” The narrator is quick to remind us that Ted is a faithfully married man, but that doesn’t stop him from experiencing love at first sight, or at least lust at first sight. I’m not exaggerating when I say Ted’s boner for the ghost woman (the narrator settles on calling her “Betsy,” so let’s go with that) will determine the course of the rest of the story. The male gaze is so strong here and so deliberately put in that it arguably becomes the point of the story, rather than something that distracts from it. There are obvious criticisms one can make. Being unable to talk to Betsy or even get her to acknowledge his existence, Ted has to settle for watching, although sometimes he does a little more than that. One night, in his bedroom, Ted turns on the flashlight and sees Betsy naked next to him, crying—maybe from sadness or an intense happiness. The narrator tells us, in so many words, that Ted jerks off to this image of Betsy, and you have to admit this is not something you read about every day. It’s discomforting, probably more than Flynn intended, and I’m not sure how much of it is supposed to serve a function other than pornographic. Robert Silverberg in the ’70s would’ve done something like this.

We learn a few things along the way, although naturally we don’t learn every detail since the world on the other side of the flashlight is blocked off to Ted other than what it allows him to see. We know Betsy lives in an alternate world where humanity has apparently been brought to the brink of annihilation, being at war with a race of vicious ape-like creatures called “leapers,” which we’ll come back to later. We know Betsy herself is a warrior, armed with a bolt-action rifle and some knives for close encounters, probably living every day as if it might be her last. We can infer Ted is drawn to Betsy by her immense physical prowess, her courage, and her rough beauty, but we can also infer Ted becomes obsessed because there’s something missing in his everyday life. We get to know very little about his marriage (his wife does not appear at all until the end), but despite the narrator’s insistence that Ted leads a faithful life he would not be so fiercely attracted to someone else unless he was discontented. The narrator tells us Ted probably decided to give the woman a name, if not Betsy, and why else would he do this other than as a projection of distorted love? “Names make us human.” Of course it’s a doomed attraction, because while he can see that other world with the flashlight, he can’t interact with it.

“House of Dreams” is about the inherent tragedy of wanting something you can’t have. I wish it went about that theme in a different way. While we can read some of Ted’s thoughts, he remains a distant character because this is all filtered through the jokey, cloying narrator who proves to be an obstacle one has to get over to enjoy the actual story at hand. I could buy into Ted’s sort of perverted attraction to Betsy if we were firmly planted in his shoes. Many would be put off by the perversion regardless, but I would argue it’d at least be easier to understand if Flynn had decided to tell this story in a more personal way. Flynn is trying to examine a basic human truth here, but decides to keep us one degree separated from the heart of the matter for some reason I can’t ascertain, and ultimately such a choice undermines what should be more emotionally resonant.

There Be Spoilers Here

The leapers, somehow, are able to sense Ted’s magic flashlight, which proves to be a problem; it’s never explained how they, but not the humans in the parallel world, are able to sense Ted’s presence, but I’ll deal with it. More unfortunately for Ted in the short term, he is forced (or rather forces himself) to witnesses Betsy’s last stand against the leapers. She gives them a pretty good fight, which gives this final scene between the two a bittersweetness, even if they’re never able to exchange even a word. Betsy seems like an interesting character; would be cool if we got a parallel story from her perspective. After Betsy’s death, Ted gives up the flashlight for good, which ultimately doesn’t do him any good, as it’s heavily implied the leapers have found a way to tear into “our” world, not only killing Ted but eating him partly. The house becomes abandoned. The narrator implies the leapers will do to our world what they did to Betsy’s. This is a thorough downer of an ending, which makes me wish I cared more.

A Step Farther Out

Was not a fan. Granted, I had no clue what I was expecting. I’m not sure what the people who voted for that year’s Sturgeon Award were thinking either, other than that it reads like Flynn trying to sound like Sturgeon. The problem is these are two writers with very different worldviews with different writing philosophies. Sturgeon, aside from being a more graceful prose stylist (even when he was trying too hard), was as open-hearted a romantic as one could get, and I’m not sure the same can be said for Flynn. “House of Dreams” has little in the way of hard science and instead focuses on a parasocial relationship, which is probably why it didn’t appear in Analog. Maybe this was not the best way to pay tribute to an author who died somewhat recently and who had done better work.

See you next time.