Eifelheim by Micahel Flynn

2006 was a great year for SF novels. It gave us at least three novels that were of such quality that they are better than the Hugo winners many years – Rainbows End, Glasshouse, and Eifelheim – as well as several that were just below that level. When I read Rainbows End, I was convinced that it would be the easy Hugo winner. Then, when I read Glasshouse¸ I was torn, as both were good. But Eifelheim is perhaps the best of the three, and is now my choice for the best novel of 2006.

Most of the novel takes place in medieval Germany, in a small town in the area of the Black Forest. Pastor Dietrich years before settled here, but he’s also very much a learned man, very intelligent, trained in logic and the science of the time as well as in theology. But life in the town is disrupted when an alien ship crashes there. The aliens – who Dietrich calls the Krenken – look a bit like giant grasshoppers. They are intelligent but alien. In fact, the book really centers on the encounter between two alien cultures, for medieval culture – the way the people thought, their way of interpreting the world around them – are as alien as the culture of the Krenken (who, while alien in many social aspects, from a scientific point of view have a world view and basic assumptions in some ways closer to our own).

Actually, though, it’s even more complex than this simple contact of cultures, since each culture has it’s own subgroups. Some humans view the Krenken as demons and fear and shun them. Other view them as “men” in another form. And yet others view them as demons but deserving of help and conversion to Christianity. The Krenken meanwhile have different groups that adjust in their own ways to the humans. And all groups grow as the novel goes on, often starting out appalled or frightened by the others, then coming to some understanding (or at least what they think is understanding). For example, the Krenken are descended from creatures very like our social insects, and are at first appaled and dismayed when they discover that some humans were capable of rebellion against their lords. Dietrich, meanwhile, is taken aback when the Krenken admit that they descended from animals, since to him that would mean that they were driven purely by instinct, not by reason. But the pastor and the Krenken both come to understand more of what this means as the novel progresses.

Dietrich is both a very bright and a very humane man. When the Krenken ship first arrives, before anyone knows that it in fact has arrived, the town experiences an electrostatic discharge, and Dietrich remembers what he had learned in Paris about static electricity created by rubbing amber and makes the connection. Throughout he shows his intelligence, but often within the context of his medieval knowledge. He has difficulty accepting a sun-centered solar system, and points out the lack of detectable stellar parallax to the Krenken. When the Krenken describe electromagnetic waves traveling in the vacuum (and even essentially describe the Michelson-Morley experiment for disproving the existence of the aether), he again finds logical refutations, within the context of what his society knows. Thus, while we see much of what the Krenken do from Dietrich’s point of view, we often understand more of what their equipment does than he does.

Communication is handled by what is essentially an AI, which Dietrich views as a talking head. Flynn does a great job with this, especially in showing the limitations of such a device. It’s great at translating the concrete, much less good at translating the abstract (though it learns more as the novel progresses). And of course it is limited to using the terms and concepts of the time, something especially difficult when the Krenken try to explain their technology or advanced physics. Reading such advanced concepts in medieval language is fascinating in itself, though.

This main story is “framed” by a story set in our time. (Frame isn’t quite the right term here, since the contemporary parts are interspersed, though there is far less set in our time than set with Dietrich and the Krenken, and the modern section serves much the same purpose as a frame.) Sharon and Tom are a couple; she is a cutting-edge physicist; he is a cliologist (essentially someone who studies history via mathematical analysis). Tom has run into a historical anomaly. The town of Eifelheim was abandoned in the late 1300s and never resettled, even though all mathematical models show that it should have been. Sharon meanwhile is investigating theories of the universe that involve extra dimensions. There results, of course, dovetail in the end, since Tom eventually uncovers bits of the story of the Krenken (though not all, and in some places – especially in his view of the young monk who he reads wrongly – outright wrong), while Sharon has discovered how they got here.

Throughout the book is filled with fascinating insights into medieval culture and history (ranging from the attitudes of the people to the early history of the Inquisition – which is a bit different than the popular view of it), and includes great discussions on science, theology, and philosophy – but done in such a way that it’s all an integral part of the story.

As I noted above, this is right now my choice for the 2006 Hugo. It’s the best novel of the year in a very good year, and in fact is one of the best novels of the new century so far. Flynn, who was always a good writer, took one major step forward in The Wreck of the River of Stars, and now has taken another major leap. He’s moved from one of those writers whose books I get around to when they come out in paperback to one whose books I’ll start buying as soon as they are released. Highly recommended.