Line #20 Literature/FirestarSeries


1	->''If we can send a man to the moon, why can't we send a man to the moon?''
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3	The ''Firestar Series'' is a set of four ScienceFiction novels by [[Creator/MichaelFlynn Michael F. Flynn]], consisting of ''Firestar'', ''Rogue Star'', ''Lodestar'', and ''Falling Stars''.
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5	In 1972, Mariesa van Huyten, heir apparent to her grandfather's corporate empire, witnesses a shooting star in the daylight over the Grand Tetons. The slightest change in the trajectory, she knows, could have been catastrophic. It marks her for life.
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7	Twenty-seven years later, the secret space program she has been developing with select members of scion companies prepares to begin test flight, as Mariesa selects students from her latest acquisition, Mentor Academies, to ensure the future of the space program -- her only hope to fight asteroids, and the highest dreams of her inner circle.
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9	But the road is beset with enemies: political opposition, competitors, saboteurs, and not least, their own vaunting ambition.
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11	Humanity, though, for all its flaws, is a race built to vaunt.
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13	----
14	!!This book series provides examples of:
15	* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: "Believe everything, and you had to hold Bullock responsible for the slave trade, the Spanish Inquisition, and the birth of disco."
16	* ArtificialLimbs: By ''Lodestar'', they're quite good. Take some intensive neural=path conditioning to adjust to and are in the UncannyValley of semblance to a real arm, but still.
17	* AsianAndNerdy: Considered the default setting for nerds at the time of the Witherspoon takeover, Tani Pandya being the most prominent example.
18	* AsteroidMiners: A lucrative and untapped industry, and thus a convenient excuse for Mariesa to work on her secret anti-asteroid mission.
19	* BlackAndNerdy: Hobie ends up as the frontrunner for the Nobel Prize. He's actually a jock in high school; his former classmates never quite get over this.
20	* BrainComputerInterface: Known as the EIEI/O, or "Macdonald" for short. People who use them are stigmatized as "cheeseheads", but the technology isn't nearly as dystopian or groundbreaking as its detractors make it out to be. (Pretty sweet for severe physical handicaps, though.)
21	* BrokenPedestal: [[spoiler: Roberta]] does ''not'' appreciate being manipulated.
22	* CanonWelding: Beginning in ''Firestar'', Mariesa has hired the Detweiler group and repeatedly mentions their economic forecasts. They're characters from Flynn's [[{{Franchise/Foundation}} psychohistoric]] conspiracy thriller ''In the Country of the Blind''. The implication is that the societal trends in the series have been encouraged by the most decent secret society and their longtime rival society is still fighting them. Later, Mariesa has a meeting with Gloria Bennett and Jimmy Caldero who present themselves as potential investors. Then Jimmy Poole considers using the code from "the old Beaumont Worm" for a project.
23	* TheCharmer: Ned [=DuBois=] translates this into a fruitful run of serial adultery. He assuages his guilty conscience about it by telling himself he's just a ChickMagnet [[ImAManICantHelpIt who can't help himself.]]
24	* ChasteHero: Jacinta Rosario is part of an inner-city female-empowerment sort of chastity movement.
25	* [[ChekhovsVolcano Chekhov's Asteroid]]: Averted-''ish.'' Since Mariesa has dedicated her life to preventing the next major Earth-impacting asteroid, the reader would expect one to come along. WordOfGod said that Flynn hadn't decided at the beginning whether that would happen. [[spoiler: In the end, there's a somewhat different threat.]]
26	* TheChessmaster: ''Mariesa''.
27	* ClassReunion: This is where Roberta closes her revenge deal with Jimmy Poole.
28	* ColonyDrop: Mariesa's lifelong terror. [[spoiler: Thanks to the efforts of some Abusive Precursors, her efforts to prevent it ironically make the threat much more immediate.]]
29	* TheConscience: Belinda Karr, Keith Richardson. Mariesa's being underhanded indeed when she knows that one of them would disapprove and presses ahead anyway.
30	* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Klondike-American is fond of these, though only Cyrus Attwood is hard-core evil.
31	* CoversAlwaysLie: The cover of ''Lodestar'' depicts a two-page dream sequence, and not a mining operation on an asteroid as the observer would assume.
32	* DoubleAgent: Jimmy Poole runs Poole Securities, putting out the best security software money can commission. He is also the notorious illicit hacker Crackman. Sometimes, the personae... conflict.
33	* DumbBlonde: Leilah Frazetti. She matures a lot over the course of the series, but that's more a matter of guts than brains.
34	* EmotionsVsStoicism: Positive character development usually means gravitating toward a happy medium, more on the "stoic" side of the line but much warmer than the extreme stoicism of the Van Huytens.
35	* EveryoneWentToSchoolTogether: The Witherspoon Class of 2001 is so in the thick of every major event that the conspiracy theorists must be going off the hook. (Okay, so there definitely ''is'' a conspiracy centered on Witherspoon, but you couldn't blame people for positing a much more sinister and further-reaching one.)
36	* FutureSlang: So much of it, it comes in ''generations''. When not tied to the new technologies, these convey concepts not on the slang radar of real-life youth culture: for instance "herbie", meaning "sophomoric and also kind of dorky", or "bone charlie", meaning "deep-down reliable dude."
37	* GeekPhysique: Jimmy Poole is obese due to a faintly transhumanist disdain for his "hardware".
38	* GoGetterGirl: Jenny Ribbon, thanks to her stage mom.
39	* {{Goth}}: Styx -- Mariesa wonders if she defies stereotypes or if it's simply a stereotype she's not familiar with.
40	* InnerCitySchool: Witherspoon, before Belinda Karr gets to it.
41	* InsufferableGenius: Jimmy Poole. As such, he's rather low on scruples -- and given his computer skills, things get interesting.
42	* InterclassRomance: Barry and Mariesa. Justified because he's a schoolteacher and she's practically on the [[{{Fiction500}} Fiction 500]].
43	* IronLady: Mariesa. Less so after [[spoiler: she resigns the chairship]], but her dialogue is still formal to the point of iciness, especially when she gets defensive.
44	* JockDadNerdSon: Jimmy Poole has quite the complex about this.
45	* KillSat: Mariesa intentionally develops this technology with the hopes of vaporizing asteroids. [[spoiler: Then the U.S. government catches wind of it and tries exploiting the military applications...]]
46	* NerdsAreVirgins: Jimmy Poole goes to astounding lengths in ''Rogue Star'' to get laid.
47	* [[spoiler:NoMereWindmill]]: In an ironic sort of way.
48	* TheRunaway: [[spoiler:Jenny Ribbon.]] Under constant pressure from her family to excel, she leaves home and disappears a month before graduation. [[spoiler: She later re-emerges in the series as "Mother Smythe," a respected and benevolent figure who helps troubled children find a second chance in life.]]
49	* SaveOurStudents: You can scarcely turn around in this universe without hitting some ambitious program to educate the disadvantaged -- Witherspoon not least. "Mother Smythe" with her chaste sisterhoods is probably the most drastic example.
50	* SexySecretary: Ned mistakes Mariesa for this.
51	* SheCleansUpNicely: Male example in Jimmy Poole, after Roberta helps prep him for their class reunion.
52	* SheIsNotMyGirlfriend: Ned spends so much time thinking about how he doesn't miss his estranged wife, it's clear he's fooling himself.
53	* ShockValueRelationship: Mariesa first asks Barry on a date primarily to shock her stuffy old-money mother.
54	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: A very practical sort of idealistic.
55	* SmugSnake: Cyrus Attwood.
56	* StrawmanPolitical: Surprisingly thin on the ground -- all political sides from paleocons to progressives are shown to have their points -- but Dottie in the People's Crusades is a StrawFeminist if ever there was one.
57	* TakeAThirdOption: Barry enacts a courageous one against Cyrus Attwood, though it doesn't work out too well for him personally.
58	* TeethClenchedTeamwork: Crops up a fair bit; the most dramatic example is between [[TheBully Chase Coughlin]] and [[InsufferableGenius Jimmy Poole]].
59	* TimeSkip: There's a pretty significant time skip between ''Rogue Star'' and ''Lodestar'', with a couple significant events that happened in the interim mentioned only in passing at the start of the book.
60	* ToughActToFollow: InUniverse, Tani Pandya's semiautobiographical novel ''Taj Mahal'' not only becomes this, but also makes people expect her to write about nothing but The Indian Experience for the rest of her career.
61	* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The first book was written in 1997 and set in 1999. It still feels like near-future.
62	* {{Workaholic}}: Mariesa, to the point where she regards two months in intensive care [[spoiler: after a stillbirth that nearly kills her]] as quite enough rest already, thank you.
63	* YouShallNotPass: Azim, Jo-Jo, and Zipper stand in front of a rusted playground gate to ward off the members of a rival gang. Bonus points for them quoting "Horatius at the Bridge" as they do so.

Context Literature / FirestarSeries