I've never read anything by George R.R. Martin, and someone had recommended this book to me since I like horror and science fiction (Alien is one of my favorite films). And many folks love George R.R. Martin. The premise sounded promising so I thought I give it a try and I am sad to report that I was disappointed by this novella.

Nightflyers was first published in 1980, won the Locus Award for best novella, and was nominated for a Hugo Award. It was made into an unsuccessful film in 1987. The story is about a scientist who's hired a scientific team & a ship to rendezvous with a supposedly mythical ship that has been traveling the universe for eons. The ship's captain doesn't reveal himself to the scientists, except by hologram, and this becomes a problem for them. They start to speculate why, and then start dying, one-by-one. The beginning of the story is beautifully written and wonderfully engaging. The set up and premise is intriguing. But unfortunately, the story doesn't retain the promise of this beginning.

Things begin to get “scary” when passengers start dying off, one by one, similar to And Then There Were None by mystery writer Agatha Christie. Some of the deaths are quite gruesome and the psychological terror of being trapped on a small spaceship with a murderer is somewhat palpable, making this a mystery, science fiction, and horror story. Cool. Cool.

So why isn’t this novella good? The plot of Nightflyers sadly isn’t compelling, especially after the murders begin. It’s George R.R. Martin, so we know that none of his characters are safe. Sadly, I didn’t like any of his characters (they were honestly all very bland), so I didn’t care if their heads exploded, they got chopped in half by a laser, got forced out an airlock, or whatever. There was no character to cheer on and there was no shock to the murders.
In the end, you just don’t care about the hysterical scientists and their untimely demises -- and that’s a bummer because the premise of this book was very promising.

I wish I could recommend this one but I honestly, beside a few fascinating ideas here and there, was bored by this novella.

If you’re intrigued by the premise go watch Alien or read Agatha Christie instead.
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It was good for a base story, I have to say unlike most books this is better as the TV show. The story had more layers. The Show has a useless point in it too. This is about the book. it is enjoyable quick read. ( )

2.5 stars. I just finished watching the SYFY series, and was curious about how it matched up with the novella, as the ending of the series wasn’t quite satisfactory to me. There are really very few similarities between the two besides the names of characters, and the fact that sex seems to be an inordinately important thing, but for no observable reason. There’s really just one established relationship, there’s no jealousy, it drives no drama at all, but we get to find out who everyone is “sexing.” It’s barely even described, just kind of catalogued. Pretty much the definition of gratuitous.

The premise of the story is really interesting, and I like how he dealt with some of the action, but a lot of the characters just kind of fell flat, there was barely enough time to find out who they were, so it actually helped that Martin often used their full names or job titles to name them. The action happened very quickly, which was somewhat disappointing, as there was little opportunity to build tension or the anticipation of dread. Add to that the fact that I don’t find Martin’s writing to be particularly impressive, and that’s about it. I liked the ending ok, it was different than what I had assumed it would be halfway through, but it makes sense and seems fitting. ( )

A far future Sci-Fi mystery/horror story. The story's tone is a lot like the film Alien before the Alien is revealed, or Event Horizon before things go off the rails, but with more ambiguous clues about is really going on. The cast isn't deeply explored, but they've each been given enough characterization that I can tell them apart.

If you want spoilers, I took detailed notes as I was reading the story:

In the far future, Karoly d’Branin is a research scientist who specializes in unusual aliens. He puts together a crew of scientists to hunt down a possibly-mythical alien race called the Volcryn. Many different alien civilizations have legends of the volcryn stretching back 15,000 years. Also called the "The People of the Gulf", their massive ships, like great dark cities, move out from the center of the galaxy towards the edge. They travel at sub-light speeds, indicating a lack of advanced technology or a stange purpose. The Volcryn are said to be refugees from some war near the beginning of time, benevolent beings seeding life on planets as they travel, or simply fleeing some terror at the center of the galaxy. The stories all agree that Volcryn ships are always alone and avoid star systems, but other details are scarce. A few years ago a Volcryn ship was spotted passing a known star system, and since they travel slowly the scientists have a very good chance of being able to find that ship to get a closer look at it. To form his research team d’Branin hires a Xenobiologist, a Cultural Xenologist, two linguists, a Psipsych, a Cyberneticist, and a powerful Telepath.

The scientists are are welcomed aboard the Nightflyer, a strange vessel that looks like a modified trading ship. Its captain, Royd Eris, offered them a bargain rate, and as the mission is poorly funded d’Branin jumped at the offer. The Nightflyer has no crew except for its captain, a man who has only interacted with the scientists remotely. One of the ship’s two life support spheres is 50% occupied by the captain's quarters, but there are no doors or windows between them and the rest of the ship. The captain says it has been a long time since he has had any passengers, and he encourages the scientists to socialize in a lounge area where he can project a hologram of himself. After a few days the academicians get used to the holograms and communicating with the captain's disembodied voices. Unbeknownst to them, he has video and audio monitoring throughout the ship, and watches them constantly.

Then strange things begin to happen around the ship. The telepath detects some indefinite danger, and the Psipsych, who is slightly telepathic, is also uneasy.

After an accident where one of the scientists was injured, the telepath says that they are being watched by some strange alien intelligence. He can tell it wishes them harm, but nothing specific. The scientists speculate that the captain might be an AI or some unknown sort of alien.

They decide to give the telepath a power-enhancing drug. They say this will either clear his delusions and verify the captain's existance as a human or enable him to find out the truth.

To prevent this, Captain Eris tells the scientists his life story. He reveals that the ship belonged to his mother. She was a sociopath who liked to do long-haul voyages with no crew. After years of flying the ship by herself, she cloned a male version of herself and sealed him in a tank to grow into an adult. Unfortunately for her, she died unexpectedly while he was still embryonic. She had already programmed the ship to raise him, since she didn’t care for children, so he grew up on the ship in complete isolation. As a result he has no immune system and has never touched another human. When he doesn’t have passengers, he lives with the gravity turned off, so he’s barely capable of moving around while he has passengers. He’s nearly 70 years old, and uses his actual appearance from when he was young for his holographic projection.

After hearing his story, the scientists are skeptical. They still drug the telepath to verify the story. His head explodes. The captain claims he tried to stop them giving the telepath the drug, and also that he didn’t make the guy’s head explode. The scientists argue about whether they should abort the mission and go back home, but since they are very close to reaching the Volcryn ship d’Branin decides that they must press on.

That night the cyberneticist and another crew member sneak into the computer room to try to hack into the computer. They want to access the ship’s data storage and control, so that they can either verify or disprove the captain’s crazy story. Also they want to hack the controls so that if they don’t trust the captain they can take over the ship. While they’re working the ship opened the wall of the room they were in and vented them into space. The captain told the other scientists that he thinks they disabled safety protocols while trying to hack the ship and accidentally killed themselves.


Captain Royd insists that everyone must stay outside the ship while he repairs the damage to the outside of the computer room. One of the scientists decides to sneak inside, cut his way into the captain’s side of the ship, and take control to end the expedition.

He is cutting through the lounge wall when an eyeball that was still in the room from the psychic’s exploded head stops floating through the air and stares disturbingly at him. He smacks at it and loses grip of his cutting laser. It should stop working when it left his hand, but it doesn’t, and it cuts him right across the throat.

Outside, the scientists hear him scream over the comms and begin begging for help. Two of them ignore the captain telling them the man is dead already and rush inside.

The captain tries to follow them in, but the airlock won’t open for him. He says to the remaining scientists who are floating in space with him, “I’m being kept outside until… until Mother is done with them”

The two scientists who made it inside the Nighflyer hear, “Help me. Help me help me help me!” coming from the lounge. They get there and find nothing, but still hear the voice. When one of them realizes that the sound is coming from the wall speakers and that there is fresh blood floating in the air, he flees. The dead man then emerges from underneath the table, once again carrying the cutting laser that killed him.

The one who ran away begins to doubt his own judgment, and sure enough the woman he just abandoned appears from around a corner. He starts apologizing when her arm comes from behind her back, and she’s holding a knife. As she stabs him, he notices the hole burned through her suit. Still smoking. Right between her breasts.

As they float outside the ship Captain Royd explains to the remaining scientists that his mother uploaded her memories and personality into the ship’s systems before she died, and that it was this ghost in the machine which raised him to adulthood. He has tried to wipe out her program twice, but each time she came back. One of the computer experts he brought on told him that the only way to wipe out the cybernetic ghost was to completely destroy the ship’s central crystal computer core. This would render the ship inoperable, and since Captain Royd can’t live anywhere else he didn’t want to do it.

“My loneliness led me to a grevious error. I thought that I could safeguard you.”, he said.
“Before this trip, she had killed only five times, and the first three died when I was still quite young.”
“If mother attempts to interfere, I countermand the orders from the central control console.”
“Telepaths are always a threat to mother. They sense her.”
“You never asked why mother hated people so. She was born gifted, you see. On Avalon she might have been a Class One… She might’ve been stronger than a Class One... Instead, they used drugs and electroshock and hypnotraining that made her violently ill whenever she tried to use her talent... Half a decade of institutional care almost drove her insane... I have read that all psytalents have several latent abilities… the emotions she felt literally sickened her… but her major strength was teke.”

The smartest remaining scientist, Melantha Jhirl, says, “Of coure she hated gravity.” Telekenises works much better in 0 G. She is the group’s Cultural Xenologist, but she’s also a genetically-altered superwoman. She calls herself, “the improved model.” She’s resistant to psychic powers, larger, stronger, smarter, longer-lived, and more resilient than typical humans.

The lead scientist (d’Branin) and the Psypsych with minor psychic abilities wait outside the ship while Melantha and Royd go into the ship to try to wrest control away from Mother.

Unfortuanately for them the Nightflyer started flying away while the captain and Melantha were still trying to take control of the ship. The captain managed to get the gravity turned back on and tried to lock Mother out of the controls, so Melantha took the bodies down to the engine to get rid of them.

The two scientists who were stranded outside the ship decide they are going to take their space sled and try to catch up with the Volcryn, because it is close enough that they can reach it.

Melantha was disposing of the bodies when Mother turned the gravity up to triple the strength of earth’s gravity. The Captain’s Zero-G adapted body couldn’t even move, a but Melantha was able to grab the drug kit, intending to giver herself a stimulant so she could struggle to the captain and help him. Then she heard the airlock begin to cycle…


Even the weak psychic powers of the Psypsych could feel the Volcryn as the two scientists approached its ship.
She said, “Ships and wars and a race of ancient travellers. It was all lies. It’s not a them. It’s an it. It’s alive, but quite mindless.”
d’Branin was disappointed. He said, “Perhaps its thoughts are too alien for you to read.”
She said, “Perhaps, but what I do read is not so terribly alien at all. Only animal. Its thoughts are hardly thoughts at all. The brain must be huge, all right, I grant you that, but it can’t be devoted to conscious thought… The propulsion system. Can’t you guess why it avoids gravity wells? How it is moving?”
“Teke.”, he said.

The airlock had opened to let a dead scientist holding a knife into the room. Melantha tried to struggle away, but she could barely move. As she was about to die, she realized Royd should have telekenesis too since he was a clone of his “mother”. Royd tried to use his latent powers, but he couldn’t access them. He strained, and in trying he died. But as he died he did as his mother had done and impressed his mind on the ship’s crystal. As a disembodied mind living in the ship, Royd was telekinetic. He used his powers to save Melantha and to return the gravity to normal.

Later on, Melantha refused to complete the repairs that would allow the ship to go faster than light again. She doesn’t know if Royd would be able to retain control enough for safe travel, because both Royd and his mother are still there inside the ship’s systems.

Royd and Melantha study the Volkrim. She does not believe that it is sentient. She has decided that someday, when she is old and near death, she will wipe out the crystal and manually set the Nightflyer on a course back to humanity with all of its scientific data. She has decided that in penance for her failures to keep the rest of the crew alive, she will keep the promise she made to the captain, that she will not leave him alone with his mother. Ever.

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Different and varied

Sci fi rather than fantasy but you can see some of the seeds of Game of Thrones in some of the settings, themes and characters. A varied collection, with echoes of some great SF writers and stories, like Solaris. ( )