At grad school in the 1950s, I'd sit at a work table with a heavy old mechanical desk calculator — a Friden or Monroe or Marchant — manually calculating thousands of squares, cross-products, etc, gaining a first-hand acquaintance with statistical analysis.  (There remained, of course, the task of rationalizing the results — making sense of them.)
    From grad school I moved to a research career in forest ecology, with a notion that it should be possible to model ecosystem dynamics.  Dynamics that included community evolution — both biological and environmental. 
    And over 17 years of research found my understandings shifting, transforming… and yep, evolving. 
    So I was a natural for Michael Flynn's THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND (CotB) (Tor, 2001).  CotB is an excellent action-adventure/suspense/mystery/psycho-social thriller, with a wealth of layered ideas.  In CotB, Flynn not only tells a plausible story; he explores the dynamics of human society from a viewpoint, and in a manner, I found very pleasing, worthwhile.  Thought provoking.  Flynn is an excellent storyteller, an explorer of humanity and history. 
    Flynn's address is in Pennsylvania, but here he writes largely and knowledgeably of Colorado, and I suspect has spent significant time there.  He knows the mountains, and his details of what grows where feels very largely right to this long-time wildland ecologist with 8 years of intimate experience in the Colorado Rockies.
    But that is incidental — condiments and spice.  Flynn plows an interesting, thought-provoking field — cultural/political engineering — turning up old roots, worms, and badger dens, exposing potentials and limitations (lots of both).  Sowing it with excellent (and sometimes bizarre) characters and intriguing relationships, and made me care about them.  Surprising me nearly to emotional exhaustion.  And tied it up with an understated but marvelous wrap-up scene. 
    A very satisfying yarn.  And when the story has been told, he proceeds — for those who are willing — he  proceeds to discuss the underlying subject matter, in a dissertation on the modeling of history and engineering, or influencing the future — in a 70-page Afterword complete with math, graphs, tables, and literature citations.  Engrossing.
    I've read an Amazon review that complained of Flynn's large cast of characters.  But some stories require them, and readers have their own viewpoints and tastes.  Some also get disoriented by time switches.  I enjoyed Flynn's use of key historical scenes — natural, distinctive, convincing— that introduce each part of this contemporary action adventure.  In fact I have no complaint with any of it.  If we write stories that avoid all the things that bother anyone, damned little would get written.  And that little, I  suspect, would not have much to recommend it.

    There was, however, one mystery in Flynn's nest of mysteries that he didn't solve for me.  Readers have gotten used to cover art that has little to do with the story; that even misrepresents it.  The cover of Country of the Blind, however, features what looks like an action portrait of the heroine, lean and athletic, caramel-colored and graceful…very good cover art!  Admittedly the apparatus on her head seems appropos of nothing in the story, but what the heck.  It does mark it as science fiction.
    Then I noticed her hands, like transplants bequeathed by some large brawny longshoreman from the cotton docks at Galveston.  What is this? I wondered.  I have a granddaughter who was a  gymnast from about age 8 to about 18.  She has strong hands — I arm wrestled her recently and tore a rotator cuff (served you right, old-timer) — but her hands are tidy, feminine, and do not look at all like the hands of Sarah Beaumont.  Not at all. 
   And it seemed to me it was deliberate, that somewhere in the novel I'd find an explanation for those hands.  I didn't.  I still suspect it was deliberate, but the meaning escapes me.  
   At any rate I recommend the whole package.  Tor can be proud of it, and so can Flynn.  And the artist.