George R. R. Martin

Nine misfit academics embark on an expedition, and the only ship available is the Nightflyer, a cybernetic wonder with a never-seen captain. Soon they are trapped in deep space, prisoners to a madman who can do anything and intends to kill them all. Ties in to the major movie release, starring C atherine Mary Stewart, Michael Praed and John Standing.

Nightflyers

Ryan LaFerney

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.

När en vetenskaplig expedition gör sig redo att söka efter en mytomspunnen utomjordisk ras är det bara skeppet Nightflyer som står tillgängligt. Besättningen består endast av kaptenen Royd Eris, som presenterar sig genom ett spöklikt hologram. Kaptenens ovillighet att visa sig för forskarna är dock inte det enda som orsakar oro. Med i expeditionen finns en telepat som från första stund känner av en farlig närvaro. De är inte ensamma ombord Nightflyer. Endast forskaren Melantha Jhirl har nu möjlighet att lösa mysteriet. När allt fler oförklarliga händelser inträffar faller det på hennes bord att utreda om hotet är verkligt. Men först måste hon hålla sig levande. Nightflyers är en skrämmande science fiction-berättelse av den bästsäljande författaren bakom Game of Thrones. Denna moderna klassiker blev i samband med originalutgivningen 1980 nominerad till det prestigefyllda Hugo Award och har vunnit ett flertal priser, bland andra Locus Award och Seiun Award. Den har filmatiserats och gjorts som originalserie på SYFY och Netflix och med hjälp av fantastiska helsidesillustrationer tas detta hyllade epos till nya höjder.

Janice Hopper

Meh, it was ok. It seems dated in its storytelling style. I guess that's not surprising in an almost 40-year old SF book. It's written in a style I call "cinematic," because you can see (heh) how easily some of the scenes could be adapted for a visual medium. 

SF horror in SPAAAAAACE. That's pretty much what it is. But the idea of the volcryn, a mysterious ship or group of ships that's been flying through space since well before the beginning of recorded history, adds an eerie appeal. I liked that bit.

Look for the SyFy adaptation later in 2018.

Apparently this is a new audio edition of this book. I copied the info from Scribd, which is where I found the book. It contains an introduction read by the author.

High Fidelity

Devetoro putnika ukrcava se u svemirski brod na putu do kontakta sa mocnom drugom vrstom. I sve krece po zlu.
Dakle to je radnja.
Dosta recenzija govori o tome kako je sve vec vidjeno. Ako cemo iskreno postoji dosta koncepata koji vec postoje negde. Smatram da to nije zlocin. Martin je sam rekao da je zeleo da napise nesto sto bi imalo elemente horora,i mislim da je apsolutno uspeo u tome. Horor deo ove price je cudan i unikatan i veoma radi svoj posao. Likovi su raznoliki,kao i opis atmosfere jednog svemirskog broda u koje vlada tisina i vrisak u isto vreme. 
Sve u svemu,recimo 3,5/5,mislim da je vredno procitati.

Kelsey Lynn

I picked this up a while ago at a local HPB, excited at the prospect of a closed system horror in space. Something that seems to be my favorite genre, but rare to find. 
 My partner found it and is a fan of GRRM, and I promptly bought it.

 It read VERY quickly, not a lot happens, (my copy was under 200 pages). But what does happen is sufficient enough. The crew of the NIGHTFLYER is a science crew, on the hunt for the mystical volcryn, an ancient fleet of ships, older than man's history, slowly making it's way through the galaxy. It's going at sublight speed, and has left myths across the galaxy. A crew has reason to believe it's close enough to finally attempt contact and make their way. They contract a ship, with a mysterious pilot that hides behind a wall and only presents himself via comms and holographs. Their crew consists of two people gifted with psionics, a "psypsych" and a telepath, some linguists, some historians, whatever crew they would need for the first contact. It is a small ship, which sets the story up for a nice close encounter horror. As the journey progresses, the crew grows ever suspicious of their nonpresent host, mysterious happenings begin to occur that lead to the death of some of their crew, and the panic rises. It becomes painfully clear they may never get to see these volcryn, as they won't be alive to see them. 
 George R R Martin expertly crafts a quiet and building fear, creating a very unique horror and a nice twist on what the cause is, that is fantastical, yet believable. 
 My only real critique is that I read it in one sitting, it went fast, the characters didn't get fleshed out as much as they probably could have, and the terror wasn't built very much. it felt like a lot of space was there that was dedicated to very little. At one point in the book, I had an overwhelming sense of having read this book before. I could picture an illustration on a title page, it went as far as I KNEW what was about to happen, I became utterly convinced he knocked the story off. If there was a title card it was an old sci-fi periodical of mine, I tore through my shelf, I had it in my mind, I could remember the cover but not the title. My answer was in the dang book the whole time, on the copyright page "originally published in a 1980 issue of ANALOG" a shorter version, however. Which answered why I recognized it, I had hit a part that must have been somewhat verbatim to the original, and I had just completely forgotten. 
 It also explains why this book felt so short, even though 200 pages is respectable. It was a shorter story that was expanded, and it feels as though (as my memory fails me on all the nuances of the original) that the major plot points, the ending especially, was left untouched, and just additional dialogue scenes and filler were put in to expand it. I truly believe had he dedicated the additional pages to more spooks, and more character development, this would have felt like a book. But it never quite did, it still felt like a short story, just... a long one? If that makes sense? The development and pacing were all the same as a short story, and all the filler, if removed, would not really be missed. I've read two other stories that were eventually expanded, And Call me Conrad (or the less interesting title of This Immortal) and The Gods Themselves, both added enough to warrant the expansion. This did not. 

 Don't get me wrong, it was a good story, satisfied my itch, filled a gap in a genre that is often unvisited. But, I remember liking the short story just fine, probably the same amount as this. So the expansion felt unwarranted (except maybe to give enough for a show, which my book cover says it apparently is now). I really wish he had really tackled expanding this story, it had so many good aspects and unique aspects for the genre, that I'm sure a proper expansion would have been really great. But c'est le vie, it is good in its own right, just underutilized and underexplored. 
 But I will for sure be checking out the show!

Dakota B.

I literally could not put this down because I really wanted to know what ominous force was affecting the crew. Then the end was just dissapointing. Well written, but the ending definitley ruined a lot of it for me.

Janne Janssens

3.5☆
George R.R. Martin is one of my favorite authors. This fact made me buy Nightflyers, even though I never read or watch horror. I am easily scared and I don't have a reference because it was my first horror story, and so I cannot really tell you if this one was scary, but it creeped me out at times. However, in a good way. I enjoyed the creepiness. I think I will watch the Netflix series, now I know what will come and hopefully will be less scared.
The plot was great, but this story also had the same flaw as many short stories have: the characters felt rather superficial. It would have created more suspence if I could have been able to get emotionally attached to them. So not my best read of George R.R. Martin!

Judy Hudgins

Considered a novella, at 193 pages with illustrations, it was a quick read. Except for the fact I really had to go slow to absorb all that was going on. Really, really enjoyed taking an afternoon 'off' and sitting and reading.

Alien meets Psycho with a chilling mystery set on a haunted spaceship in this short story, soon to be an original series on Netflix, by the #1 bestselling author of A Game of Thrones.

The crew of the starship Nightflyer is heading into the outer reaches of known space in search of a kegendary alien race known as the volcryn. The mission is led by Karoly d'Branin and the ship captained by the mysterious Royd Eris, who appears only as a hologram who driftrs among them, sometimes playing chess with the beautiful and brilliant warrior, Melantha Jhirl. Soon the explorers begin to feel they are being watched. Macabre accidents befall them one by one. There someone else on board ? Royd won't say. And there is no turning back : the volcryn are near...

Nightflyers

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