Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Baen 2008)
Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Baen 2009)
Poul Anderson (1926-2001) was one of the classic science fiction writers who I used to read regularly (without coming close to reading all his work), generally feeling after each book or story, yeah, that was pretty okay. But occasionally, something of his would hit my sweet spot, and I would love it. So he stayed on my radar consistently, while others would drop off. He had a degree in physics, and loved working out how the various worlds he created would actually work. He also had a greater sense of style and of character than many of his contemporaries, though neither of these stand out among today’s writers.
I loved the concept of his combined Technic Civilization series. This started in 1951, when he published a couple stories about Dominic Flandry, a 31st century secret agent – a James Bond-type before there was a James Bond – who protected the Terran Empire from enemies within and especially without. He was striving against the Long Night, a Dark Age that was expected to overwhelm the entire interstellar society.
Anderson wrote many series simultaneously, all separate from each other, and in 1956 he introduced Nicolas van Rijn, a merchant who ran a powerful trading operation between planets. These were problem-solving stories, published in a venue – Astounding and then Analog magazine – that particularly treasured these. Van Rijn would solve whatever problem a people or planet was having, and make himself a profit along the way. These were set closer to our time, in the 25th century.
At one point, he combined the Flandry and van Rijn series, by mentioning in a story in one series a planet from the other. I assume he did this on purpose, rather than by forgetfulness, but in either case it was relatively easy to make the two series fit together, and new stories in the now-one-big-series could reflect their new continuity. Stories were also added before, between, and after the two main sequences, and some of the older ones were revised to make them fit better. I do enjoy this sort of thing.
The final total was 43 novels and pieces of short fiction, with publication dates from 1951 to 1985. All but a couple stories were in my collection of 17 paperbacks (well, 16 paperbacks and one Science Fiction Book Club hardcover). I was able to replace all these, though, starting in 2008, when Baen Books collected the whole saga in 7 books (under the editorship of Hank Davis, one of my early friends in fandom back in the 70s). The first two were published in hardcover, but I guess didn’t sell well enough to continue that way, and the other five were released as trade paperbacks.
Back in the day I had read most of the short story collections and a couple of the novels, but now there was no excuse not to read everything – eventually. I’ve so far read the first two of the Baen compilations. In them are the previous collections Trader to the Stars, The Trouble Twisters, and most of The Earth Book of Stormgate, the novel Satan’s World, and the novella “The Saturn Game.”
I miss The Earth Book of Stormgate (1978), a beautiful example of making a whole better than its combined parts. This pulled together the mostly minor short stories that hadn’t appeared in the other van Rijn-era collections, but it frames them in an immensely appealing way: as stories told about Earthmen by inhabitants of the planet Ythri (from a novel and several short stories in the series). Each is briefly introduced by an Ythrian scholar, who explains why this story was chosen to illustrate the humans to Ythrians. It ties the book into a very satisfying whole. All these introductions are carried over into the Baen editions, but as the stories have been reordered chronologically (as of course they should have been), the Ythrian comments are diluted. They don’t have the same effect. Well, an acceptable loss.
The first book, The Van Rijn Method, begins with one of the later stories written, from 1981, “The Saturn Game.” In this, which won both the Hugo and the Nebula, four astronauts on their way to the Saturn moon Iapetus play an elaborate fantasy game on the long voyage. By the time they arrive, land, and start exploring, they have lost some sense of what is reality and what is the game. The game itself is pretty tame by our standards now; Anderson was writing before the Internet. Myself, I didn’t enjoy the game sequences even at the time. I’ve read the story several times now, and it has never been one I particularly enjoy (though the descriptions of Iapetus are great).
I’ve also never understood how it fits into the Technic Civilization series. It takes place a hundred years before the next story, by which time a hyperdrive has been developed and we’re out exploring the galaxy. If it’s just to show how slow things were before, that’s not really adding anything to the story. Maybe I’m just missing something.
Everything in The Van Rijn Method I had read before, some on original publication, some in the earlier collections. My two favorites are “The Man Who Counts” and “Hiding Place.” “The Man Who Counts” was an Ace Double as War of the Wing-Men, but that wasn’t a Double that I ever had, so I first read it in The Earth Book of Stormgate. It must have been great as an Ace Double, an exciting adventure. Van Rijn and a few others are stranded on an unfamiliar planet, with life support dwindling. The indigenous people would be willing to help, but they’re involved in a never-ending war and can’t spare the manpower. To save his life, van Rijn has to find a way to stop the war. “Hiding Place” is a pure puzzle story. Being chased in space by an enemy, van Rijn’s crew comes across an unfamiliar ship that they hope can help repair their damaged hyperspace drive. The other ship is a zoo ship, transporting a bunch of alien animals from one planet to another. To hide from the approaching Terrans, the crew destroys all their visible records, and even their clothes, and hops into an empty cage. Van Rijn’s job is to figure out, by the configuration of the ship and its controls, which of the many animals are actually zoo inhabitants, and which are the crew members.
David Falkayn: Space Trader has eight stories, most of a substantial length. There’s a two-part Analog serial that’s almost novel-length, and the 1968 novel Satan’s World. Falkayn is a young member of van Rijn’s company (Solar Spice & Liquors). He generally travels with the small feline-like Chee Lan and the large dragon-like Adzel (a Buddhist). While I had read most of these before, Satan’s World was new to me. (I own the paperback, just never read it.) It’s a decent adventure, not one of Anderson’s better ones, but after a slow start it moves along pretty well. The story concerns a wandering planet, frozen, that will come close enough to a sun to thaw out and make mining for its resources available for a brief window. Who will get to do that?
One of the key pieces of the series is in here, the story “Day of Burning.” I read this in Analog as “Supernova,” with a great Chesley Bonestell cover. Again, this is hurt by being in chronological order. When this was published in 1967, many of the Dominic Flandry stories had been published. Flandry’s chief adversary was the planet Merseia, whose inhabitants despised the people originally from Earth. In this story, a sun three light-years from Merseia has gone supernova, and Falkayn offers to bring in enough Terran expertise to save the planet’s civilization from the electromagnetic pulses on their way. To the Merseians, the Terrans were just demonstrating how much more advanced they were, how insignificant the Merseians were, and it was costing them much stature. Reading it in this book, it’s just another story about another group of aliens. Reading the stories in publication order, this story takes on an enormous importance. It’s easy to imagine Flandry wishing that Falkayn had simply let Merseia suffer on its own – and maybe disappear completely. Even for me, knowing what’s to come, the effect the story had on me was much stronger when I originally read it (by coincidence, soon after reading a Flandry novel) than it does now.
I’m in no particular hurry to get to the next book in the series (which has a Falkayn novel (unread), a stand-alone novel (read and loved), and two each short stories (read) and novelettes (unread). But I know I’ll enjoy it when I do.