The Van Rijn Method

These stories are wonderful -- if you haven't read them before, stop reading this review and start reading the stories. You're in for a treat. This is volume one of a proposed six-volume collation of Poul Anderson's wonderful Technic stories, starting with the beginnings of human exploration of the solar system, and moving out into the heyday of the Commonwealth. The world building is superb, the stories fun, and the characters fascinating (and believable). Wonderful stuff, and now we can read them in internal chronological order. So much fun!

Poul Anderson was one of the Grand Masters of Science Fiction for many decades. It is terrific that his "Technic Civilization" series of novels and short stories is back in publication. This future history series postulates a dazzling future for mankind as humans spread across the galaxy encountering alien races and civilizations. Some of these have very alien motivations, while others have motivations, i.e. avarice and greed, that humans recognize all too well. This is all great fun. Nicholas Van Rijn is president of Solar Spice & Liquors, an interstellar trading corporation that specializes in finding new civilizations and selling them, well, Solar spices and liquors. These stories are a part of Poul Anderson's vibrant Technic Civilization series during the period in which the Polesotechnic League ("League of Selling Skills") dominates. Mankind has invented cheap and practical interstellar travel. Humans and their alien friends and rivals take the profit motive to the stars, and this makes for a fascinating and optimistic vision of the future. Van Rijn himself is an unforgettable character. Smart and tough, with the ability to understand both human and alien motivations, his trials and travails as an interstellar trader make for great fun. Van Rijn is directly the protagonist in only a few of these tales, but he is the archtypical interstellar capitalist, and his influence can be felt throughout. Highly recommended. RJB.

An excelent book for those who like SF of the 50's and 60's. Anderson is a fine story teller, and his characters are some of the most interesting ever created.

This novel is the first in a four-book collection of stories, novellas, and novels set in the Technic Civilization created by SF Grand Master Poul Anderson. Nicholas Van Rijn is a character that speaks in malapropisms and is corpulent and capitalistic, and would not seem to be the ideal hero. Yet, Anderson turns him into one by putting the lie to the idea that "imagination is cheap" or even worthless compared to the one who makes imagination into reality, as the narrator of "The Man Who Counts" claims. Though Van Rijn is the primary protagonist in only 3 of the 11 tales collected here (he is secondary in a few more), the philosophy he is the archetype for permeates them all. Hank Davis has compiled for the very first time into chronological order the stories of Anderson's Technic Civilization Saga, a set of tales and novels that found publication in many places over a period of 30 years. Fans of SF in the old style of grand world building, strange alien encounters, and high adventure will want to read this unrivaled achievement. Reviewed By John Ottinger III

Anderson is one of the grand masters of the field, and these adventures -- carefully thought-out, with solid worldbuilding and scientific speculation, plus great characters and wonderful action -- are classics. If you want to know science fiction, you should read these. And if you want to have a great time... then read them for that, too.