Customer Reviews

Ensign Flandry

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This is the first book of the Poul Anderson series, "Flandry, Agent of Imperial Terra" and it was published in the mid-sixties. I say this up front because the book, story and characters live outside the copyright date and achieve that timeless quality you expect from authurs like Asimov, Burroughs and of course Poul Anderson. Flandry is just an ensign when we meet him in this story and at first, he doesn't even feel like the staring character. As the story unfolds, we expect more and more from our young ensign until the fate of Terra and other worlds hang on his every decision. Don't get me wrong, he's not made Emporer by books end. Through and through, he is just an ensign who plays the cards that are dealt him. It is said that great events make great men and we see Ensign Flandry take on a captivating shape. I haven't read the next books in the series, but have high hopes for the Long Night of the Terran Empire.

Flandry is fresh out of the military joint at 19, and shows some quick thinking and nereve in a confrontation between two races on an outpost world.

An old diplomat and spymaster recognises a possible super agent, when he sees one, and apparently there is a large shortish of such even in the massive empire, so he gives Flandry a job.

He uncovers a very big secret, on more than one front, and is sometimes on the run from his own side.

This is the first book of the "Dominic Flandry, Agent of Imperial Terra" series. Basically, it is the 31st Century, and Humankind has established a large, but now decadent, interstellar empire. Dominic Flandry is a brilliant, resourceful young man who is eventually recruited into the Imperial Intelligence Corps by Max Abrams, head of Terran security on the world of Starkad, where the Terran Empire and their deadly rivals, the Merseians, are fighting a brush-fire war.

Before all is said and done, Flandry has uncovered the deadly secret of the Starkad War, which poses a lethal threat to Humanity. Both sides are after him, and in the end his brilliance is established. Flandry is the James Bond of the 31st Century and the whole "Flandry" series is great space opera. Those readers who appreciate this genre won't want to pass this one up. The whole Flandry series by Poul Anderson is well worth reading.

In this novel the reader is introduced to newly minted Ensign Flandry, age nineteen, fresh out of the Space Navy Academy, full of patriotism for the Empire and equally full of skepticism for efforts at detent with the Evil Empire- The Merseian.

Once we digest the apparent similarities with Horatio Hornblower, push aside the cardboard characters - appealing natives, reptilian enemies and incompetent leaders, accept the E. E. Smith space antics we are left with a story, not profound or rich in ideas, but with enough adventure to keep the pages turning.

Our saga concerns Terra and the Merseian who each support opposing factions in a civil war on the planet Starket. The conundrum for the Flandry and the Space navy forces is why does the Merseians continue to escalate the conflict risking a catastrophic war with Terra. You will have to read the book to find the answer.

Light and enjoyable entertainment for fans of Poul Anderson.

This is the first of the Terran Empire books, which follow the Polesotechnic League subseries in Poul Anderson's lengthy Future History. 19-year-old Ensign Dominic Flandry of the Imperial Naval Flight Corps is forced down on the planet Starkad, whose thick atmosphere is unbreathable by humans, and gets embroiled in a sort of proxy war between his own government and that of its great rival, the Merseians. Terra is supporting the "Tigeries," a seafaring felinoid species, and Merseia the aquatic "Seatrolls" (shades of the Vietnam War, which was just on the verge of coming to a boil at the time of publication). As Flandry struggles with conflicting sympathies (both cultures have their fascinations, though he tends to like the Tigeries more), hero-worship, and the suggestion that he may have what it takes to "transfer from the flyboys to the spy-boys," he also gradually comes to realize that this apparently minor conflict has possible repercussions that could spell doom for his entire culture.

Given that the book appeared in 1966, it may be inevitable that good human female characters are thin on the ground (in the Empire most high-class women are little better than breeders and ornaments, and male officials routinely travel with a concubine ("the right honorable Persis d'Io")), but Anderson isn't incapable of creating strong alien ones, like Flandry's Tigery friend Dragoika, who once rebukes one of her male officers with "This is female talk" (in her culture the women are the more creative and make most of the decisions). Flandry is, of course, a product of his own background, but he manages to rise above it and try to work for real peace between Tigeries and Seatrolls. Exciting, fast-moving, and full of lyrical language and vividly portrayed alien races, this would be a good book with which to begin your acquaintance with Anderson's earlier work.

For 19-year-old Ensign Dominic Flandry, the galaxy is a harsh place. A recent graduate of the Terran Naval Academy, he's recruited by Commander Max Goldstein, of Earth Intelligence. He's assigned to infiltrate the Draconian Empire and get their military secrets. There's only one problem, he's branded a traitor and is hunted by both sides. Poul Anderson's 1966 science fiction novel is the first installment in the sereies. An excellent read.

From the back cover of the 1985 Ace Science Fiction edition:
Introducing Dominic Flandry...
Before he's through he'll have saved worlds and become the confidant of emperors. But for now he's seventeen years old, as fresh and brash a sprig of the nobility as you would care to know. The only thing as damp as the place behind his ears is the ink on his brand-new commission.

Though through this and his succeeding adventures he will struggle gloriously and win (usually) mighty victories, Dominic Flandry is essentially a tragic figure: a man who knows too much, who knows that battle, scheme and even betray as he will, in the end it will mean nothing. For with the relentlessness of physical law the Long Night approaches. The Terran Empire is dying...

Having relished a couple of Anderson's short stories (and understandably confused Poul with Pohl and blown some time on 'Outnumbering the Dead') I thought I'd give a novel of his a go.

Pity, that.

It wasn't awful, but I'd hope that this wasn't what he was showered in Hugos and Nebulas for. Sure the general space vibe is workable, and there's some action and exotic locations - but Ensign Flandry's James Bond style antics get a bit silly at times - no more so than when Anderson is trying to be taken seriously on some political stance.

The politics of the book are pretty wiffy - almost laughable. It's your standard right wing Tom Clancy jingoist fare - bleeding heart appeasers are weak ambitious fools who should just hand over control to the hardheaded clear thinking generals. And of its time: it's hardly a coincidence that a book written in 1966 by an American sets two superpowers against each other in a cold war environment as they dice around each other offering `support and advice' to opposing factions on an undeveloped minor planet, while the military who are engaged must grind their teeth at the brinkmanship diplomacy that means they only have a portion of the resources their governments could supply. Blimey, I wonder where he got an idea for a situation like that? Extrapolate and the lesson is quite hypocritical. Ensign Flandry, our hero from the human side, can shake his head in superior bemusement at the tragedy that the two barbarian cultures of Starkad can't see past their immature prejudices to realise that their `enemies' really aren't so bad, and actually have a lot to respect, and even a lot in common. Anderson, however, is totally blind to the irony that the moral to Flandry's story is realising that *his* enemy, the empire of the Merseians, is evil to the core, and that the only hope of humanity is to cease any attempt at negotiation, to get fighting, and, with any luck, to destroy them. They're not a foe to be underestimated, but it is ultimately us or them: something those stupid self-seeking peaceniks will never realise.

So instead of perhaps enjoying the mentor-apprentice relationship between Abrams and Flandry, I found the former's pompous (but meant to be unquestionable) pronouncements hard going. Unlike Starship Troopers where at least Heinlein actually formulates an argument, Anderson just has Abrams drop a few impressive sounding names - Aristotle, Machiavelli, Jefferson (as if there aren't any alternative names like Plato, Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther-King) - in the expectation that the reader won't actually have engaged with these writers and will feel they dare not challenge someone who drops them. It's a cheap and underhand technique: if these guys have a good case and you understand it - present it. If you've won people over just by waving some iconic figures they haven't even read, what sort of a victory is that?

It's not all shallow pamphleteering and bedroom farce, there are some usable action scenes. The hardest bit, again, is having to deal with the author regularly telling us who the really smart people and actions are, when they're patently not. Why, for example, did Flandry work so hard to keep the Merseian's evil secret rather than simply broadcast the coordinates the moment he had them - this is hardly the action of a supposedly precociously intelligent agent. It is just possible to ignore these sorts of dodgy aspects, but as background noise they do detract from the pleasures Pohl has to offer.

I notice this is the first of a series. I won't be back - maybe I'll try to find something where Pohl's politics are less to the fore.