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Flandry; Defender of the Empire

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This book contains two novellas from Poul Andersons classic series of stories detailing the 'future history' of Technic Civilization and the Terran Empire. Set in a period of this culture's decay, Dominic Flandry, Intellegence Agent of the Imperial Navy, battles to hold off the Long Night (collapse of civilization) by defeating both external and internal enemies of the Empire. Poul Anderson is a master of blending historical allegory, political intrigue, and action/adventure in a beautifully crafted science fiction universe. The Flandry series displays a strange wistfulness, as the protagonist is certain that even his resounding victories can only prolong the inevitable destruction of his civilization and culture.

A Circus of Hells (1970) takes Flandry on adventures with a frontier world's criminal underworld, a lost planet overrun by machines controlled by a self-aware supercomputer, to a planet whose severe climatic changes have produced two interdependent, but aloof sentient races. Flandry even tangles with the Mersians, an bipedal mammalian race resembling humanoid dinosaurs, that vie with humans for mastery of the galaxy.

The Rebel Worlds (1969) pits Flandry against a corrupt sector governor and rebellious fleet admiral attempting to dismember the Terran Empire. The story carries all the poignancy of a civil war, in which neither side is wholly in the right.