Customer Reviews

The Man Who Counts

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Though Nicholas van Rijn, self-made Anglic-mangling boss of Solar Spice & Liquors, was an important figure in all the earlier volumes of Anderson's Future History, this is the only full-length novel that centers on him. The planet Diomedes, while earthlike in many ways, has such an alien protein structure that all its edibles and even its air and water are deadly to humans. 10,000 kilometers (over 6000 miles) from the planet's lone human settlement, a sabotaged spaceboat brings van Rijn, his young factor Eric Wace, and Lady Sandra Tamarin, the lovely young Grand Duchess of Hermes, down in the midst of the world-girdling ocean, from which they are plucked by the Fleet of Drak'ho, a seagoing society of sapients with an 18' span of functional batlike wings. The humans must get back to the trading post before their salvaged food and their allergy shots run out, but the Drak'ho are in the midst of a war with another society of their kind, and they can't spare the resources to get van Rijn and his companions all that distance. So van Rijn helps a prisoner escape and gets the three of them rescued by the beleaguered Flock of Lannach, then sets to work helping the Flock to victory, in hopes that by settling the war once and for all he can divert the natives' attention to the possibility of helping him--and, as he says, "make a little bit profit" on the side.

The great strength of this story is Anderson's vivid and logical world-building and his portrait of the native Diomedans, who, although by no stretch of the imagination human, he contrives to make comprehensible and even (especially in the case of Drak'ho officer Delp hyr Orikan) sympathetic. Their society is described with loving care and is as fascinating as anything you might find in some exotic corner of our own planet. Van Rijn's maneuverings add excitement, though as a character he has neither the appearance of a hero nor a particularly ethical personality. Anderson has been among my favorite writers of sf for 40 years, and this book is an excellent example of why.