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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An overlooked classic,
By Roger J. Buffington (Huntington Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Trouble Twisters (Paperback)
This is the first book in an overlooked "future history" series by author Poul Anderson. Essentially, it postulates: 1) mankind develops cheap interstellar travel within a few centuries; 2) there are quite a few worlds inhabited with sentient beings; and 3) humans and aliens are just as greedy in the future as humans are right now here on earth. Anderson takes these three postulates and projects what I have found to be the most plausible extrapolation about what an interstellar human civilization would be like that I have yet found.Those familiar with the broad range of Anderson's work know that he believes that the market "functions as effortlessly and as inevitably as gravity." The Trouble Twisters deals with interstellar merchant-adventurers out to make a buck. No "Prime Directive" here. Human civilization is dominated by the Polesotechnic League ("League of Selling Skills") and is unabashadly capitalist. Private corporations and merchant-adventurers dominate space travel for the very good reason that they plan to make a profit by it. (Something to think about in itself. NASA hasn't gone to the moon lately.) Anderson's characters are well-developed, and the stories will make you think and make you laugh about the predicaments people (and aliens) manage to get themselves into. Recommended.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Capitalist Future?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Trouble Twisters (Paperback)
Another in Anderson's Polysotechnic Universe, the book is three novella's from the career of interstellar horse trader and protege' of Solar Spice & Liquour's Nicholas Van Rinjh, David Falkyn. I remember these stories fondly from my college days and I'm afraid that Anderson's cowboy capitalist view of interstellar relations has forever prevented me from joining the Trekkie's cashless society of the future camp. It puzzles me that no television producer has jumped on old Nick and David for a sci-fi series. The stories in the series are ingenious looks at cultural collision with a distinctly (almost) conservative Republican bias. In each story, it is not figuring out how to outshoot some nameless menace that makes the story. It is rather the struggle to figure out how two very different cultures can make money off each other without killing each other. I love the whole concept. Hollywood may not be ready for that yet. In Anderson's stories, Van Rinjh is not an altruist and Falkyn is a bit of a chauvinist. What a wonderful antidote to Star Trek's "we've eliminated all want & any need for money" fairy tales as well as the equally "extreme the other way' doom and gloom futures that are tossed at us on the toob. This is the future as Wild West and what a lot of fun it is. Violence tends to be personal and immediate without the unlikely "intergalactic empire" liberal futurists envision (whether benign or evil). Very satisfying and you don't have any magicians mucking up the works (except for the local fraudulent hedge wizard types). I like my sci-fi technical, intellectual and pure like this. Poul Anderson is one of my all time favorite reads and this was a good book!
Tom Kin
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good book for people who like to think,
By A Customer
This review is from: Trouble Twisters (Paperback)
It has been awhile since I read this book and have been looking to read it again. That alone is one of my criteria for whether a book is any good or not. The main characters have plenty of depth and history but what still grabs me still today is the situations the author places them in and that they have to think their way out. In one instance they have landed with a crippled ship miles away from a repair depot. The depot has the equpment to fix the ship but it is very heavy and needs to be transported. The hitch is the locals consider a circle to be a religious topic and doesn't allow them to be used as wheels (Sacrelige!) How do they transport a few tons of equipment without using a wheel? Not only is it approached from a scientific angle but also how this discussion affects the local population who have lived under the church's limits on thinking about circles. My explanation doesn't to the story justice. Anderson is a master at this type of delimma and tells the tales very well. I'd recommend this book in a heartbeat. Now if only I can find a copy.
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