The Van Rijn Method: The Technic Civilization Saga #1

by Poul Anderson

Paperback, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Description

Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML: The Buck Starts Here! Think there's an unbridgeable gulf between human and alien thought Not so! There's a common tongue, all right �?? and Nicholas Van Rijn speaks it fluently: TRADE. For behind the buffoonish blarney and bawdy bonhomie of the Falstaffian Van Rijn is a man who gets things done. A born wheeler-dealer who usually leaves both sides better off in the bargain. (While pocketing a hefty cut of the profits himself, of course!) With The Man Who Counts and a passel of other tales included, this is the first of three volumes set to contain the complete cycle of "Polesotechnic League" books and stories by transcendently-gifted science fiction master (how does seven Hugos and three Nebula Awards strike you ) Poul Anderson �?? and starring Nicholas Van Rijn, his most famous character of all! At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management)… (more)

Pages

656

DDC/MDS

813.54

Language

User reviews

LibraryThing member clong
I found this collection to be a bit of a mixed bag. At times it offers clever ideas and at times it offers entertaining storytelling. Nicholas Van Rijn makes more sense to me as a character after reading the short novel The Man Who Counts.

The blurb on the cover proclaims that "In Nick Van Rijn,
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Poul Anderson created one of the most memorable and popular characters in science fiction." Frankly, I have a hard time seeing how anyone could particularly like this character (who appears in several but not all of the stories in this collection). It's almost as if, at some long ago science fiction convention, a group of authors sat around a table playing a game in which they would each by required to come up with a protagonist who embodied various of the seven deadly sins, and Anderson drew Gluttony, Avarice, and Lust. We are often told that Van Rijn is brilliant but, in these stories at least, not given much compelling evidence. Besides making lots and lots of money, his principal occupation seems to be finding needy and/or gullible women who will trade sex for an opportunity to better their lot in life.
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Publication

Baen (2009), Edition: First Edition, 635 pages

Original language

English

Original publication date

2008-09

Physical description

656 p.; 6.75 inches

ISBN

9781439133262

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