Get Started On Earthman, Go Home! Penned By Poul Anderson Released As Paper Edition
Captain Sir Dominic Flandry heard about Unan Besar, he thought carefully about the possibilities the planet might offer, It had been a Terran settlement, but in the vast confusion of galactic colonization, it had been lost in the shuffle.
Lost Well, perhaps not so much lost as kidnaped, For a civilization can develop in strange ways over three hundred years and it looked as if this one had deliberately withdrawn from the rest of the universe.
It was the kind of situation that Flandry liked, And because he knew there was profit in intrigue, he decided to invade the planet alone, But as soon as he had landed he found himself playing a game for his very life with all the rules made by his worldwide opponents!'
Blurb from theDAce Doubles paperback edition
Serialised in Fantastic Stories December, Januaryunder the title "A Plague of Masters.
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Captain Dominic Flandry has paid an unofficial visit to the planet of Unan Besar, a world which has been cut off the mainstream of human civilisation for centuries.
Flandry hopes to profit from reintroducing trade to the world, although it would appear that the rulers are not keen to allow visitors.
To keep humans from dying from local biotoxins in the atmosphere, all the residents must take a pill every month.
The issue of pills of strictly regulated and they are not issued until the recipient provides a bioscan,
Biocontrol has therefore risen to become the government of this world, as they control the source of life for
the worlds population.
Under the premise of diplomatic security, Biocontrol have confined Flandry and plan to scan his mind for information about the outside galaxy.
Flandry escapes however and manages to team up with members of the local criminal underworld in order to devise a plan for a worldwide and profitable revolution.
Refreshingly, Anderson does not fill his world with Americocentric stereotypes, This world appears to have been peopled by Indonesians,
This is a late story in Andersons tales of Dominic Flandry, Flandry is a semiautonomous agent of the Terran Empire, an Empire in its decadent final stages and doomed to collapse.
He has been compared to a James Bond of the spaceways since his every adventure seems to see him involved with a new love interest in this case Liang, a wily female criminal whom he abandons at the finale.
Formulaic though the tales may be, they are very well written and laced with a certain wit and panache.
This raises this piece above the general level of Ace Doubles,
Anderson, Poul. Earthman, Go Home. Flandry No Ace,.
Tucker, Wilson. To Tombaugh Station. Ace,.
Nostalgic old man alert! I miss the Ace Doubles, which were two science fiction paperback novellas published backtoback with two front covers with the print running in opposite directions.
They were common in the paperback racks in drugstores and the like in thes ands and provided a second life for magazine stores by writers who were not the big three or four.
The Earthman, Go Home/ To Tombaugh Station combo is still an entertaining genre romp, Poul Anderson was the best known of the writers, and Dominic Flandry stories were already magazine staples by the time Earthman, Go Home appeared.
Flandry, a dashing intelligence agent for the Imperial Navy, investigates a planet that uses toxins to control its population, In the magazine version, it was titled A Plague of Masters, Flandry is James Bond in space,
Tucker Wilsons To Tombaugh Station is a bit more original, Kathy Bristol, a nononsense tracker, is hired by an insurance company to investigate the accidental death of a crewman on a tramp freighter.
Undercover, she buys passage on the freighter for a long voyage out to Tombaugh Station on Pluto, The pilot worries that she is setting him up to take the fall, A hardboiled detective story that should have been made into a film with Bogart and Bacall,.is the true rating, But give the double a four for period nostalgia,
Pseudonym A. A. Craig, Michael Karageorge, sitelink Winston P, Sanders, P. A. Kingsley. Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into thest century.
Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories, He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards, Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in, He married Karen Kruse in, They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear, Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Amer Pseudonym A, A. Craig, Michael Karageorge, sitelink Winston P, Sanders, P. A. Kingsley. Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into thest century.
Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories, He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards, Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in, He married Karen Kruse in, They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear, Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in, He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in thes, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies.
He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Robert A. Heinlein dedicated hisnovel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.
Poul Anderson died of cancer on July,, after a month in the hospital, Several of his novels were published posthumously, Series: sitelink Time Patrol sitelink Psychotechnic League sitelink Trygve Yamamura sitelink Harvest of Stars sitelink King of Ys sitelink Last Viking sitelink Hoka sitelink Future history of the Polesotechnic League sitelink Flandry sitelink.