Captain Flandry - Defender Of The Terran Empire

Poul Anderson’s Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire is space opera in full ceremonial uniform: interstellar intrigue, imperial decay, beautiful danger, hostile powers, clever treachery, and one dashing agent trying to keep civilisation upright despite civilisation doing very little to deserve the favour. Dominic Flandry serves the Terran Empire, which sounds splendid until one notices that the Empire is already sliding into that late-stage historical condition where the banners are still impressive but the foundations have begun making expensive noises.

Flandry is not a square-jawed innocent galloping through the stars with a clean conscience and a handbook of noble principles. He is more useful than that. He is a spy, soldier, diplomat, opportunist, seducer, patriot, cynic and professional improviser, the sort of man who understands that empires are not usually saved by virtue alone. Sometimes they require charm, deception, good tailoring, bad faith, a quick exit, and the ability to drink with people who may be plotting to kill you.

This Baen collection gathers adventures from Anderson’s long-running Technic History future, where humanity has reached the stars and immediately resumed politics, espionage, war, trade, ambition and all the other habits that suggest evolution may have been slightly oversold. The Terran Empire faces alien rivals, internal weakness, frontier trouble and the general inconvenience of being enormous. Flandry moves through it all like a man trying to patch a leaking palace with wit, nerve and occasionally a blaster.

The irony of the whole thing is baked in beautifully. Flandry knows the Empire is tired. He knows the barbarians, rivals and opportunists are gathering at the edges. He knows decadence when he sees it, probably because it keeps inviting him to dinner. Yet he defends the thing anyway, not because it is pure, but because the alternatives may be worse, and because history, if left unattended, has a nasty habit of becoming very untidy indeed.

Expect alien courts, dangerous women, political traps, space battles, elegant cynicism and that old Anderson pleasure of big ideas wearing adventure clothes. These are stories where empires rise and rot, clever people play deep games, and the fate of worlds may depend on whether one urbane intelligence operative can stay half a step ahead of disaster while looking as if he meant to do that all along.

Good copy, as sold by Crappy Old Books. A solid bit of Baen imperial shelf-business, ready for anyone who likes their science fiction with spies, stars, declining empires and a hero who appears to have read both the military manual and the wine list.

Keep browsing: See more Science-Fiction books Other books by Poul Anderson