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The Van Rijn Method (The Technic Civilization Saga Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Poul Anderson (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 190 ratings
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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 (DRM Rights Management).
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  1. Book 1 of 7
    The Technic Civilization Saga
  2. Print length
    645 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  5. Publication date
    September 1, 2008
  6. File size
    805 KB
  7. Page Flip
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) was one of the most prolific and popular writers in science fiction. He won the Hugo Award seven times and the Nebula Award three times, as well as many other awards, including the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America for a lifetime of distinguished achievement. With a degree in physics and a wide knowledge of other fields of science, he was noted for building stories on a solid foundation of real science, as well as for being one of the most skilled creators of fast-paced adventure stories. He was author of over one hundred novels and story collections, several hundred short stories, and several mysteries and nonfiction books.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00AP9D3NW
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Baen Books; 1st edition (September 1, 2008)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 1, 2008
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 805 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 645 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 190 ratings

About the author

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Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson

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"Poul Anderson (1926-2001) grew up bilingual in a Danish American family. After discovering science fiction fandom and earning a physics degree at the University of Minnesota, he found writing science fiction more satisfactory. Admired for his ""hard"" science fiction, mysteries, historical novels, and ""fantasy with rivets,"" he also excelled in humor. He was the guest of honor at the 1959 World Science Fiction Convention and at many similar events, including the 1998 Contact Japan 3 and the 1999 Strannik Conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Besides winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards, he has received the Gandalf, Seiun, and Strannik, or ""Wanderer,"" Awards. A founder of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, he became a Grand Master, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

In 1952 he met Karen Kruse; they married in Berkeley, California, where their daughter, Astrid, was born, and they later lived in Orinda, California. Astrid and her husband, science fiction author Greg Bear, now live with their family outside Seattle."

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
190 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Marcy L. Thompson
5.0 out of 5 stars Blessed be the collectors and reprinters
Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2010
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These stories are wonderful -- if you haven't read them before, stop reading this review and start reading the stories. You're in for a treat. This is volume one of a proposed six-volume collation of Poul Anderson's wonderful Technic stories, starting with the beginnings of human exploration of the solar system, and moving out into the heyday of the Commonwealth. The world building is superb, the stories fun, and the characters fascinating (and believable). Wonderful stuff, and now we can read them in internal chronological order. So much fun!
7 people found this helpful
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Amaxon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Great Intro to the Cranky Trader
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2013
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In the beginning, Van Rijn made his fortune by making deals himself. This meant risking his own (considerable) skin on various planets, facing down tyrants and crooks (while abusing the King's English). Along the way, we learn history of the Polesotechnic League. And about planetary science- not fantasy.
So, The Saturn Game is the crew of a spaceship lost in a role playing game.
The Problem of Pain concerns two races on an island- one dying of a local germ, the other ill, not dying.
How to be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson relies on a friend to score points at a festival.
The Three-Cornered Wheel takes place on a primitive planet under fire.
Each story a neat set-piece in a different place.
The book is especially valuable for a Chronology of the Technic civilization.
See:  David Falkayn: Star Trader: The Technic Civilization Saga .
One person found this helpful
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Fritz
5.0 out of 5 stars Great classic SF - where plots and characters matter - back in print
Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2021
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I read all of Anderson's stuff, or at least all I could find, as a kid. It filled me with wonder and taught me a lot about human nature. I started reading this Technic Civilization collection decades later, partly from nostalgia and partly to see how it held up in an old man's eyes. It holds up.
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Lyal S
3.0 out of 5 stars Poul Anderson is a legend, but...
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2015
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I have read many books by Poul Anderson, but this is one I am not overly enthused over. While very creative, and well constructed, the story, or series of stories in this time does not contain the plot elements I like. Also, a rarity for Poul Anderson, there is plot redundancy in which the team is going to run out of food. This is a seldom used element in Sci-Fi. Not a bad read, but I don't plan on reading any more.
One person found this helpful
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Jack L Rookard
5.0 out of 5 stars Nicky Van Rijn - Just as I remembered him
Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2013
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Was looking for Kindle Polesetechnic books a few months ago - nothing. And then - hurrah! A whole slew of Poul Anderson works. This is the first volume in the Polestechnic series and does not disappoint. Van Rijn is fantastic as a character and all of the stories in the book are entertaining. I highly recommend this book and all of the books in the Polestechnic series, all of which I am re-reading now in Kindle format. The first story in the second book in the series, "David Falkayn: Star Trader" starts off with a great Van Rijn yarn about a frozen plant and Old Saint Nick's penchant for effectively dealing with aliens and commerce. If you like intelligent heros with eccentric personalities, you will truly enjoy this book.
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Richard J.
4.0 out of 5 stars Classic Stories from the Golden Age
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2013
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These are Poul Anderson short stories pulled together, with the theme of a future history in which Earth traders explore worlds, get into trouble and solve problems. Anderson is one of the great writers from the 50s- 70s era of sci-fi and is a master of story telling. For anyone interested in the history of sci-fi this is a must.

Why not five stars? I hesitated, but stuck with only four, perhaps because of a not-too-rational feeling that the stories are in some way a bit dated
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Pwyll
5.0 out of 5 stars The beginning of Anderson's Polesotechnic League in one handy volume
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2016
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This is the first collection of the polesotechnic future history written by Poul Anderson, collected and printed in chronological order as they happened not as they were written. So the quality of the writing changes from story to story. Not that any of the writing is bad as Anderson was an accomplished writer whose characters have complex personalities and whose descriptions and settings are plausible. But over time even Anderson became more accomplished as a writer.
These stories are mostly about Nicholas van Rijn, the businessman behind his interstellar trading company. Other key characters are introduced in some of the stories, so the characters and settings develop over the course of the tales. These stories are stories of exploration for profit, the merchant princes are looking for new worlds in order to find new products and new markets. The government hasn't become corrupt yet, so people and the alien races are free people of the galaxy.
I've always enjoyed Andersons writing, and the hard science fiction he wrote. So it's nice to have all the stories collected in volumes that make them easy to read in order. Each volume contains at least two novels and numerous short stories and novella's that precede the succeed the core novels.
If you enjoy the classic hard sci-fi that started in the 50's then you will enjoy this collection.
4 people found this helpful
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John Dark
5.0 out of 5 stars The Complete Van Rijn
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2020
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The Van Rijn story canon is original and precious, and huge fun to read. One story theme that appears persistently is the need to respect alien cultures, regardless of their level of technological development. Poul Anderson had a genius for writing alien races that are complex in their ethnology, social structures and biological needs. A lot of these stories show alien races fighting civil wars and Anderson (via Nick Van Rijn) showing how cultures that respect individuality have the edge over more dictatorial civilisations.

But it is Nick Van Rijn who makes these stories so joyous to read. A mixed race space-merchant, big, overweight, with a thirst for ale and liquer he is by turns cunning, sly, compassionate and profiteering. An entrepreneurial genius, with a secret desire to do the right thing, Nick Van Rijn is one of the most larger-than-life characters in Science Fiction.

Settle down in your favourite armchair with a Whiskey Sour, some Mozart on low, read and enjoy.
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Valerio Pastore
5.0 out of 5 stars La riscoperta di un classico superlativo!
Reviewed in Italy on December 7, 2017
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Poul Anderson, con questa lunga saga della Lega Polesotecnica, si confermò maestro di una fantascienza fatta non solo di azione e di ardite avventure, ma soprattutto di soluzioni *scientifiche* ai problemi ed all’applicazione di sottili metodi politici per gestire i nativi dei tanti mondi della Lega Mercantile.
Una saga evergreen, perché nel suo principale rappresentante, l’avido e astutissimo Nicholas Van Rijn, troviamo tutti i pregi e difetti del capitalismo d’assalto, quello di frontiera capace di trasformare una missione di soccorso in una guerra, di rovesciare le parti in una situazione di inferiorità di forze…
Van Rijn è l’uomo che detestiamo ed ammiriamo, simbolo del potere più pericoloso e subdolo, quello INTELLIGENTE.
Aggiungete a tutto questo la più accurata maestria nella descrizione dei mondi della Lega Polesotecnica e dei loro abitanti, e avrete un arazzo che non vi stancherà mai!
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Mark Poles
4.0 out of 5 stars Good old-fashioned space adventure
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 16, 2010
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In my review of C.J.Cherryh's 'Pride of Chanur', I said I like my science fiction to be nice and Traveller-esque. By that I mean 'in the style of the Traveller role-playing game setting'. Until I came across these stories, I'd never quite found the series I was looking for in this respect.

I should have looked here earlier. Poul Anderson's 'Technic Civilisation' saga has long been cited as an influence on Traveller. In my defence though, it has been difficult to get hold of in a sensible format. You see, these stories are mostly short stories, and appeared over several decades in a variety of SF magazines and anthologies. They were written and published out of chronological order too. So hats off to Baen for collecting all the stories together and publishing them in several volumes (of which 'The Van Rijn Method' is the first) in the order in which the stories are set.

So we start off in 'The Saturn Game' with the first expedition to the moons of Saturn, then meet our first aliens one short story and a century later in 'Wings of Victory'. And that's before we've even met the title character, the merchant prince Nicholas van Rijn.

Van Rijn is a larger-than-life interstellar merchant. If they ever make a TV series of these books (and they would very much suit a TV series), Omid Djalili could play van Rijn. MoneysuperMARKetdotCOM.

Some of the short stories are good, some are very good and some read like a really good role-playing group playing one of the classic Traveller adventures. 'The Three Cornered Wheel' in particular was like this. It features the other main character in this part of the saga - a young merchant officer called David Falkayn. The one longer story (short novel in length) in the book doesn't quite reach the quality of the short stories.

Highly recommended if you're looking for some (Traveller-esque) good old fashioned space opera.
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KA Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars More than a Great Writer.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 28, 2015
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Not one of the 'Greats', one of the Greatest. Ever. In any language. So there: ner ner.

But hey, if you are reading this I'm probably preaching to the converted, or at least convert-able, so come on in, the rijstaffel is lovely.

Poul Anderson is so good he makes some of the 'great' writers look quite ordinary, and this is a handy collection collated according to the chronology of the Technic worlds, which helps to tie things together for the reader. There are not many authors so good that I want to read everything of theirs that has ever been published, Poul Anderson is one of them, along with Gogol, Dostoevski, Rabelais, and a few others. This edition seemed to me to be one of the more competently edited collections I have come across, irrespective of field or genre, so thank you for putting it together.

Read it, it is good for you.
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Philip M. J. Carteret
5.0 out of 5 stars Uneraseable !
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 1, 2019
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I first read Poul Andersen in what is now Analog, many moons ago, and he was one my few favourite authors. It has been a really great pleasure to meet old friends like Falkayn and Van Rijn after so many years, and I plan to read the entirety of Poul on my kindle.
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