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(More customer reviews)This is a collection of short stories which take place in Poul Anderson's "Polesotechnic League" ("League of Selling Skills") aka Nicholas Van Rijn series. The premise is simple: 1) Humans have achieved cheap interstellar travel; 2) There are many other intelligent races and inhabited planets; 3) Humans and aliens alike are just as greedy in the future as humans are now.
Unlike "Star Trek" (which I also love!) and some other science fiction prognostications about the future, this series never, ever, assumes that people (or aliens) are or will become morally superior to people in the present day. There is no "Prime Directive" here. No, in Anderson's universe, most people are out to make a buck, and space is dominated by merchant-adventurers who make no bones about their aim of pursuing profit. Anderson presents this as mostly a good thing, albeit not without its moral hazards. The bad guys more often than not are politicians, whom Anderson more often than not, scorns. The good guys (and gals) are merchant-adventurers who, in their pursuit of profit, encounter some pretty wild situations and get into some pretty interesting (sometimes quite funny) predicaments.
The stories in this collection are highly readable, well-written, and quite imaginative. They always involve clever applications of scientific speculation combined with a good storyline. The stories generally do a fine job of keeping the reader's interest. They are crisply written and move along smartly, unlike some of Anderson's later writings (see my reviews of "Harvest of Stars" and "The Stars are also Fire" by Anderson--some of his later works.)
This book is highly recommended. If you like this one, don't miss "The Trouble Twisters" which is the next book in the series, also a collection of short stories set in the Polesotechnic League future. Enjoy both.
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