http://pro-libertate.net/20150524/263-read-van-rijn-method ( )

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, 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 be 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. ( )

...The choice to present these stories in chronological rather than publication order means the reader frequently moves between various stages in Anderson’s development as a writer. Just the setting does not quite provide enough continuity to make this collection a coherent whole in my opinion. Still, there’s some pretty interesting short fiction here, if you can overcome an unsympathetic main character in some of them...

Full Random Comments review ( )