When the human race spread out among the stars, they took the profit motive
with them, and none exemplified that fact better than Nicholas Van Rijn,
interstellar trader and capitalist extraordinaire. He might look like Falstaff
and talk in a steady stream of malapropisms, but anybody who might take him for
a bumbling buffoon would quickly find themselves taken—to the cleaners! In
Nick Van Rijn, Poul Anderson created one of the most memorable and popular
characters in science fiction, and now, for the first time, all the stories of
Van Rijn and the Polesotechnic League will be published in chronological order
in three volumes. This first volume includes the classic novel, The Man Who
Counts, in which Van Rijn and two associates are stranded on a planet inhabited
by a winged race, two factions of which happen to be at war with each other. The
planet has no food that is not poisonous to humans, and the three humans have
only a small supply of food in their wrecked ship. Somehow the humans must get
to another continent, where a human outpost is, before they starve, in spite of
the planet’s inhabitants being too busy fighting a war to bother with the
troubles of these three odd-looking wingless aliens. An impossible problem? Not
for Nick Van Rijn.
- ISBN10 1416555692
- ISBN13 9781416555698
- Publish Date 14 September 2008
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 2 November 2012
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Baen Books
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 608
- Language English