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Ensign Flandry Mass Market Paperback – January 1, 1979

by Poul Anderson (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 28 ratings
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Ace Books. 1979. Mass market paperback. One of several printings with the same Michael Whelan cover art. First published in 1966, this story takes place A.D. 3019 in the timeline of the Technic Civilization series, of which the Dominic Flandry series forms a sub-series. A short version of this story featured in Amazing, October 1966.
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  1. Print length
    277 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Ace Books
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 1979
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B009QL5YA0
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ace Books; Second Ace ed. edition (January 1, 1979)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 277 pages
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 28 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

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
28 global ratings
The downward spiral of the Terran Empire
4 Stars
The downward spiral of the Terran Empire
From the back cover of the 1985 Ace Science Fiction edition:Introducing Dominic Flandry...Before he's through he'll have saved worlds and become the confidant of emperors. But for now he's seventeen years old, as fresh and brash a sprig of the nobility as you would care to know. The only thing as damp as the place behind his ears is the ink on his brand-new commission.Though through this and his succeeding adventures he will struggle gloriously and win (usually) mighty victories, Dominic Flandry is essentially a tragic figure: a man who knows too much, who knows that battle, scheme and even betray as he will, in the end it will mean nothing. For with the relentlessness of physical law the Long Night approaches. The Terran Empire is dying...
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Top reviews from the United States

C. A. White
5.0 out of 5 stars Great seller!
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2022
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Fast shipping. Great book. Just as described. Would definitely buy from again.
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Robert E. Katz
4.0 out of 5 stars Great old stories
Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2014
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I absolutely loved these stories when I was a teen-ager. Foreign cultures, adventure, and a hint of sex. I have given these to my 11-year old grandson for Christmas and will report after hearing from him if they still appeal. I shall adjust the stars upon his feed back.
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Trevor Kettlewell
3.0 out of 5 stars Some OK SF action, but a bit childish and a dodgy political subtext
Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2006
Having relished a couple of Anderson's short stories (and understandably confused Poul with Pohl and blown some time on 'Outnumbering the Dead') I thought I'd give a novel of his a go.

Pity, that.

It wasn't awful, but I'd hope that this wasn't what he was showered in Hugos and Nebulas for. Sure the general space vibe is workable, and there's some action and exotic locations - but Ensign Flandry's James Bond style antics get a bit silly at times - no more so than when Anderson is trying to be taken seriously on some political stance.

The politics of the book are pretty wiffy - almost laughable. It's your standard right wing Tom Clancy jingoist fare - bleeding heart appeasers are weak ambitious fools who should just hand over control to the hardheaded clear thinking generals. And of its time: it's hardly a coincidence that a book written in 1966 by an American sets two superpowers against each other in a cold war environment as they dice around each other offering `support and advice' to opposing factions on an undeveloped minor planet, while the military who are engaged must grind their teeth at the brinkmanship diplomacy that means they only have a portion of the resources their governments could supply. Blimey, I wonder where he got an idea for a situation like that? Extrapolate and the lesson is quite hypocritical. Ensign Flandry, our hero from the human side, can shake his head in superior bemusement at the tragedy that the two barbarian cultures of Starkad can't see past their immature prejudices to realise that their `enemies' really aren't so bad, and actually have a lot to respect, and even a lot in common. Anderson, however, is totally blind to the irony that the moral to Flandry's story is realising that *his* enemy, the empire of the Merseians, is evil to the core, and that the only hope of humanity is to cease any attempt at negotiation, to get fighting, and, with any luck, to destroy them. They're not a foe to be underestimated, but it is ultimately us or them: something those stupid self-seeking peaceniks will never realise.

So instead of perhaps enjoying the mentor-apprentice relationship between Abrams and Flandry, I found the former's pompous (but meant to be unquestionable) pronouncements hard going. Unlike Starship Troopers where at least Heinlein actually formulates an argument, Anderson just has Abrams drop a few impressive sounding names - Aristotle, Machiavelli, Jefferson (as if there aren't any alternative names like Plato, Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther-King) - in the expectation that the reader won't actually have engaged with these writers and will feel they dare not challenge someone who drops them. It's a cheap and underhand technique: if these guys have a good case and you understand it - present it. If you've won people over just by waving some iconic figures they haven't even read, what sort of a victory is that?

It's not all shallow pamphleteering and bedroom farce, there are some usable action scenes. The hardest bit, again, is having to deal with the author regularly telling us who the really smart people and actions are, when they're patently not. Why, for example, did Flandry work so hard to keep the Merseian's evil secret rather than simply broadcast the coordinates the moment he had them - this is hardly the action of a supposedly precociously intelligent agent. It is just possible to ignore these sorts of dodgy aspects, but as background noise they do detract from the pleasures Pohl has to offer.

I notice this is the first of a series. I won't be back - maybe I'll try to find something where Pohl's politics are less to the fore.
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HRB
5.0 out of 5 stars Flandry is a hero for the ages!
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2021
Anderson is a great science fiction writer and Flandry is his greatest creation. Dominic Flandry is a hero for the ages, bold, brash and skeptical of authority. He is by far my favorite hero (along with Parker's Spenser)! And in case you think my opinion is worthless, I'm 90 with 85 years of reading behind me. And, oh yes, I'm BA [Poly Sci], MA [Anthropology] (both from Ohio State) plus a JD from Yale. Worked as a college professor and consultant for over 30 years. I started reading science fiction with Captain Future (anybody remember him?) and while I haven't read 'em all, I've read a helluva lot of them. :-) Harry
2 people found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Super Reader
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2007
Flandry is fresh out of the military joint at 19, and shows some quick thinking and nereve in a confrontation between two races on an outpost world.

An old diplomat and spymaster recognises a possible super agent, when he sees one, and apparently there is a large shortish of such even in the massive empire, so he gives Flandry a job.

He uncovers a very big secret, on more than one front, and is sometimes on the run from his own side.
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Chrijeff
5.0 out of 5 stars A stellar career begins
Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2010
This is the first of the Terran Empire books, which follow the Polesotechnic League subseries in Poul Anderson's lengthy Future History. 19-year-old Ensign Dominic Flandry of the Imperial Naval Flight Corps is forced down on the planet Starkad, whose thick atmosphere is unbreathable by humans, and gets embroiled in a sort of proxy war between his own government and that of its great rival, the Merseians. Terra is supporting the "Tigeries," a seafaring felinoid species, and Merseia the aquatic "Seatrolls" (shades of the Vietnam War, which was just on the verge of coming to a boil at the time of publication). As Flandry struggles with conflicting sympathies (both cultures have their fascinations, though he tends to like the Tigeries more), hero-worship, and the suggestion that he may have what it takes to "transfer from the flyboys to the spy-boys," he also gradually comes to realize that this apparently minor conflict has possible repercussions that could spell doom for his entire culture.

Given that the book appeared in 1966, it may be inevitable that good human female characters are thin on the ground (in the Empire most high-class women are little better than breeders and ornaments, and male officials routinely travel with a concubine ("the right honorable Persis d'Io")), but Anderson isn't incapable of creating strong alien ones, like Flandry's Tigery friend Dragoika, who once rebukes one of her male officers with "This is female talk" (in her culture the women are the more creative and make most of the decisions). Flandry is, of course, a product of his own background, but he manages to rise above it and try to work for real peace between Tigeries and Seatrolls. Exciting, fast-moving, and full of lyrical language and vividly portrayed alien races, this would be a good book with which to begin your acquaintance with Anderson's earlier work.
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Top reviews from other countries

Peter Baird
4.0 out of 5 stars A trip down memory lane
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 3, 2020
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I’d forgotten what 1950s & 1960s science fiction was like. Or perhaps it’s more that at a 60 year remove, it’s easier to see how science fiction writing reflects the society the writer lives in.
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Ianto Stevens
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2015
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Well written and a page turner.
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