An Equality of Dissatisfaction: a review of Poul Anderson's The Trouble Twisters.
From Wednesday, 28 December 2011 through Sunday, 1 January 2012, I read Poul Anderson's The Trouble Twisters (NY: Berkley Medallion Books [Berkley Publishing Corporation]; 1976 [originally published in 1966 by Doubleday & Company, Inc. in 1966], 2nd printing; 190 pps.), which is nominally the second book in Anderson's Polesotechnic League series, although several stories and the novel collected in The Earth Book of Stormgate (1978) predate the stories here and in the nominally first volume, Trader to the Stars. The aggressively uninformative cover art is by Richard Powers.
The Trouble Twisters is a fix-up containing "The Three-Cornered Wheel" (originally published in the Oct. 1963 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact); "A Sun Invisible" (first published in the Apr. 1966 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact; winner of 1967 Nebula Award for Best Novelette); and "The Trouble Twisters" (originally published as "Trader Team" in the July & Aug. 1965 issues of Analog Science Fiction and Fact). These stories concern the exploits of the young David Falkayn, who would eventually become the heir apparent and son-in-law of Anderson's "globular" trader, gourmand, spaceman and malapropist extraordinaire, Nicholas van Rijn: van Rijn was the main protagonist in two of the stories collected in Trader to the Stars (and the Marlow-like commentator of the third), but he only has a brief cameo, in flashback, in the titular novella here.
The Trouble Twisters is more classic, solid science fiction from Anderson that is superficially concerned with hard science (which is probably what garnered "A Sun Invisible" its Nebula Award), but moreso with the squishy sciences of sociology and politics, as expressed in spacefaring humanity's dealings with various sentient alien lifeforms (or "sophonts," to use Anderson's terminology). The stories here hinge entirely upon the solving of various vexing problems to further the fortunes of van Rijn's company, Solar Spice & Liquors Company: Falkayn saves the day in "A Sun Invisible" and "The Trouble Twisters," and plays a large supporting role to a trader named Martin Schuster in "The Three-Cornered Wheel." The format entails lots of "As you know, Bob"-type of exposition, a few pithy lines (fewer than in either Trader to the Stars or The Earth Book of Stormgate), minimal character development, and a bone-deep sexism that has even fiercely competent, physically formidable, near genius-level females, human or extra-terrestrial, favoring such pursuits as reading "slushy love novels" (p. 139) and willing to be seduced even by the clumsy attempts of the young Falkayn. Readers looking for more substantive and profound entertainment should look elsewhere.
It's difficult to review or even summarize these stories without spoiling the surprise of their resolutions, but here goes: "The Three-Cornered Wheel" has Falkayn recalling a mathematical problem from his schooldays and Schuster recalling a bit of Earth's theological history to save their own lives, the lives of their shipmates, and, incidentally, further the fortunes of the League in general and van Rijn in particular; “A Sun Invisible” finds Falkayn making a counter-intuitive leap to solve a particularly thorny problem for the League (and, again, for van Rijn), and recalling other lessons from his formative years to woo a sheltered lass; while “The Trouble Twisters” sees Falkayn paired with his non-human chums Adzel, a Buddhist, meters-long, dragon-like being called a Wodenite (whose chronological first appearance was in “How to Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson,” collected in The Earth Book of Stormgate), and a ninety centimeters long part cat-/part lemur-like being (p. 108) from a planet named Cynthia by the humans who stumbled across it named Chee Lan on a secret expedition to the planet Ikrananka to set up an exclusive trade agreement with the warring, paranoid natives and their human mercenaries (descended from humans who were stranded on Ikrananka several centuries prior); they also learn the considerable advantages and disadvantages of teaching their ship’s computer to play poker. This last story also has Falkayn citing, though not crediting, Millard Fillmore’s pronouncement on the Compromise of 1850 (“an equality of dissatisfaction”). “The Trouble Twisters” also had me speculating as to which refugee crisis of the day -- or of the then-recent past -- Anderson was obliquely commenting on.
My personal favorite here was “The Three-Cornered Wheel,” although the by-play between and individual exploits of Falkayn, Adzel and Chee (who also appear in the stories “Day of Burning” and “Lodestar,” also collected in The Earth Book of Stormgate) in “The Trouble Twisters” is amusing and engaging. If Falkayn is luckier in general and luckier with the ladies than he perhaps entirely deserves, at least he never quite develops the self-assured swagger of Captain Kirk or Commander Ryker (from Star Trek and Star Trek: Next Generation, respectively); on the other hand, he doesn’t have van Rijn’s larger-than-life Falstaff-in-space vibe, and I for one found myself missing the greedy, shrewd, lecherous, self-pitying, language-mangling scalawag, which means that I didn’t enjoy The Trouble Twisters quite as much as either Trader to the Stars or The Earth Book of Stormgate.
I can’t help but wonder if Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum were at least partially inspired by Adzel and Chee Lan when they created the humanoid reptilian Ch’od and the humanoid skunk Mam’selle Hepzibah for their team of intergalactic pirates-cum-revolutionaries the Starjammers to serve as supporting characters in The X-Men; supposedly Hepzibah, who has been depicted as being more feline than skunk-like in recent years, was an homage to Miz Mam’selle Hepzibah from Walt Kelly’s Pogo comic strip, but in attitude, abilities and personality, she seems to owe a lot to Chee Lan.
*Cross-posted to my LibraryThing account.
The Trouble Twisters is a fix-up containing "The Three-Cornered Wheel" (originally published in the Oct. 1963 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact); "A Sun Invisible" (first published in the Apr. 1966 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact; winner of 1967 Nebula Award for Best Novelette); and "The Trouble Twisters" (originally published as "Trader Team" in the July & Aug. 1965 issues of Analog Science Fiction and Fact). These stories concern the exploits of the young David Falkayn, who would eventually become the heir apparent and son-in-law of Anderson's "globular" trader, gourmand, spaceman and malapropist extraordinaire, Nicholas van Rijn: van Rijn was the main protagonist in two of the stories collected in Trader to the Stars (and the Marlow-like commentator of the third), but he only has a brief cameo, in flashback, in the titular novella here.
The Trouble Twisters is more classic, solid science fiction from Anderson that is superficially concerned with hard science (which is probably what garnered "A Sun Invisible" its Nebula Award), but moreso with the squishy sciences of sociology and politics, as expressed in spacefaring humanity's dealings with various sentient alien lifeforms (or "sophonts," to use Anderson's terminology). The stories here hinge entirely upon the solving of various vexing problems to further the fortunes of van Rijn's company, Solar Spice & Liquors Company: Falkayn saves the day in "A Sun Invisible" and "The Trouble Twisters," and plays a large supporting role to a trader named Martin Schuster in "The Three-Cornered Wheel." The format entails lots of "As you know, Bob"-type of exposition, a few pithy lines (fewer than in either Trader to the Stars or The Earth Book of Stormgate), minimal character development, and a bone-deep sexism that has even fiercely competent, physically formidable, near genius-level females, human or extra-terrestrial, favoring such pursuits as reading "slushy love novels" (p. 139) and willing to be seduced even by the clumsy attempts of the young Falkayn. Readers looking for more substantive and profound entertainment should look elsewhere.
It's difficult to review or even summarize these stories without spoiling the surprise of their resolutions, but here goes: "The Three-Cornered Wheel" has Falkayn recalling a mathematical problem from his schooldays and Schuster recalling a bit of Earth's theological history to save their own lives, the lives of their shipmates, and, incidentally, further the fortunes of the League in general and van Rijn in particular; “A Sun Invisible” finds Falkayn making a counter-intuitive leap to solve a particularly thorny problem for the League (and, again, for van Rijn), and recalling other lessons from his formative years to woo a sheltered lass; while “The Trouble Twisters” sees Falkayn paired with his non-human chums Adzel, a Buddhist, meters-long, dragon-like being called a Wodenite (whose chronological first appearance was in “How to Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson,” collected in The Earth Book of Stormgate), and a ninety centimeters long part cat-/part lemur-like being (p. 108) from a planet named Cynthia by the humans who stumbled across it named Chee Lan on a secret expedition to the planet Ikrananka to set up an exclusive trade agreement with the warring, paranoid natives and their human mercenaries (descended from humans who were stranded on Ikrananka several centuries prior); they also learn the considerable advantages and disadvantages of teaching their ship’s computer to play poker. This last story also has Falkayn citing, though not crediting, Millard Fillmore’s pronouncement on the Compromise of 1850 (“an equality of dissatisfaction”). “The Trouble Twisters” also had me speculating as to which refugee crisis of the day -- or of the then-recent past -- Anderson was obliquely commenting on.
My personal favorite here was “The Three-Cornered Wheel,” although the by-play between and individual exploits of Falkayn, Adzel and Chee (who also appear in the stories “Day of Burning” and “Lodestar,” also collected in The Earth Book of Stormgate) in “The Trouble Twisters” is amusing and engaging. If Falkayn is luckier in general and luckier with the ladies than he perhaps entirely deserves, at least he never quite develops the self-assured swagger of Captain Kirk or Commander Ryker (from Star Trek and Star Trek: Next Generation, respectively); on the other hand, he doesn’t have van Rijn’s larger-than-life Falstaff-in-space vibe, and I for one found myself missing the greedy, shrewd, lecherous, self-pitying, language-mangling scalawag, which means that I didn’t enjoy The Trouble Twisters quite as much as either Trader to the Stars or The Earth Book of Stormgate.
I can’t help but wonder if Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum were at least partially inspired by Adzel and Chee Lan when they created the humanoid reptilian Ch’od and the humanoid skunk Mam’selle Hepzibah for their team of intergalactic pirates-cum-revolutionaries the Starjammers to serve as supporting characters in The X-Men; supposedly Hepzibah, who has been depicted as being more feline than skunk-like in recent years, was an homage to Miz Mam’selle Hepzibah from Walt Kelly’s Pogo comic strip, but in attitude, abilities and personality, she seems to owe a lot to Chee Lan.
*Cross-posted to my LibraryThing account.