War of the wing-men

This is one of my favorite Anderson stories, one of the best in which Nicholas van Rijn plays a leading role. The plotline is one Anderson used several times, with variants --three humans are marooned on an alien world a long way from the only human base, and have to persuade the local aliens to help them get back safely. Usually, the stories focus on the trek back, but in this case it focuses on the "persuading" part, which involves helping one alien nation in a war it is losing against another. These aliens are winged loosely humanoids (another Anderson theme, especially with the Ythrians). The currently losing people, Lannachska, annually migrate to the tropical zone of their rather cold world, engage in a mating frenzy and then fly show more back to their home islands. But this year, they found their islands had been invaded by the Drakhoi, who do not migrate but live year-round on a fleet of (by local standards) great ships. Thy live chiefly on fish, and their primary food species had migrated to seas near Lannach, so they followed. Since they had managed to occupy most key areas while the Lannachska were away, the latter were doing badly. The three humans, Van Rijn, his engineer Wace (his local trade factor for the planet) and the Duchess of Hermes (ruler of a planet with an aristocratic tradition, which reappears in a number of other stories) are marooned in the sea when Van Rijn's space yacht is destroyed by bomb (presumably planted by an enemy of van Rijn or the duchess --we never learn which). At first thy are rescued by the Drakhoi, who are not interested in helping them get back to base --and urgent matter, since the local food is poisonous to humans (and human products are poisonous to to the locals) and the humans have only a limited supply. Van Rijn arranges for his party to be rescued by the Lannach, drives Wace (and to some extent the duchess) into teaching Lannachska to make various human-history inspired weapons, and when despite that they lose a critical battle, revives their morale with a great speech cribbed liberally from Gaunt in Richard II, Henry V at Agincourt, Scots Wha' Hae etc. (This is on of my two favorite scenes. The other comes near the end, when Van Rijn, having deduced the cause of the different mating patterns of the two nations (which they regard as mutually disgusting), tries to negotiate a rational settlement of the war. The arrogant and impulsive young ruler of the Drakhoi refuses, so Van Rijn taunts him into biting Van Rijn's butt, thereby poisoning himself and leaving power to his much more reasonable rival. show less

Merchant prince Nicholas Van Rijn and two companions are stranded on the alien planet Diomedes, where they must navigate a war between Flock and Fleet winged natives to reach the human outpost, relying on Van Rijn's cunning, gambling, and management skills rather than brute force to survive and even improve the locals' civilization, proving that brains triumph over brawn.

I always have mixed feeling about Poul Anderson. He has won many awards so he must be good right? Yet, I can't think of a single SF book, written by him, that I would recommend to friends.

This is an early effort and is mostly fantasy. I don't like fantasy so is was not for me. Did not finish.