The Flandry Series by Poul Anderson
The Flandry Series, created by author Poul Anderson, is a science fiction saga set approximately six hundred years after the Polesotechnic League stories. The narrative unfolds within a vast Terran interstellar Empire, which is in a state of decline and under constant threat from the powerful alien Roidhunate of Merseia. The protagonist, Dominic Flandry, navigates a complex landscape as he rises from a junior officer to an admiral and informal adviser to the Terran Emperor. Central to the series is the dual conflict Flandry faces: combating the Merseians' schemes while also confronting the internal decay of his own Empire.
Flandry’s character is depicted as a cynical opportunist who supports the crumbling Empire for pragmatic reasons, fearing that alternative rule would lead to greater chaos. Throughout the series, themes of cultural diversity are explored through Flandry’s encounters with various human and alien civilizations, drawing on historical inspirations. The narrative includes subplots involving Flandry's relationships and complex moral choices, often highlighting the tension between personal desires and political duties. The overarching story arc features Flandry's continual struggle against both external and internal threats, while also addressing the implications of governance and legitimacy in a declining empire.
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The Flandry Series
First published:We Claim These Stars! (1959), Earthman, Go Home! (1960; serial form, Fantastic, December, 1960-January, 1961), Mayday Orbit (1961; short version, Fantastic, 1959), Agent of the Terran Empire (1965; includes We Claim These Stars!), Flandry of Terra (1965; includes Earthman, Go Home!, a short version of Mayday Orbit, and one other story from Venture, 1958), Ensign Flandry (1966; short version, Amazing, 1966), A Circus of Hells (1970; short version, Galaxy, 1969), The Rebel Worlds (1969), The Day of Their Return (1973), A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows (1974; serial form, If, September-December, 1974), A Stone in Heaven (1979), and The Game of Empire (1985)
Type of work: Novels and stories
Type of plot: Science fiction—future history
Time of work: The thirty-first century
Locale: Various planets
The Plot
Poul Anderson’s Flandry series is set some six hundred years after the same authors Polesotechnic League stories. Its background is that of a Terran interstellar Empire controlling thousands of suns but falling into what appears to be irreversible decline. The Empire is threatened continually by the ruthless and vigorous alien empire (known as the Roidhunate) of Merseia. Dominic Flandry’s career is followed from his initial adventures as a junior officer to a position as admiral of the Fleet and unofficial adviser to the Terran Emperor.
The major theme of this sequence is a double contest, on one hand against the plots of the Merseians and on the other against the weakness and corruption of the Terran Empire itself. The two contests are often set against each other, raising again and again the question of why Flandry, portrayed as a cynic and opportunist, nevertheless continues to support an Empire that he knows is weak and contemptible against both human rebel-reformers and the alien Merseians, whom he frequently admires. The answer, in brief, is that Flandry supports a principle of legitimacy, for the purely practical reason that it is likely to lead to less internal warfare within the Empire. As much as he admires the Merseian virtues, he is aware that these do not include mercy or tolerance. Flandry is a believer in the idea of minimum government and sees the inefficient Empire as more likely to produce this than is Merseian rule or the post-Imperial anarchy that he foresees and calls “the Long Night.”
Intertwined with the theme above is that of cultural diversity. Flandry’s travels lead him both to strange human civilizations, modeled on those of real history, and to stranger alien ones from Anderson’s imagination. Thus, in Ensign Flandry—the first of these works in terms of Flandry’s career—Flandry finds himself on Starkad, where a land-based species, the Tigeries, is at war with a sea-based one, the Seatrolls. The former are supported by Terra and the latter by Merseia. Flandry discovers that this minor war, which Merseia seems set on escalating, is designed to draw a substantial part of the Terran fleet to Starkad, there to be destroyed when a rogue planet turns its star nova. The novel draws much of its charm from the relatively incidental depiction of the Tigeries and the Seatrolls.
In A Circus of Hells and the stories collected as Flandry of Terra, the hero confronts a planet controlled by an insane computer, a planet shared in turn between summer and winter intelligences, and a series of planets based on African, Mongol, and East Asian cultures. Two minor themes that appear variously in the three books so far mentioned are Flandry’s manipulative treatment of women, which results in a curse being laid on him by a slighted woman at the end of A Circus of Hells, and the use of telepathic powers by allies of Merseia. Both these themes, together with the continuing internal and external conflicts from which the Empire suffers, appear repeatedly in the books that follow.
In The Rebel Worlds, Flandry is forced to drive an honest rebel into exile in support of a totally corrupt emperor, at the same time forfeiting his chance of happiness with the rebels wife. He does, however, assist the wife in taking revenge on the sadistic governor whose actions provoked the rebellion. In a coda to that work, The Day of Their Return, in which Flandry appears only marginally, a Merseian plot attempts to disrupt the Empire by launching on it a new religion, in fact the creation of the Merseians most dangerous agent, the telepathic non-Merseian Aycharaych, who becomes Flandry’s continual opponent.
In We Claim These Stars!, Aycharaych masterminds the takeover of a human planet by a wolflike race as a means of drawing Imperial strength away from the Merseian frontier. Flandry foils the plan by revealing to the wolf-creatures how they are being manipulated. In A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Aycharaych plots to drive a human world into revolt to distract the Empire with a civil war. At the end of this novel, Aycharaychs home world is destroyed, and Flandry once again loses the woman he truly loves.
In A Stone in Heaven, a further prospective revolt is combined with the presentation of an alien race facing a new Ice Age on its home planet, together with another love affair for Flandry. This one is happier in its ending. In The Game of Empire, a daughter of Flandry, assisted by a Tigery and a Wodenite (a race described in the Polesotechnic League series), foil a Merseian attempt to put a “sleeper” or secret Merseian sympathizer on the Imperial throne. In this work, Flandry, now old and distinguished, figures only marginally.