The Game of Glory

Vestal, the little town where my paternal grandmother lived when I was in my tweens. Upstate New York, but closer to Buffalo out west than Albany up north. Still, it was noted (by us at least) for its snowy winters. It was during one such snowy winter, possibly in 1979 or 1980, that I read Poul Anderson’s Flandry of Terra, a Christmas gift no doubt.

So despite its setting in a humid waterworld, I will forever associate the first novella, “The Game of Glory,” with snow.

These memories came tumbling back to me this past weekend as I reread it after scoring it at a local used book store. Flandry of Terra is a trio of long short stories concerning a Bondian hero of the far future. In this case, Dominic Flandry is the stand-in for 007, and instead of serving the interests of Her Majesty’s Empire, he fights the shades of gray skirmishes to keep the Terran Empire – all one million planets – functioning smoothly against its nemesis, the Merseians. Now, I haven’t researched this, so don’t hold me to it, but Anderson wrote a whole bunch of Flandry stories way back in the 50s, so it’s not exactly an Ian Fleming rip-off. I also think I’ve seen other Flandry compendiums.

Anyway, Anderson can write. I’ve been a fan of his since I was a youngling. Tau Zero was probably the first “hard science” SF book I read, way back when I was ten or so. So the science is all there in these stories. But so is the intrigue, the espionage. And the characters. In “The Game of Glory” we have not only Flandry but Flandry chasing a lead on a waterworld called Nyanza, trying to get to the bottom of a whispered conspiracy against the Empire by some shady folks.

The shadiest is thrown at us almost as a coda. The force fomenting dissension, smoked out after some delightfully unanticipated subterfuge by our spy hero, is a Merseian operative called A’u. How I loved A’u as a kid. That name! And what A’u exactly is – a massive, whale-sized slug-like creature who was hiding out on the ocean bed on Nyanza. * And yet he, too, is a spy, Flandry’s mirror opposite, merely doing his own best for his own king and country. In these stories, no one is really in the right, there is really no white knight in shining armor. There is only one side doing a better job than the other.

It took me 90 minutes to relive the story. 90 minutes well spent. I give it a solid A. The other two novellas are significantly lengthier, so the remainder of Flandry of Terra will wait its turn in the reading queue. But I’ll get to it, eventually, for it’s definitely worth a read.


* Picture Jabba the Hut sparring with Sean Connery at the climax of Thunderball, and I think you come close to what ran through my head at the conclusion of this story.