Science fiction critic Algis Budrys once speculated that "Dominic Flandry could have sprung from no union less than that of Diana the Huntress and David Niven, with all the early personality advantages one would derive from such a fortune."1 From his sleek seal-brown hair to his soft beefleather boots, Flandry is the epitome of rakish elegance, a devil in velvyl whose smile "had bowled over female hearts from Scotha to Antares." ("A Plague of Masters," 1961, chapter 6) Foul Anderson's debonair Naval Intelligence agent exerts his agile body and nimble wits preserving the moribund Terran Empire a thousand years hence. As Flandry says, "What was the use of this struggle to keep a decaying civilization from being eaten alive, if you never got a chance at any of the decadence yourself?" ("The Game of Glory," 1958) His life is a glittering web woven of lurex and genuine gold.

Yet Flandry is a voluptuary with a conscience, a hedonist subject to bouts of *Angst*. "'We're hollow and corrupt,'" he says of his class, "'and death has marked us for its own. Ultimately, though we disguise it, however strenuous and hazardous our amusements are, the only reason we can find for living is to have fun. And I'm afraid that isn't reason enough.'" ("Hunters of the Sky Cave," 1959 chapter 8) Flandry often broods over the price of his pleasures. He desperately needs to believe in the merit of the bargains he strikes to prolong the Empire's lifespan. He takes some grim satisfaction in tabulating the billions of man-years of peace his exploits have bought for others and in predicting that colonies he has saved will outlive the Empire. The last knight of Terra is a failed gentleman, but a species of gentleman nonetheless.

It is this combination of opposing traits that makes Flandry so memorable. His charm has a certain. bittersweet "Gallic" flavor, a blend of cynicism and idealism. Initially, Anderson intended him to be a science fictional cousin of the Saint, not another James Bond. (Remember, Fleming's hero postdates Anderson's.) Moreover, the Terran officer's relationship with his intrepid alien servant Chives has faint traces of Bertie Wooster's with Jeeves or Lord Peter Wimsey's with Bunter.

But Anderson's restless imagination was not content to remain with his original premises. Fifteen years after the first Flandry story appeared, he shifted the series from template to developmental mode and transformed his hero into a futuristic Horatio Hornblower. The Terran is a born aristocrat and the Briton an incorrigible bourgeois but Ensign Flandry's rise is meant to match Midshipman Hornblower's.

Like C.S. Forester, Anderson was faced with the challenge of extrapolating his hero's youth from his maturity: seven stories about Captain Flandry (1951-61) precede "Ensign Flandry" (1966). Unlike Forester, he also had to expand and justify the imaginary universe which his hero inhabits and invent settings for his heroics. Most of the time Anderson manages to achieve psychological and historical consistency and accommodate scientific advances. This makes his Flandry cycle a more technically interesting example of series-writing than his David Falkayn cycle which appeared in correct chronological order.

Furthermore, since Flandry has survived through 28 of Anderson's first 32 years as a professional writer, these works record fluctuations in the author's sentiments and skills like annual growth rings on a tree. The Flandry saga exemplifies Anderson's adventure fiction and summarizes many of his own personal interests, opinions and tastes. The perceptive reader will recognize that Anderson is a scientifically educated man who reads history, favors limited government, delights in nature, adores women, and enjoys Mozart, Hiroshige, Scotch, and "Alice in Wonderland".

Flandry's first home was in the pulp magazines alongside such bold adventurers as C.L. Moore's Northwest Smith and Leigh Brackett's Eric John Stark. The influence of these early peers lingers in his flamboyant garb and flair for melodrama. Nowadays, sf protagonists seldom worry about the tilt of their bonnets nor ride rockets to probable doom sipping Lapsang Soochong tea.

Flandry's earliest escapades, "Tiger by the Tail" (1951),''Honorable Enemies" (1951), and "Warriors from Nowhere" (1954), are simply entertainments. Their pseudo-medieval and quasi-Oriental settings are conventional, their casts of curvaceous ladies, brash barbarians, rotten noblemen, and alien menaces are drawn from the basic Planet Stories Repertory Company. (Special revisions for this edition justify such matters as inhabited worlds around Betelgeuse.)

Against this background, Flandry's impudent roguery blazes up like a nova. Although his novelty failed to excite pulp readers (a group as tradition- bound as Kabuki fanciers), it laid the groundwork for his subsequent popularity. Thus "Tiger by the Tail" remains enjoyable while "Witch of the Demon Seas," its running mate from the very same issue of Planet Stories, is mercifuIly forgotten. "Tiger by the Tail" has survived changes in taste partly because its Mark Twain's "Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg."

A whole new audience was waiting for Flandry after the demise of the pulps, an audience with higher expectations of its amusements. By then Anderson's talent had matured. He was able to spin cleverer puzzles at longer lengths using stronger characters. For instance, compare Aycharaych's first appearance in "Honorable Enemies" with his next encore in "Hunters of the Sky Cave." Eight years more writing experience had equipped the author to present his ambiguous villain more skillfully.

Anderson had also shaken off pulp conventions sufficiently to realize that aliens are not merely humans disguised with horns, tails, and tinted skins. He no longer copies past cultures as closely as he did in "Tiger by the Tail" where the Celtic and Nordic prototypes of the Scothani are perhaps too obvious despite rationalizations. The Ice People of "A Message in Secret" (1959), the hydrogen-breathing Ymirites and lupine Ardazirho of "Hunters of the Sky Cave" are more pleasingly original. The "otherness" of the latter two races is heightened by playing them off against the essentially American colonists of Vixen.

However, colonial societies can still be plausibly modeled on past historic ones, especially when a pattern of ethnic immigration is assumed. Anderson maintains that preserving a cultural, religious, or political heritage will motivate extrasolar colonization. Therefore he presents Boer-Bantus on Nyanza In "The Came of Glory," Russo-Mongols on Altai in "A Message in Secret," and Malays on Unan Besar in "A Plague of Masters." At this point, Anderson had not quite perfected his procedures: his repetitions are too neat, he arbitrarily borrows personal and geographical names, and he overlooks data--the natives of Unan Besar are more likely to be Moslems than polytheists. But each planetary society is richly colorful and·shows the regional differences appropriate to a world. None is in danger of being mistaken for the state of Delaware.

Furthermore, from the warm shallow seas of Nyanza to the wind-scourged deserts of Vixen, each people occupies a thoroughly realized environment complete with marvelous scenery. This is an arctic forest on Altai:

White slender trees with intricate, oddly geometric branches flashed like icicles, like jewels. Their thin, bluish leaves vibrated continuously. It seemed that they should tinkle, that the whole forest was glass. ("A Message in Secret," chapter 8)

The great Trees were.., incredibly massive, organic mountains with roots like foothills. They shot straight up for fifty meters or so, then began to branch, broadest at the bottom, tapering to a spire. The slim higher boughs would each have made a Terran oak; the lowest were forests in themselves, forking again and yet again, the five-pointed leaves (small delicately serrated, green on top but with a golden underside of nearly mirror brightness) outnumbering the visible stars. ("A Plague of Masters," chapter 13)

The other development to be noted over the course of a decade is the deepening sense melancholy that tinges the stories. (Anderson's series typically grow darker the longer he writes them.) To quote Budrys again, "The devil-may-care hero of the earliest stories became the socially conscious inner- directed man..., the seeker-out-of-extracurricular adventure.... What he gave away prodigally in his first flush of manhood he regrets in his prime, and now he takes it."2 Flandry's old sense of fun has not vanished -- he could still trade quips with his ownn executioner -- but he knows his former hopes for Terran Renaissance are vain. He and the Empire he serves have reached their autumn season. "'We who see winter coming can also see it won't be here till after our lifetimes... so we shiver a bit, and swear a bit, and go back to playing with a few bright dead leaves.'" ("Hunters of the Sky Cave," chapter 8)

Finally, Anderson took an impulsive step that significantly altered the direction of the series. He tied Flandry's universe to that of his other popular character Nicholas van Rijn by mentioning the latter is a legendary folk hero on Unan Besar. (This is an appropriate place for van Rijn's reputation to survive since he is half-Indonesian.) Uniting these two blocks of stories gave Anderson the nucleus of a future history 5000 years long which now numbers more than 40 separate items including 11 full-length novels. It is the most remarkable achievement of its kind in sf.

Since this splice was made in 1961, a preoccupation with the historical process itself has come to dominate the whole series. In the rise and fall of Technic civilization Anderson has found a theme engrossing enough to engage all his talents. It allows him to combine political, social, and philosophical commentary with scientific speculations. It also encourages him to go on designing worlds and cultures but adds the challenging constraint that these creations be mutually consistent. A few flaws have unavoidably crept into Anderson's scenario despite a voluminous set of background notes that "bulges out a looseleaf binder." As he explains; "Perfect consistency is possible only to God Himself, and a close study of Scripture will show that He doesn't always make it."3

Not only does cross-referencing amuse reader and writer alike, it also transmits information. Instead of mentioning Unan Besar's successful re-entry into Technic civilization, Anderson shows Flandry eating imported Unan Besarian fish in "A Stone In Heaven" 25 years after the events in "A Plague of Masters." Genealogical references indicate whether characters met or shirked their duty to build a better universe for their offspring. Each time Anderson traces a family connection he proclaims his faith in the continuity of life: "children *are* the future." Note that he bridges the 700-year gap between his principal heroes with a bond of flesh. Van Rijn descendant Tabitha Falkayn has a brief affair with Flandry's ancestor Philippe Rochfort in "The People of the Wind" (1973).

Such attention to detail reflects the same spirit of craftsmanship that prompted medieval stonemason to carve the hidden parts of their work as carefully the visible ones. Consider an obscure bit of irony in "Ensign Flandry": peacemongering Lord Hauksberg's name means "Hawk's Mountain." His policies are clearly doomed from the start because his title, Viscount of Ny Kalmar, and space yacht, the "Droning Margrete", point to the ill-fated Union of Kalmar established by medieval Danish queen Margaret I.

Anderson will always make allusions whether anyone notices or not. However, those who do notice leave the author pleasantly bemused and receptive to their suggestions. Several Flandry fans independently concluded that the lost colonists of Kirkasant in "Starfog" (1967) were descended from some of the McCormac exiles in "The Rebel Worlds" (1969). Their arguments persuaded Anderson to accept this unplanned connection as true.

History, politics, philosophy, the sciences -- these are the factors shaping the final batch of Flandry tales and related works. The series has grown in scope and intricacy far beyond its frivolous origins, much to the surprise of the author himself. "That aimless, hedonistic boy who did them, in a hurry because he needed more beer, does seem rather a stranger now," says Anderson, echoing Flandry's own sentiments as he looks back across the same span of years at his younger self in "A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows" (1974).

World-building skills honed to unrivaled keenness over the decades have been lavished on these stories. The aliens are a roll call of wonders: the feline Tigeries and cetacean Seatrolls of Starkad ("Ensign Flandry"), the composite Didonians ("The Rebel Worlds"), and the lyncean Ramnuans ("A Stone in Heaven"). The three colonial planets are among Anderson's loveliest: snowy Slavic Dennitza ("A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows"), ecologically sane Freehold ("Outpost of Empire," 1967), and austere Aeneas ("The Rebel Worlds" and "The Day of Their Return", 1973). The last of these is especially note - worthy. It is a cool, dry globe ruled by mind and might, fittingly paired with a steamy hot, barbaric world called Dido. Aeneas has a tripartite social system on the traditional Indo-European model while the bizarre natives of Dido possess tripartite bodies. Compare this description of an Aenean landscape to the glimpses of Altai and Unan Besar quoted earlier:

The sun was almost down. Rays ran gold across the Antonine Seabed, making its groves and plantations a patchwork of bluish-green and shadows, burning on its canals, molten in the mists that curled off a salt marsh. Eastward, the light smote crags and cliffs where the ancient continental shelf of Ilion lifted a many-tiered, wind-worn intricacy of purple, rose, ocher, tawny, black up to a royal blue sky. ("The Rebel Worlds", chapter 6)

The tomorrows thus wrought take shapes both fair and foul. Technic civilization is a western-flavored, technophilic global order that arises during the twenty-first century after an era of chaos. Discovery of faster-than-light travel soon permits interstellar exploration and colonization. Human expansion beyond Earth is known as the Breakup. Trade among colonial and alien societies is controlled by the merchant-adventurers of the Polesotechnic League under conditions reminiscent of the Europe: an Age of Exploration. Nicholas van Rijn and his protege David Falkayn flourish late in this period just as civilization is beginning to break down under the pressure of institutionalized greed. The bloody Time of Troubles follows. Manuel Argos founds the Terran Empire -- the Principate phase of Technic civilization. -- and restores galactic order. His empire expands (peacefully and otherwise) to embrace a sphere 400 light-years in diameter until it collides with a younger and fiercer Imperium, the Roidhunate of Merseia. Dominic Flandry is born late in the Principate and lives into the Interregnum that follows, ending his days as a trusted Imperial advisor. The Empire degenerates into a cruel Dominate and the Long Night Flandry has labored so hard to postpone falls at last. But civilization will eventually revive and a new cycle will commence.4

This is a plausible enough scenario despite its patchwork origins because Andersen sewed his imaginary future out of recurring motifs from the real past. His sound instincts for historical pattern-making were augmented after 1973 by the theories of historian and sf fan John K. Herd. Herd's system (as yet unpublished) is an attempt to go beyond Spengler and Toynbee by actually quantifying the historical process. He showed Anderson how well the Terran Empire fitted his model. Anderson enthusiastically resolved to make the fit even closer by altering dates and adopting Herd's terminology. The long conversation between Flandry and Chunderban Desai in Chapter Three of "A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows" summarizes Herd's scheme and "A Stone In Heaven" is dedicated to him.

Aside from this influence, Anderson has become much more specific in his use of historical analogies in the past decade. Originally, Terra and Merseia were generalized Old and New Empires. Gradually, they began to resemble Pome and Persia. Although the Merseians have Welsh-sounding names and the self-discipline of samurai, they are Sassanid Persians in their social and political arrangements, their hunters' ethos, their romantic masculinity, and their militant xenophobia. Transforming the hostile "gatortails" into complex beings who promise their cubs stars for playthings is a fine example of Anderson's ability to refine his starting materials. (cf. chapter 3 of Ensign Flandry. "A Circus of Hells" shows the danger of admiring Merseians too much.)

The Terran Empire's Roman aspects are more obvious. Terra's dynasties -- the Argolids, Wangs, and Molitors -- arre roughly comparable to Rome's Julio-Claudians, Antonines, and Severi. The emperors Flandry serves correspond to specific Roman ones: Georgios is Marcus Aurelius, Josip is Commodus, Hans Molitor is Septimus Severus, Dietrich is Geta, and Gerhart is Caracalla. (Flandry himself has the cynical gallantry of a Byzantine aristocrat.) Terra and Merseia are doomed to exhaust each other as the Eastern Roman Empire and Sassanid Persia did. Does some future cognate of Islam await its turn on the galactic stage?

Yet however grand the scale of events he dramatizes, Anderson steadfastly treats history as the sum. total of individual moral choices. He extols freedom, not mystical Necessity although he knows full well the grief free actions may breed. Every decision plants a seed that can bring forth fruits never foreseen. If Falkayn had not saved and humiliated the Merseians in "Day of Burning" (1967), they would not have survived to menace Flandry's society. But likewise, if Falkayn had not founded the colony of Avalon and his descendants successfully defended it against Terra in "The People of the Wind", an Avalonian native would not have been on hand to save the Empire in "The Day of Their Return".

Flandry, who is Falkayn's counterpart even to his initials, demonstrates this truth with even grimmer clarity. His biography is a record of choice and consequence, sin and retribution. The nexus points in his life inevitably involve women, "The aliens among us!" ("A Circus of Hells", chapter 20). This dramatic pattern expresses the author's own admitted gynolatry. Mistreating women is one of the worst things he can imagine Flandry -- or anyone else -- doing. Note that the killing of little girls is the ultimate outrage throughout Anderson's work.

"Seeing the anguish upon her, Flandry knew in full what it meant to make an implement of a sentient being." ("Ensign Flandry", chapter 13) These lines might apply to any number of Flandry's affairs. Maternal neglect explains but scarcely excuses his behavior. He is also a seducer, an exploiter, and a betrayer of women. Even his dangerous feud with his superior Fenross starts over a woman. Sadly, his best and bravest ladies lose the most because they care the most. Flandry's callousness towards Persis ("Ensign Flandry") and Djana ("A Circus of Hells") costs him both of his great loves, Kathryn ("The Rebel Worlds" ) and Kossura ("A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows"), Eventually, after years of pointless dalliance with bored noblewomen and expensive whores, he finds a measure of peace with Miriam, the daughter of his old mentor Captain Abrams. She is one woman he never deceives ("A Stone in Heaven").

Furthermore, there is also a malign influence overshadowing Flandry, insuring he reaps even more sorrow than he sows. This is his great nemesis Aycharaych,5 the agent and witness of his woes, This alien genius darkens Flandry's life for more than a decade before they meet in person. Merseian master-spy Aycharaych surely has a hand in the Starkad plot that brings Flandry and Persis together. Aycharaych's special mind-training techniques arm Djana with the power she uses to curse Flandry so effectively. The two agents clash repeatedly and inconclusively until Aycharaych's machinations destroy both Flandry's favorite child and intended bride. He then destroys what Aycharaych loves best and scars his own spirit with the fury of his vengeance.

Aycharaych claims kinship with his foe. "'Dominic, we share a soul, you and I. We have always been alone.'" ("A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows", chapter 20. In a sense, the "Tom O'Bedlam" quote of the title applies to both beings.) But is the charge true? Granted that both enjoy their work and justify it by appealing to the value of the ends they seek. Nevertheless, Flandry still retains a sense of righteousness even when cataloging his own vices. Aycharaych's principles transcend the normal categories of good and evil. He is in fact the galaxy's sublimest sadist, virtuoso in an art "'whose materials are living beings.'" ("A Knight of Ghosts and Shad- ows", chapter 3) His enthralling dharm is satanic at the core.

Aycharaych, the last member of a supremely gifted Elder Race, guards his charnel homeworld Chereion. (Note the probably accidental associations in that name-Chiron, Charon, and carrion.) He kills without compunction to protect what is already dead. Aycharaych's depravity is best measured against the standards of a race as wise and ancient as his own -- the Ice People of Altai. These beings are stewards of an evolving biosphere, not lifeless relics. They possess in truth the enlightenment he feigns.

Flandry's service to dying Terra is not really comparable. His true allegiance is to the Empire's Pax rather than to the Empire as such -- he calls himself a "'civilization loyalist'", not an imperialist in "A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows" (chapter 11). "Dead's dead," he says elsewhere, "My job is to salvage the living." ("The Rebel Worlds", chapter 8) Human and other civilizations can survive Terra's fall. New births will surely follow her death as long as thinking beings endure.

Ironically, Aycharaych is defeated by qualities he disdains -- physical force, emotional violence, moral principle. Try as he may, he cannot really appreciate the intensity of love, courage, loyalty, or self - sacrifice in lesser beings and so miscalculates at critical moments. This recalls Anderson's "Operation Chaos" (1971) in which an ordinary American couple defeats the hosts of Hell. Moreover, there is something of Faerie in Aycharaych's subtle beauty and artfulness. Like the elves of fable, he finds the weight of his centuries oppressive and wonders about the effect of mortality on men: "'What depth does the foreknowledge of doom give to your loves?'" ("A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows", chapter 9) Anderson's judgment on the elves in The Broken Sword (1971) can be applied to Aycharaych: "'Happier are all men than the dwellers in Faerie -- or the gods, for that matter, .... Better a life like a falling star, bright across the dark, than a deathlessness which can see naught above or beyond itself.'"

Failure and death are the only certainties in this universe. There is no lasting shield against the pitiless arrow of Time. Yet intelligent beings prove their worth by the manner in which they meet their fates. "'If we're doomed to tread out the measure, we can try to do so gracefully,'" says Flandry. ("A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows", chapter 3) The loom of history captures such experiences for us to share. No matter that here Anderson's threads happen to be imaginary rather than real. Whatever the scale -- personal, dynastic, or cosmic -- all the patterns he designs for his Technic Civilization tapestry convey the same message: "'We're mortal -- which is to say, we're ignorant, stupid, and sinful -- but those are only handicaps. Our pride is that nevertheless, now and then, we do our best. A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for?'" ("Ensign Flandry", chapter 18)

So despite all his flaws and denials of virtue, this ill-starred knight, Dominic Flandry, is truly a hero. He accepts the terrible consequences of doing the wrong thing for the right reason. He trades his own peace of soul for other beings' happiness. Even Aycharaych admires his bold, unyielding spirit. "'Your instincts are such that you can never accept dying.'" ("Hunters of the Sky Cave," chapter 2) Flandry has won the right to boast with Kipling's battered chevalier:

 "Ay, they were strong, and the fight was long;
 But I paid as good as I got!"6

FOOTNOTES

1"Galaxy Bookshelf," Galaxy. (June 1967), pp. 188-89. Flandry is actually the illegitimate son of an opera diva and a nobly - born space captain with antiquarian interests.

2"Galaxy Bookshelf," Galaxy (February 1966;), p. 139

3These and other unattributed remarks are from personal communications between Anderson and Miesel.

4For a detailed account of Technic history, see my [Miesel's] essay "The Price of Buying Time" published by Ace Books, 1979, an Afterword to "A Stone in Heaven", the final(?) novel of the Flandry series.

5These remarks incorporate some suggestions from critic Patrick McGuire.

6"The Quest"

Last updated May 20, 2003