Cosmic Van Rijn

David Falkayn contemplates van Rijn as the Omnipotent:

"'Hey, what a thought, creation operated for profit!...'"
-Poul Anderson, Satan's World IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 329-598 AT XIII, p. 448.

Later, he imagines the transmutation of van Rijn into:

"'A new isotope. Van Rijn-235, no, likelier Vr-235.000 -'"
-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN David Falkayn: Star Trader, pp. 631-680 AT p. 639.

The first speculation is philosophically significant if only as envisaging an impossibility. A hypothetical creator cannot possibly extract any profit from his creation:

I believe in neither an omnipotent creator nor a hereafter but what would follow from these premises? First, universalism. An omnipotent creator would be able to “save” all of his creatures. I did not include benevolence among the premises but I argue that it is implicit in omnipotence. Only finite power can be or needs to be oppressive. An infinitely powerful being would not be able to profit by exploiting finite beings. We would not be able to make anything for him that he could not effortlessly have made for himself. Indeed, by definition, he already is everything that he might want to be. Therefore, his only purpose in creating us must have been for our benefit. It follows that infinite power differs not quantitatively but qualitatively from finite power, however great.
-copied from here.

The second speculation is practically significant because it starts Falkayn thinking about a possible natural source of supermetals: Lodestar; Mirkheim.