Flandry And Amalfi

The Poul Anderson Appreciation blog is bigger than the James Blish Appreciation blog because Anderson's output was much bigger than Blish's. Anderson wrote quickly and easily whereas Blish wrote slowly and with difficulty and accepted Star Trek adaptation work for money reasons. 

Dominic Flandry who repeatedly thwarts the Merseian Roidhunate appears in eight volumes whereas John Amalfi who prevents the Vegan Tyranny from making a comeback appears in only three. (Both Flandry and Amalfi cameo in a novel about a younger character.) This comparison is misleading because Flandry's career consists in defending the Terran Empire against threats like the Merseians whereas Amalfi's career does not consist in defending Earthman civilization against threats like the Vegan orbital fort. Amalfi is the mayor of a flying city that trades with colonized planets, thus he might be described as a "trader to the stars," like Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn or David Falkayn. However, Amalfi's aim is not the accumulation of personal wealth but simply the survival of the city. Thus, he is more akin to the captain of a Nomad ship in Anderson's earlier future history series. The first Nomad captain thinks that there will be:

"...a fleet, a mobile city hurtling from sun to sun."

-Poul Anderson, "Gypsy" IN Anderson, Star Ship (New York, 1982), pp. 12-34 AT p. 32.

 

- and that this fleet will be the bloodstream of an interstellar civilization. Amalfi describes Okie cites as bees pollinating the galaxy.