If you enjoyed James Bond

The Dominic Flandry SF novels began appearing a few years before the first James Bond novel. It is suspected but never proven that Ian Fleming's James Bond may have been derived from or at least influenced by Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry.

This space opera series is set in the 31st century, during the waning days of the Terran Empire. Flandry is a dashing field agent of the Imperial Intelligence Corps who travels the stars to fight off imminent threats to the empire from both external enemies and internal treachery. His long-time archenemy is Aycharaych, a cultured but ruthless telepathic spymaster who weaves plots for the expansionist rival empire of the alien Merseians.

The illegitimate son of a minor nobleman, Flandry rises to considerable power within the decadent Empire by his own wits, and enjoys all the pleasures his position in society gives him. Still he is painfully conscious of the impending fall of the Terran Empire and the subsequent "Long Night" of a galactic dark age. His career is dedicated to holding it off for as long as possible. In time, he passes the mantle to his daughter Diana, who is also illegitimate.

Flandry is willing to disregard conventional morality and use his foes' tactics against them. He can cheerfully deceive, seduce, and blackmail; in A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, he orders the mind-probing of his traitorous illegitimate son, reducing him to a vegetative state, and bombards Aycharaych's uninhabited homeworld into radioactive ruin in part for vengeance, as Aycharaych's latest plot had resulted in the death of the woman he loved and planned to marry.

Appearances

Novels

Ensign Flandry (1966)

A Circus of Hells (1970)

The Rebel Worlds (1969)

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows (1974)

A Stone in Heaven (1979)

The Game of Empire (1985; modeled on Kipling's Kim)

Collections

Agent of the Terran Empire (1965) consisting of the short stories "Tiger by the Tail" (1951), "The Warriors from Nowhere" (1954), "Honorable Enemies" (1951) and "Hunters of the Sky Cave" (1965).

Flandry of Terra (1965) containing "The Game of Glory" (1958), "A Message in Secret" (1959) and "The Plague of Masters" (1960/1965).