The Van Rijn Method

pro-libertate.net/20150524/263-read-van-rijn-method

I've read most of the stories in this collection before, mostly in the Earthbook of Stormgate. This collection is nice because it includes them in chronological order. That order was sometimes difficult to determine in previous collections.

Overall, the stories are enjoyable. My only real complaint being that Poul Anderson had a tendency to make obscure references that have only gotten more obscure with time. It was one of the reasons these stories weren't among my favorites when I was younger, although I still liked them. Fortunately, the internet makes most of the references easy to look up for the curious.

The eBook edition contains a couple of extras, including the original version of Margin of Profit, and an essay by Sandra Miesel analyzing The Man Who Counts, and the Technic Civilization Series as a whole. I found the latter particularly interesting.