About this Book

"War of the Wing-Men was the second van Rijn story (after "Margin of Profit"). Nicholas van Rijn is a somewhat Falstaffian character - fat, noisy, slobish - who is owner of Solar Spice and Liquors, one of the powerful firms in the Polesotechnic League, the commercial organization which dominates Technic civilization. Van Rijn, an engineer who works for him, and a woman are crashed on a little-explored planet where humans can live, but not eat the food. They have food for eight weeks, but no means to contact the only human outpost half-way around the planet. There are natives, however, who can fly (the planet is a large, low-density planet with correspondingly dense air.) Van Rijn and company have been deposited in the middle of a war between a band of native who live on shipboard and one which inhabits a string of islands. Neither has the time or the resources to aid the humans. Van Rijn, ever the leader sets out to free up the native resources by winning the war for one side. He works the engineer mercilessly while himself lounging around, bossing everyone who gets within range including the natives, and eating twice his share of the human's food."--New England Science Fiction Association, Inc.