Thinking about this early novel after a lapse of years, I believe I can see what its wellsprings are. They include the old pulp conventions of storytelling and a desire to change or, at any rate, spoof these: Falstaff, Long John Silver, and other amiable literary rogues, as well as a few real figures from the Renaissance: L. Sprague de Camp’s unique combination of humor and adventure: above all, Hal Clement’s marvelously detailed and believable fictional worlds. I do not say that The Man Who Counts matches any of its inspirers. Certainly I would write it a bit differently today. Yet it does represent my first serious venture into planet-building and the first full-scale appearance of Nicholas van Rijn. Thus I remain fond of it.

After being serialized in Astounding (today’s Analog) it had a paperback edition. The latter was badly copy-edited and saddled with the ludicrous title War of the Wing-Men. I am happy that now, at last, the proper text and name can be restored.

Planet-building is one of the joyous arts, if you have that sort of mind. The object is to construct a strange world which is at the same time wholly consistent, not only with itself but with what science knows of such matters. Any extra-scientific assumptions you make for story purposes — e.g., faster-than-light travel — should not be necessary to the world itself. So, taking a star of a given mass, you calculate how luminous it must be, how long the year is of a planet in a given orbit around it, how much irradiation that planet gets, and several more things. (Of course. I simplify here, since you ought also to take account of the star’s age, its chemical composition, etc.) These results will be basically influential on surface features of the planet, kind of life it bears, evolution of that life, and so on endlessly. There is no rigid determinism: at any given stage, many different possibilities open up. However, those which you choose will in their turn become significant parameters at the next stage… until at last, perhaps, you get down to the odor of a flower and what it means to an alien individual.