Phule's Company

November 23, 2016 5:35 AM - by Robert Asprin

After being court-martialed by the Space Legion for ordering the strafing of a treaty-signing ceremony, multimillionaire Willard Phule receives his punishment: He must command the misfit Omega Company on Haskin’s Planet, a mining settlement on the edge of settled space. At his duty station, he leverages his personal money and a knack for managing people to get the company to come together as a unit. Phule convinces the governor to leave the contract for an honorary duty up for competition...
posted by Just this guy, y'know (6 comments total)

Turns to side, pours out a little coffee for Robert Asprin Man, I can't believe he's been gone eight years already.

I didn't keep any of my Phule paperbacks, I'll have to come back to discuss when the kindle re-release drops next week.
posted by phearlez at 9:50 AM on November 23, 2016

I read Phule's Paradise several times as a kid; I actually got that one first, not realizing it was the second of a series, and ended up being confused a bit by references to backstory that I didn't know anything about. I did go back and get this one but for some reason I think I only read it once or twice; maybe I misplaced it? I remember enjoying it but recall very little about the plot; I think it was on a swamp planet, and they had to compete in an obstacle course against some other elite unit? I'm pretty sure I read the third one as well but I remember even less about that. Apparently the series has carried on for several more books since then; I had no idea.
posted by jordemort at 9:51 AM on November 23, 2016

I'm not as familiar with the Phule series, but when I was in the 7th grade, I received an allowance of five dollars every week, on Friday. That five dollars was always spent that same day, when I would go to the mall Waldenbooks and buy the next Myth Adventures book, the Ace paperbacks. It makes me nostalgic for the days I could just sit and read those books, and for the days when you could get a paperback for five dollars.
posted by cottoncandybeard at 11:24 AM on November 23, 2016

And the days when every mall had a Waldenbooks......

Love this book, had no idea it was coming out on Kindle, so thanks for that, Just This Guy.

The Series as a whole, I thought, falls apart fairly quickly. The making-a-team-of-misfits narrative in this book worked great, watching-the-team-do-stuff narrative after that, though, just didn't hold my interest.
posted by Frayed Knot at 4:54 PM on November 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Asprin had serious struggles with writer's block, didn't he?
posted by Chrysostom at 9:03 PM on November 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Asprin had serious struggles with writer's block, didn't he?

Writer's block and a years-long struggle with divorce and the IRS. There was a rumor in the fandom for a long time that either his ex-wife (Lynn Abbey) or the feds got a huge chunk of the proceeds from anything he wrote solo, which was the fanon explanation for why he mostly co-authored books in the 2000s.
posted by Etrigan at 7:14 AM on November 24, 2016