The Unorthodox Engineers

This is a collection of five short stories about the exploits of Fritz Van Noon and his squad of Unorthodox Engineers, tackling bizarre engineering problems on distant planets in the fairly distant future. Recommended to sf fans only: the rest of you can move straight on.

The stories are set in an old-fashioned military environment with no women or children in sight; but they're written with a light humorous touch that makes them readable even for non-engineers (such as myself).

The first story is rather delightful and one of my long-time favourites; I first read it long ago, before encountering the others. The second is good, but not quite so good (though I laughed out loud partway through it). The others are readable but less memorable; in fact, I'd forgotten the content of the last two stories since the last time I read them.

Or I thought I'd forgotten. However, as I read these last two stories I found that I anticipated in advance the basics of what Fritz was going to discover; so either the problems are not really difficult or I had some subconscious memory of them.

I've given the book 3 stars: think of it as 4 stars at the beginning descending to 2 stars by the end. If you can get hold of the first one or two stories by themselves, the other three are OK but inessential.