Captain Empirical (An Analog Book). This item is unavailable.Captain Empirical (An Analog Book)

Essef - Captain Empirical refers to Captain Schuster, the hero of the book, a hard-headed hard-working throwback of a ship's officer. Those ships are mainly ordinary cargo ships carrying ordinary goods in the 20th century and occasionally in a shuttle or mining tug in the far-flung exotic reaches of... Earth's moon. Only about 10% of the book is science fiction, unless you consider nuclear-powered sailing vessels or lunar landings science fiction (fait accompli in 1979). Even including those, the number only rises to 25%. Of the 10%, we have: 1) Asteroid mining, about as mundane a subject as science fiction has to offer... except see #3 2) Rat traps which attract rats via psionic waves which also have the side effect of attracting lowlife scum humans ("rats" - get it?)... but not any other scavenging life forms 3) A robot which collects the mail