The fat and clever Nicholas Van Rijn belongs to a long line of cunning fat men, beginning with Count Fosco in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (1859) and including Rex Stout's detective Nero Wolfe, the protagonist of mystery novels such as Gambit (1962).

Such characters, often at once repellent and fascinating, have long appealed to popular audiences. In addition, the adventures surrounding Van Rijn are meant to advance Anderson's ideas about freedom and the common good.

Authors have often followed the adventures of a single character to present their ideas about society. For instance, Jonathan Swift does so in Gulliver's Travels (1726), which features several different imaginary societies that represent Swift's social views. In tone and content, Trader to the Stars is distinctly literary, intending to engage the mind in thought as well as to entertain it, thus placing the book in the tradition of such fiction as...