This is Chapter 13 of The Universal Good Deal, you may want to start at the beginning or go back to Chapter 12.

This ancient Martian myth, now lost, seems to have been a fable about a person who was assaulted by a ceaseless parade of hideous random circumstances. The Martians of Flinders' age were an optimistic people, and such fables as these had fallen out of favor—which, no doubt, is why he was able to acquire a copy even in the confines of prison.

In the unlucky hero of the book, Flinders saw himself: poor, miserable, alone on an island of despair, feeling almost dead.¹ And yet the hero achieved wealth, success, even fame. For Flinders the epiphany was that success did not come to the hero by any merit or particular industry of his own, but because of this very ill-fortune at the center of the tale.

The bad luck was the thing. Flinders realized that true greatness came from bad luck, not good.

It gave Flinders hope. And having met with, and read, partly by stealth, this fable, Flinders felt inspired with all the spirit of enterprise, and restless desire of fame, which such tales of surprising calamities usually caution youthful minds against.² Whereas, for most of his young life, he had believed he was too ill-starred to dare anything more than survival, he felt as he read Robinson Crusoe that there was born within his heart the ambition to distinguish himself.³

Over the course of his short life, Flinders wore out no less than six copies of the book with hard work in his service.⁴ Though out of its chronological order, it may be appropriate to include a few further instances in which this book so profoundly influenced Flinders' life:⁵ After he had attained some success, he often told people that he was induced to go into advertising against the wishes of friends from the reading of this book.⁶ He also held the book responsible for working in him a near-miraculous recovery from pneumonia. And it may have been the case that Crusoe was at the core of his reasoning in the Goldner campaign. Only a few days before his death aboard the Investigator, he violated mission protocol and transmitted over the ship's sole antenna a note pre-ordering a copy of a new edition of the book, with astrological annotations.⁷ It must have been one of the last communications the Martians ever received from him.⁸ As I have said, the reading of Robinson Crusoe made upon him a profound impression.⁹ When his spirits were bad, when he wanted advice, when he had trouble in romance, and when he drank too much, in all cases, Flinders turned to Robinson Crusoe.¹⁰