Tag Archives: H. Beam Piper

Piper’s “Police Operation”

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Today, March 23, marks the birth of H. Beam Piper (1904-1964). I’ve been a fan of Piper’s since I read his future history stories, of which the Fuzzy novels are a part, when I was in high school, way back in [REDACTED].

Piper drew heavily from history in much of his science fiction. It adds a great deal of depth to this future history. Reading his work was one of the things that helped kindle my interest in history.

I have a confession to make. While I’ve read most of Piper’s work, I’ve never read any of his Paratime stories. They’ve been on my radar. I just have never gotten to them. Continue reading →

The Ebb and Flow of Empire

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Over on Adventures Fantastic, I’ve been reviewing the nominees for the Retro Hugos. Isaac Asimov has two stories from his Foundation series on the ballot, one a novelette, and the other a short story. I haven’t read the original Foundation series since I was in high school. These two stories are the last two in Foundation. So I read the whole book.  The last story in the book, “The Merchant Princes”, which was published under the title of “The Big and the Little” before the story that precedes it in the book. There’s a passage in the story where the central character travels outside the Foundation’s sphere of influence and talks to an old man. The old man tells him what’s happened in the Empire, which the Foundation has lost contact with, over the last few decades.

In addition to increasing my interest in history, that made me want to read something with an epic scale.  I immediately thought of Poul Anderson’s Technic future history, particularly the Dominic Flandry subseries. Which made me want to reread H. Beam Piper, Dune, and  and to read the rest of Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater series.  (If you haven’t read Ruocchio, you’re missing out. I’ve only read the first book, but I’ll be buying all the others.) Continue reading →

Piper’s “Omnilingual”

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So as I was writing yesterday’s post on Raymond Z. Gallun and his story “Old Faithful”, I couldn’t help but think of H. Beam Piper’s “Omnilingual”. Both stories concern communication between Earth and Mars. Gallun dealt  with two living species trying to find common ground for communication.  Piper ups the ante by having a group of archaeologists, or rather one archaeologist in particular, try to find common ground and read the writings left behind by a long dead race.

H. Beam Piper

After posting that review, I checked the ISFDB to see if there were any birthdays of note today. Lo and behold, whose name did I see but H. Beam Piper’s? Talk about good timing.  (The universe made up for it this today.)

Henry Beam Piper was born on March 23, 1904. He has been forgotten by many readers, especially younger readers, and that’s a shame. He was one of the best writers the field produced in the middle of the last century. If he had lived longer (he died in 1964), perhaps he would be better known today.

Piper published most of his stories in Astounding, so this post also counts at a 90th Anniversary post for Astounding. “Omnilingual” first appeared in the February 1957 issue.

This review is going to contain spoilers.  If you want to read the story first, it’s currently available in The Rise of the Terran Federation, edited by John F. Carr or in the H.Beam Piper Megapack, which contains some of his nonfiction. Continue reading →

Revisiting H. Beam Piper

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Henry Beam Piper was born on this day, March 23, in 1904.  He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1964.

Piper is not well known today, and that’s a shame.  In his lifetime, he was best known for two series, The Paratime Police and the Terro-Human Future History, as well as the stand-alone short story “Omnilingual”.  His best known novels include the Little Fuzzy subseries of his future series and Space Viking, which was a major influence on Jerry Pournelle.  Piper was a student of history who built his future history by using real history as a guide, similar to what Poul Anderson was doing with his Technic future history.

I read most of Piper’s works that were in print when I was in high school, which was most of them.  The only thing I didn’t read were the Paratime stories.  For several years, I had a summer job flagging for a crop dusting company that was spring mesquite trees in cow pastures.  What that means is that several men walked across the pasture in (hopefully) a line so the pilot would know where to spray.  We would move out of the way ahead of the plane.  (These days this is all done by GPS.)  One summer I carried a Piper paperback in my backpack and read three or four of his books while I would wait for the plane to get a refill and come back.

I think I’ll read one of the Paratime stories tonight to honor his memory.