{"id":1666,"date":"2021-03-23T21:26:51","date_gmt":"2021-03-24T02:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1666"},"modified":"2021-03-23T21:26:51","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T02:26:51","slug":"pipers-police-operation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/pipers-police-operation\/","title":{"rendered":"Piper’s “Police Operation”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>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]<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Until today. I read the first of the Paratime stories, “Police Operation”. It was first published in the July 1948 issue of Astounding<\/em>. It’s currently available in The H. Beam Piper Megapack<\/em><\/a>. I read it in the paperback collection from Ace books that had several printings in the early 1980s and was edited by John F. Carr. That’s it down below. With a cover like that, it’s no wonder the book saw three printings.<\/p>\n

“Police Operation” is the first of the Paratime stories, and according to the introduction by John F. Carr, it is the only one that gives a full explanation of how things work. It concerns a society that can travel to alternate time lines. Of course such a society needs a police force to prevent mischief, intentional or otherwise.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In this story something in the Pennsylvania of our timeline is slaughtering livestock. The local state police and game warden can’t figure out what it is or how to stop it.<\/p>\n

That’s because it’s not something native. I’m not revealing a big surprise with this statement. It’s up to a member of the Paratime Police to stop the creature.<\/p>\n

“Police Operation” was one of the first of Piper’s stories that saw print. It’s not as polished or as complex as some of his later work. But it’s still a good adventure story. I enjoyed it enough to want to read the rest of the collection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[232,296],"tags":[772,775,858],"class_list":["post-1666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astounding-science-fiction","category-birthday","tag-astounding-science-fiction","tag-birthday","tag-h-beam-piper"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-qS","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1666"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1669,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666\/revisions\/1669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}