Today, March 23, is the birthday of H. Beam Piper (1904-1964). Piper was one of  John W. Campbell’s stable of authors from the late 1940s until his death.

Piper wrote two major series. The first is the Paratime Police, consisting of a collection of shorter works (collected in Paratime!) and the novel Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. As you can probably tell from the series title, it concerns an organization dedicated to preserving the timeline across multiple dimensions.

The seond series is sometimes called the Terro-Human Future History. This series contains much of Piper’s best known works, including the Fuzzy books and the novel Space Viking, as well as a few lesser-known novels and a number of shorter works. It was by reading Piper when I was in high school, that I really got interested in knowing more history.

Piper wasn’t the only author who ignited my interest in history. The other was Poul Anderson.Piper’s future history is similar in many ways to Anderson’s. They both drew on history as their inspiration. Both future histories cover thousands of years but focus on certain time periods that only extend for a few hundred years.  Anderson was  more prolific and wrote more novels, so his work is better remembered, but they were both excellent writers in the galactic empire subgenre. 

In both series, empires rise, then fall. A new civilization emerges from the ashes and ruins of the previous. In Anderson’s timeline, this happens with the Nicholas van Rijn/ David Falkayn subseries and later with the Dominic Flandry subseries which concerns the fall of the empire which arises after the van Rijn/Falkayn merchant league collapses. There are stories before and after these two empires, as well as stories that take place between them, but they are the bulk of the series.

This is similar to Piper’s Federation, in that most of the stories focus on this time period. It’s during the time of the Federation that the three Fuzzy novels – Little Fuzzy, The Other Human Race (reprinted as Fuzzy Sapiens), and Fuzzies and Other Peopl – take place.

The Fuzzy books may give the impression of being some type of cutesy sicence fiction, but don’t let the covers of the Ace editions from the early 1980s (one of which is shown on the right) fool you. They are solid adventure sicence fiction.

The third Fuzzy book, Fuzzies and Other People was lost for about twenty years. I don’t know the circumstancers under which it was found, but Ace published it in 1984.

The Federation falls. The Cosmic Computer and Space Viking take place during this period. Then five empires arise. Piper didn’t write much about this portion of his future history.  Those stories are collected in the book Empire. It’s a standard size paperback from the early 1980s, so you can tell there weren’t a lot of stories set in this part of the future history. The book only contians four stories, and one of them takes place at the end of the Federation.

I do love that cover, though.

Some of ther writers have attempted to expand on Piper’s future history. William Tuning and Ardath Mayhar both wrote sequels to Little Fuzzy. I’ve nto read either of them, but my understanding is that Tuning’s Fuzzy Bones took things in a different direction that Piper did in Fuzzies and Other People.

Other writers have tried to expand Piper’s future history. I’ve read some of the stories in The Rise of the Terrn Federation, edited by John F. Carr. I quit before finishing, and not because I got distracted by something else. The stories I read ranged from “okay” to “godawful”.  I think there are other books along those lines, but I’m not going to bother unless I decided to do a really deep dive into Piper’s universe.

Piper shot himself. Piper died sometime between November 5, 1964, when the last entry in his diary was recorded, and November 8, when his body was found. It has been speculated that he thought he was in dire financial straights. His agent had died wihtout telling about, or paying him for, several sales. Supposedly, he had bee reduced to shooting pigions from his apartment window. I’m not sure that’s true, but regardless, it was a tragic way to die.

If you like adventure fiction with a libertarian bent, Piper is a good place to start.