Books with author H Beam Piper

After a galaxy-wide war had left the planetary federation in ruins, every surviving civilized world was on its own. And that was a perfect setup for the marauders from the far-out rim. Trask was one of these dreaded Space Vikings, a renegade spaceman with a crew and a ship that struck terror to a thousand worlds. But Trask had a personal interest in scourging the stars: he wanted to draw upon himself the ire of a certain enemy, another planet-wrecker with a yen for galactic empire building.

The chartered Zarathustra Company had it all their way. Their charter was for a Class III uninhabited planet, which Zarathustra was, and it meant they owned the planet lock stock and barrel. They exploited it, developed it and reaped the huge profits from it without interference from the Colonial Government. Then Jack Holloway, a sunstone prospector, appeared on the scene with his family of Fuzzies and the passionate conviction that they were not cute animals but little people.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

The heroes of this story, Verken Vall and his wife Hadron Dalla, are ready to embark on a long-overdue vacation, when the Paratime Police send them both to investigate rumors of slavery in the Esaron Sector. Like many of Piper's stories, this is a police procedural, set in the world of the future.This short novel by H. Beam Piper was originally published in two parts in Astounding Science Fiction, February and March of 1955 and also appeared in the 1981 collection Paratime.

Thirty minutes to Litchfield. Conn Maxwell, at the armor-glass front of the observation deck, watched the landscape rush out of the horizon and vanish beneath the ship, ten thousand feet down. He thought he knew how an hourglass must feel with the sand slowly draining out. It had been six months to Litchfield when the Mizar lifted out of La Plata Spaceport and he watched Terra dwindle away. It had been two months to Litchfield when he boarded the City of Asgard at the port of the same name on Odin. It had been two hours to Litchfield when the Countess Dorothy rose from the airship dock at Storisende. He had had all that time, and now it was gone, and he was still unprepared for what he must face at home. Thirty minutes to Litchfield. The words echoed in his mind as though he had spoken them aloud, and then, realizing that he never addressed himself as sir, he turned. It was the first mate. He had a clipboard in his hand, and he was wearing a Terran Federation Space Navy uniform of forty years, or about a dozen regulation-changes, ago. Once Conn had taken that sort of thing for granted. Now it was obtruding upon him everywhere.

Space Viking (1963) A great new novel by H. Beam Piper. Space Viking is set in his Terro-Human future history. It tells the story of one man's search for his wife's murderer and its unexpected consequences. The story was originally serialized in Analog magazine (November 1962 – February 1963), then published by Ace Books in 1963. On the Sword World Gram, Lucas Trask, Baron of Traskon, is about to marry Elaine Karvall, whose father owns the Karvall steel mills. In addition to being a political alliance, it is also a love match. But Andray Dunnan, the insane nephew of Duke Angus of Wardshaven, is under the delusion that Elaine loves him and is being forced into the marriage. When she tries to correct him, his anger boils over. He crashes the wedding ceremony, kills her and seriously wounds Trask, before stealing the Duke's newly built starship, the Enterprise, and escaping. When he recovers from his injuries, he pledges his realm to Duke Angus in return for another warship...

The planet Zarathustra is listed as uninhabited -- which means that the entire planet can be owned by a corporation. That owner is the rich and happy Zarathustra Company -- rich and happy, that is, until a prospector named Jack Holloway comes across undocumented species -- a tiny, golden-furred little biped that he dubs "Little Fuzzy." Not only are the Little Fuzzies cute, they're bright too -- in fact, they may be sapient as people are . . . and that means everything the Zarathustra company owns on this world is at stake. . . .

Vengeance is a strange human motivation -- it can drive a man to do things which he neither would nor could achieve without it . . . and because of that it lies behind some of the greatest sagas of human literature!*After a galaxy-wide war had left the planetary federation in ruins, every surviving civilized world was on its own. And that was a perfect setup for the marauders from the far-out rim.Trask was one of those dreaded Space Vikings, a warrior spaceman with a crew and a ship that struck terror to a thousand worlds. But Trask had a special personal interest in scourging the stars -- he wanted to draw upon himself the fire of a certain enemy -- a renegade planet-wrecker with a yen for galactic empire building. . . .

A running theme in Piper's work is that history repeats itself; past events will have direct and clear analogues in the future.When the book was published, he had been writing and selling science fiction for many years to the leading magazines, and that he was highly rated among readers for his skill and imagination. He had published several novels, mostly SF, but also including mysteries and juveniles. But that blurb was written just before he took his own life in the noise and nonsense that come out of divorce . . . sigh. Some things happen so large upon our lives that they seem to blot out all that goes before . . . "There are incredible things still undiscovered; most of the important installations were built in duplicate as a precaution against space attack. I know where all of them are. "But I could find nothing, not one single word, about any giant strategic planning computer called Merlin! -- Is there really a Merlin?" That's what Conn Maxwell asked, and the question irked those who heard it. Of course it did! Merlin meant everything to the folks on the planet Poictesme: power, pleasures, and profits unlimited. But the leading men of the planet didn't believe him. They couldn't! The search for Merlin had become their abiding obsession. Everybody believed that when this super-gigantic computer was located amid the mountains of surplus equipment that was the planet's sole source of revenue, it would mean Utopia for everyone. Conn Maxwell knew different. He had studied the records on Earth and he thought he knew the true facts about this cosmic computer. To tell them would be to panic , so instead he set about a new search in his own way -- with startling results.