Books with author H.Beam Piper

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.

This short novel by H. Beam Piper was originally published in two parts in Astounding Science Fiction, February and March of 1955 and was also published in the 1981 collection, "Paratime."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.

An extraordinary novel from the 1950’s, the period called the Golden Age of science fiction literature, and the first in Piper’s well-known series entitled Terro-Human Future History, Uller Uprising is based on the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, a revolt of the Indian military ranks against the dominance and rule of the British East India Company and it reflects on the concept that whatever happened in the past will happen again in the future. The novel presents a detailed, complex and elaborate alternate world that is like ours, but all so different as well and the intriguing story is presented in Piper’s signature style that pins the reader to his or her chair to the very end.The novel features Piper’s well-known Terran Federation and its Chartered Company, an organization that bears a striking resemblance to the Britain’s East India Company. The company generates huge profit on Uller, a habitable planet in the galaxy that resembles Earth in many respects and it tries to embetter the life of the local communities, but natives revolt against the foreigners. The book includes detailed descriptions of the hardware and the technology used by the military against the rebels and the reader also gets detailed explanations about how the military mind works as well as of the moral implications of the military mentality.Even though the ideology behind the plot is considered to be questionable, Uller Uprising does make an exciting read. The story is fast-paced and eventful, with detailed descriptions of battle scenes and the characters, human and Ulleran alike, are complex and intelligent, making up opposing parties of equally strong skills. The story wraps up in a way that is predictable only to a certain extent – Terrans will find the solution that puts an end to the rebellion, but the solution itself is truly surprising, including one more twist into the story at the very end.

Four-Day Planet:Fenris isn't a hell planet, but it's nobody's bargain. With 2,000-hour days and an 8,000-hour year, it alternates blazing heat with killing cold. A planet like that tends to breed a special kind of person: tough enough to stay alive and smart enough to make the best of it. When that kind of person discovers he's being cheated of wealth he's risked his life for, that kind of planet is ripe for revolution.

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! "When they turned and stepped off, the orange and blue aircar had let down directly in front of them, blocking their way. Now he was really furious, and started forward with a curse. Then he saw who was in the car. Andray Dunnan, his thin face contorted and the narrow mustache writhing on his upper lip; he had a slit beside the window open and was tilting the barrel of a submachine gun up and out of it. He shouted, and at the same time tripped Elaine and flung her down. He was throwing himself forward to cover her when there was a blasting multiple report. Something sledged him in the chest; his right leg crumpled under him. He fell- He fell and fell and fell, endlessly, through darkness, out of consciousness. " H. Beam Piper (1904-1964) weaves yet another colorful, exciting, and mind-grabbing science-fiction tale with SPACE VIKING. There have been few SF authors who can pack so much adventure into a single book and still be concise, clear, and complete - - Piper has always been at the top of that list!