Customer Reviews

Flight from Tomorrow and Other SF

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With the transition of much of H. Beam Piper's work into the public domain publishers like Aegypan Press have finally begun to bring Piper's work back into print and for that fans of Piper owe them a debt of gratitude. But this collection is an odd choice. The title story is one of Piper's least imaginative and includes an outdated and mistaken understanding of radiation poisoning as a central plot element. Two other stories, "The Answer" and "Operation R.S.V.P.," are cautionary tales from the Cold War era of Mutually-Assured Destruction (MAD) that will also seem outdated to contemporary readers. It does include "Graveyard of Dreams," an intriguing novela that was later expanded by Piper into the novel The Cosmic Computer (originally published as Junkyard Planet) but this story only introduces the plot that is finished in the novel. "Genesis," a story of ancient Martian explorers crash-landed on Earth is seem by most Piper fans as the "genesis" of Piper's Paratime yarns. Finally, the story "Edge of the Knife," about a history professor who has glimpses of the future on the eve of World War III, is the most interesting and complex one in this collection and is also the first of Piper's Terrohuman Future History yarns.