Customer Reviews

Junkyard Planet

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Junkyard Planet (Cosmic Computer) is one of H. Beam Piper's best works. Would have liked to have seen more based in that universe.

With the transition of much of H. Beam Piper's work into the public domain publishers like Wildside Press have finally begun to bring Piper's work back into print and for that fans of Piper owe them a debt of gratitude. This novel, set in Piper's Terrohuman Future History (and oddly issued under its original title--Piper preferred The Cosmic Computer), is one of his best. Poictesme (pronounced "pwa-tem") is a backwater planet, its economy crashed in the aftermath of an interstellar civil war, its surface dotted with known and unknown installations from the war. Conn Maxwell, freshly returned from computer studies on Terra (the non-miniaturized technology here will make some readers stumble), leads an exciting search for the fabled lost supercomputer, Merlin, that helped to win the war. In an adventure that takes us across the planet and into the local solar system Conn and his colleagues encounter pirates, Merlin-worshippers, wayward robots, and saboteurs before discovering a long-kept secret that threatens all of interstellar civilization! This is an exciting, tightly-written story that showcases Piper's storytelling at its complex and intricate best.

Other Terrohuman Future History works by Piper include Four-Day Planet, Uller Uprising, Little Fuzzy, and Space Viking.