Customer Reviews

Little Fuzzy, Space Viking and Other Terro-Human Future History Stories from H. Beam Piper (Twelve Terro-Human Future History Novels in One Volume)

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Folks, this is what I'm talking about! TWELVE books in one book. This is the advantage of e-books and the Kindle--whole interlinked collections that you can carry around without the weight.

Linked table of contents worked awesome and the formatting looks great on my Kindle.

The first H. Beam Piper book I read was Space Viking. Loved it and shortly afterword found Little Fuzzy. This is sci-fi with intelligence! Piper was a brilliant author that committed suicide before his writing got the credit it deserved.

All twelve books are loosely connected because they take place in the same future that Piper dubbed the "Terro-Human Future."

But they do not have to be read in order or anything like that. They aren't really connected by characters or anything, so you can skip around read them out of order.

Space Viking remains my favorite from this collection (think Star Wars with more background and action), followed by the very great "Four-Day Planet" and "Uller Uprising."

But let's not forget the best known, "Little Fuzzy," which is a sci-fi classic about a small sentient species accidentally found on a planet that was set to be destroyed.

All twelve books are great and many of them I never would have found if it weren't for this collection. Makes the Piper suicide all the more tragic--he was a great writer. Classic science fiction at it's best. For less than a dollar? Oh yeah....

H. Beam Piper has long been one of my favorite authors. the collections offered make for a great mixed reading of his works, I say mixed as the collections generally come from variouse series that he wrote in his future history, (much like the works of Robert A. Hienlien and his future history)

With the works of authors from gerations past you must gear yourself to the thinking of the era they lived in, in most of Piper's works settle into the mind frame that lived in the time when atomic bombs and nuclear energy was young and considered the greatest thing since sliced bread and little was actually known about them by the general public a time when almost everyone smoked some form of tobacco product without being condemed for it, a time when almost everyone had a coctail hour with friends sipping hi-balls and smoking and sexual liberation was barely peaking around the corner.

Piper used a lot of history in his righting, transposing past events onto future settings in an intelligent and entertaining way, actually at least one of his stories is a true history of a civil war officer (not sure if it is in this collection or another one).

Piper as it has been said in a previous review committed suicide thinking his life was a failure just before his publisher could reach him to tell him of his success.

Little Fuzzy has to be one of his most successful books but the planet wasn't about to be destroyed as state previously the company was trying to destroy the fuzzies.

Piper's paratime series will always include at least 2 if not more characters from previous books and brdge together better if read in order.

All of his books tie into his future history but its not a straight line step into the future, various series cover different time periods and some branch into paratime periods.

The other reviewers have covered most of what I would say about the series. As they noted, the "ambience" is constant smoking and cocktails every evening along with a fairly hard-nosed attitude about solving problems. These stories were written only a decade or so after the use of nuclear weapons at the end of WWII. Because of this, nuclear weapons and even more destructive follow-ons show up often.

Piper is a relatively "hard" sci-fi writer for his time. He is not hung up just on technology, but includes legal drama, detailed and appealing alien description, and good character depiction. He also explores an area that is very relevant to modern life: the battle between profit motive and morality in business.

Although I have been reading sci-fi for many years, I had never read any of Piper's stories. I am sorry that I missed them until now.