Piper, H Beam - Empire

VIP免费

2024-11-29 0 0 415.34KB 163 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Empire

"Empire" a story collection written by H. Beam Piper.

Scanned by Highroller and proofed more or less by Highroller.

TERRO-HUMAN FUTURE HISTORY CHRONOLOGY*

* (The following dates are approximations suggested by data in H. Beam Piper's short stories and

novels.)

(1942)1 A.E. Year One of the Atomic Era, which begins when the first atomic pile goes into operation

under the direction of Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago.

The first unmanned rocket, the Kilroy, is launched.

The first Lunar base is completed.

The Thirty Days War; the First Terran Federation is formed.

The First Mars Expedition.

Contragravity is developed.

The Mars Colony is established.

The first colony on Venus is started.

The first interstellar expedition.

Venus secedes from the Terran Federation.

The First Terran Federation is dissolved and the Second Terran Federation is established.

The Uller Uprising, a revolt against the Federation by the natives of Uller.

The Chartered Fenris Company goes bust.

The Gartner Trisystem is settled.

Zarathustra is found and colonized.

Foxx Travis is born.

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20...n%20series%20(4)/02%20-%20Empire%201.0.html (1 of 163) [12/24/2004 11:44:17 PM]

Empire

Native revolt on Kwann.

Aditya is discovered.

—854 The System States War, starts when the System States Alliance tries to break away from

Federation control.

Ten thousand refugees from Abigor flee with the remnants of the System States Navy to found a new

civilization. They colonize Excalibur, the first Sword-World.

Merlin, the great Federation battle computer is located on Poictesme.

—1399 The Interstellar Wars, a series of revolts and wars that lead to the collapse of the Terran

Federation.

Aditya is occupied by Morglay.

Skathi is deserted by the Space Vikings.

Six Space Viking ships from Haulteclere raid Aton; four of their ships are destroyed and two others limp

home. After this failure the Space Vikings no longer raid civilized worlds.

During a war between Aton and Baldur, the Planetary Nationalist Party on Aton takes power and forms a

dictatorship.

The Nemesis spaceship is built and Lucas Trask leaves Gram for Tanith in the Old Federation.

The Battle of Audhumla

Omfray of Glaspyth, with a fleet of eight Space Viking ships, lands on Gram.

The Battle of Marduk.

King Steven IV becomes the first Galactic Emperor.

The Sword-Worlds are added to the Empire.

Emperor Paul II begins building the Imperial palace on Odin.

Rodrik VI completes the consolidation of the First Galactic Empire.

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20...n%20series%20(4)/02%20-%20Empire%201.0.html (2 of 163) [12/24/2004 11:44:17 PM]

Empire

Paul XXII tries to move the Empire out of its complacent rut.

INTRODUCTION John F. Carr

EX-BEATLE JOHN LENNON IS SHOT TO DEATH IN NEW YORK reads

the headline of the Los Angeles Times as I write this article. Hundreds of distraught fans are already

gathering at the famed Dakota Building where John Lennon lived and died. Thousands of flowers drape

the fence. Tower Records of Hollywood announces they've sold over a thousand copies of Lennon's new,

last, record, "Double Fantasy," in less than ten hours. Radio stations across the dial are playing Lennon's

songs and Beatle retrospectives.

I think of James Dean, Jim Morrison, Dylan Thomas, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Marilyn Monroe, John F.

Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Cordwainer Smith, Brian Jones—H. Beam Piper.

There's very little other than death that gives these people anything in common; a premature death that

robbed them of future success and us of the special talents that might have enriched us all. What they all

left us was a terrible sense of loss—within the science fiction community, the rock music community, the

literary community, and occasionally the entire human family.

At the time of his death, H. Beam Piper was writing at the top of his form and certainly with the best of

his contemporaries. "Omnilingual."

"Gunpowder God," Little Fuzzy, The Cosmic Computer, Space Viking: these were the products of Piper's

last five years. When he died, Piper was working on a major historical novel, Only the Arquebus, had

recently completed the third, and now lost, "Fuzzy" novel, and was finishing a new Empire novelet. We

can only imagine what Piper, free of debts and worries, might have accomplished during the next ten or

twenty years. Jerry Pournelle believes that had Beam lived, he would have been elevated to the top ranks

of the science fiction pantheon.

But we will never know, and that is the greatest tragedy of all. Piper's death, by his own hand, because he

wrongly believed his career was finished, brought everything to a premature end. Because of problems

over the estate, it also kept much of his early work out of print for some time.

For over twenty years Piper's short stories have remained forgotten in past issues of musty old science

fiction pulps. Other than an occasional anthology appearance, few of Piper's short stories have ever

appeared in book form. But now, thanks to Ace Books, the best of them are being reissued in thematic

collections like this one. Now together for the first time in Empire are the stories that describe and define

the First Galactic Empire and the later times of the Terro-Human Future History.

* * *

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20...n%20series%20(4)/02%20-%20Empire%201.0.html (3 of 163) [12/24/2004 11:44:17 PM]

Empire

H. Beam Piper is best known to sf readers for his Fuzzy books and to fans for his Paratime stories, but it

is his Terro-Human Future History that is his greatest and most imaginative gift. Robert A. Heinlein may

or may not have created the first future history series in science fiction, but he certainly gave it its modern

definition and legitimacy. Isaac Asimov and Poul Anderson soon followed with their own unique

contributions. Not far behind was H. Beam Piper. The Terro-Human Future History may not have the

evolutionary synthesis of Gordon R. Dickson's Childe Cycle or the breadth of Anderson's Polesotechnic

League and Terran Empire, but Piper's history of the future has a historian's attention to sociological and

political detail that is unsurpassed.

As related by Jerry Pournelle, Piper's original plan had been to do a story per century throughout the first

several thousand years of the Terro-Human Future History. Even had he lived another twenty years it is

doubtful that he would have accomplished this goal. The demand for sequels to the Fuzzy books and

Space Viking made it improbable. Yet, we are all the poorer for his not having had the time to try.

The Terran Federation itself is well mapped out by Four-Day Planet, Uller Uprising, Little Fuzzy, Fuzzy

Sapiens, The Cosmic Computer, and half-a-dozen short stories; however, only one novel, Space Viking,

and three short stories exist to describe the next four or five thousand years. Furthermore, since Space

Viking takes place several hundred years before the First Galactic Empire, there are some large holes

indeed.

"A Slave is a Slave" occurs during the consolidation of the First Empire and does illuminate some

imperial policy; however, it leaves us with many questions about where the Empire began and how it rose

to power. ''Ministry of Disturbance" takes place some eight hundred years later when the Empire is at

peace and suffering from stagnation. It sheds some light on a few of the previous Emperors, their reigns,

and the state of the once mighty Sword-Worlds, but again provides us with nothing concerning the

genesis of the Empire.

In order to learn more about the origins of the First Empire we have to look back at the Federation and its

fall. In The Cosmic Computer, Piper's major late Federation story, we find the Federation in retrenchment.

It is no longer expanding and the economy is deteriorating. Although Piper never makes this explicit, it

appears that some sense of common purpose and unity was lost during the System States War, an

economic war as brutal as the War Between the States. Part of the reason is that Merlin—the super battle-

computer that directed the Federation's strategy during the war—had predicted the breakup of the

Federation at the end of the war. "…the strain of that conflict [the System States War] had started an

irreversible breakup. Two centuries for the Federation as such; at most, another century of irregular trade

and occasional war between independent planets, in a Galaxy full of human-populated planets as poor as

Poictesme at its worst."

The leaders of Poictesme, the world where Merlin has remained hidden since the war, learn of this

prophecy when they locate Merlin. They ask Merlin's advice on how to stop the coming dark age; the

computer gives them the Merlin Plan, a step by step blueprint on how to save Poictesme from the breakup

of the Federation and then begin a revival of civilization. The mystery here is that there is no further

mention of Poictesme or Merlin or the Merlin Plan in any of the novels or short stories that follow The

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20...n%20series%20(4)/02%20-%20Empire%201.0.html (4 of 163) [12/24/2004 11:44:17 PM]

Empire

Cosmic Computer.

In Space Viking we learn that the Interstellar Wars arrived just about the time Merlin predicted, as did the

breakup of the Federation. Both books were written at about the same time; The Cosmic Computer was

published in 1963, while Space Viking was serialized in Analog starting in Nov. 1962. Yet, there is

nothing in Space Viking that gives any indication that Merlin or Poictesme had any effect at all in the

rebirth of civilization. Unfortunately, Piper never wrote any stories that bridge these two novels, leaving a

seven-hundred-year gap that includes the fall of the Federation and rise of Neobarbarism.

At the time of Space Viking, the fall of civilization is almost complete; only a few worlds such as Marduk,

Aton, Baldur, and Odin have retained some degree of Federation culture and interstellar spaceflight. Most

of the former Federation planets have regressed to a more primitive state, anywhere from nuclear-power-

using civilizations all the way down to the Old Stone Age. Most of these worlds have political and social

structures resembling ones out of Terra's past (unsurprising, since one of Piper's major themes throughout

the Terro-Human Future History is that the future repeats the past). Li "The Edge of the Knife" Piper has

his history professor say: "There were so few things, in the history of the past, which did not have their

counterparts in the future." In Space Viking, as the title indicates, this theme is played over and over

again.

The Sword-Worlds do not suffer from the Federation's fall as they are separated from the Federation by

culture as well as distance. The Sword-Worlds were settled by refugees from the System States. "Ten

thousand men and women on Abigor, refusing to surrender, had taken the remnant of the System States

Alliance navy to space, seeking a world the Federation had never heard of and wouldn't find for a long

time. That had been the world they had called Excalibur. From it, their grandchildren had colonized

Joyeuse and Durendal and Flamberge; Haulteclere had been colonized in the next generation from

Joyeuse, and Gram from Haulteclere.'' Sword-World civilization continues to flourish until a ship from

Morglay returns from the Old Federation to tell what has been going on there since the System States

War.

The Space Vikings have a hybrid civilization, a mixture of high technology and feudalism. Sword-World

men are expected to fight for their freedoms and keep careful rein on those who lead them. When talking

to the Mardukan court, Lucas Trask—Prince of Tanith and former Space Viking—describes their political

system: "Well, we don't use the word government very much… We talk a lot about authority and

sovereignty, and I'm afraid we burn entirely too much powder over it, but government always seems to us

like sovereignty interfering in matters that don't concern it. As long as sovereignty maintains a reasonable

semblance of good public order and makes the more serious forms of crime fairly hazardous for the

criminals, we're satisfied."

Sword-World civilization, by the time of Space Viking, is already on the decline; far too many trained and

needed men are being drawn to the Federation for plunder and are then staying. When the Space Vikings

do return home, their ships are loaded with stolen goods which can be sold at discounted prices unfairly

competing with Sword-World-made products. The result is unemployment and runaway inflation which

ruin the local economy. Historically, the same thing happened in Spain after the discovery of the New

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20...n%20series%20(4)/02%20-%20Empire%201.0.html (5 of 163) [12/24/2004 11:44:17 PM]

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

Empire"Empire"astorycollectionwrittenbyH.BeamPiper.ScannedbyHighrollerandproofedmoreorlessbyHighroller.TERRO-HUMANFUTUREHISTORYCHRONOLOGY**(ThefollowingdatesareapproximationssuggestedbydatainH.BeamPi\per'sshortstoriesandnovels.)(1942)1A.E.YearOneoftheAtomicEra,whichbeginswhenthefirsta\tomicpilegoesi...

展开>> 收起<<

Piper, H Beam - Empire.pdf

共163页,预览5页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Piper, H Beam - Empire

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: