Piper, H Beam - Paratime

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Paratime by H. Beam

Piper

INTRODUCTION

John F. Carr

Here, at long last, are the Paratime tales (with the exception of the Lord Kalvan

stories*) by H. Beam Piper together in one volume. These stories, first published

in Astounding Science Fiction during the late forties and early fifties, are the

foundation of Piper's reputation as one of the great sf adventure writers. Together

they display Piper's lifelong interest in history, reincarnation and alternate

worlds, and the time theories of J. W. Dunne.

*The first two Lord Kalvan novelettes, "Gunpowder God" and "Down Styphon,"

were published in Analog in the sixties. In 1965 they were collected, together

with a third novelette, and published as Lord Kalvan Of Otherwhen by Ace

Books.

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Interestingly enough, H. Beam Piper's first published story, "Time and Time

Again," was a time travel piece: It begins with a soldier on a World War III

battlefield who is at the point of death when he is projected back into his

childhood persona. The rest of the story deals with his attempts to influence the

"future" of his childhood, and later of mankind. The story has an

autobiographical feel and Piper does a good job of evoking rural Pennsylvania,

where he himself was raised.

Until the late fifties, most of H. Beam Piper's fiction was concerned with time

travel and alternate worlds, stories such as "He Walked Around the Horses."

"Genesis." "Police Operation." "Flight From Tomorrow," and others. Other

science fiction writers, Philip K. Dick, Robert Silverberg, Keith Laumer, Poul

Anderson, etc., have dealt with time travel and paradox, but none—with the

possible exception of Richard Meredith—have been so obsessed with it.

There may be an explanation: At a science fiction convention in Seattle in the

early sixties, Jerry Pournelle asked Piper whether he believed in reincarnation or

not. Beam's answer was yes, and he added that the story "He Walked Around the

Horses" was one that had occurred in a past life. Well aware of Piper's wry sense

of humor, Jerry questioned him further, but could elicite no more information.

Jerry left convinced that Piper was serious.

A little over five years ago, I rode an RTD bus into Los Angeles and sat next to a

bearded man in his late twenties. It was a long ride and after a while we fell into

conversation; the talk turned to reincarnation. This man, a former Vietnam

soldier, claimed that he was the reincarnation of a World War II lieutenant who

had died somewhere in Normandy. All his life he had been fascinated by war

toys and games of war, and had sometimes dreamed of battles and long marches.

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No one, including himself, had thought his interests unusual as they were quite

common among his peers. It wasn't until he joined the Marines that he began to

have actual flashbacks of World War Two battlefields and firefights.

They continued, predominately in dreams, throughout his tour of 'Nam. He had

thought they would stop when he returned to the United States, but they didn't.

They intensified.

When I talked with him, he was working in a carwash, living at home with his

parents, and saving every cent he could towards a pilgrimage to Normandy. His

free time was spent in the library researching World War Two and trying to

identify that young lieutenant. He was certain that once he found the young

officer's name he would be able to lay his ghost to rest, or possibly find his real

identity. He wasn't sure. He admitted that with every passing year his own life

grew more faint and the young lieutenant's grew stronger. He was even

beginning to relive his youth in the Midwest. I left the bus convinced that he

believed every word of what he'd told me, and certain that I wouldn't want to be

in his place.

David Chamberlain, a San Diego psychologist who completed a study on birth

memories under hypnosis, claims that people can remember their own births in

great detail. A large number of his subjects, during hypnotic age regression,

remembered their painful birth experiences, complaining bitterly about harsh

treatment by their doctors and separation from their mothers. Some of these

memories had led to lifelong traumas; psychological maladaption brought on by

chance remarks, headaches resulting from rough handling with forceps, digestive

problems caused by the mother's refusal to breastfeed, and asthma provoked by

the panic of delivery. In nine out often cases, Dr. Chamberlain found that these

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memories were corroborated by the mothers during independent questioning.

In an interview in the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Chamberlain said: "The fact that a

child's mind is actually working at birth upsets a lot of theories… obviously,

we're not dealing with the brain at all…I don't think that birth memory has

anything whatever to do with the brain. What we're dealing with is mind. It's a

non-physical aspect of every person. And mind has an all-or-nothing quality. It

doesn't develop cell by cell over the years so that it's competent to do something

at six years that it can't do at two. It's just not that way." Reincarnation is one

possible explanation for the retention of birth memories.

I think H. Beam Piper would have been very interested in Dr. Chamberlain's

work. In "Last Enemy" Hadron Dalla is doing research on reincarnation,

although she is attempting to communicate with the recent (dead) rather than the

newly born.

On the Akor-Neb time-line where Dalla is doing her research, we have a culture

where reincarnation is an accepted scientific truth, while death is considered no

more than a somewhat disruptive event—more an inconvenience than anything

else. When Dalla establishes communication with recently dead who have not

yet picked a new incarnation, she starts a political crisis between the

Volitionalists (the party that believes you return in the body of your choice) and

the Statisticalists (who believe that one is reincarnated in the first available

human host). Not only does she undermine the belief in statistical reincarnation,

but she opens up a literal Pandora's Box over inheritance laws and guilt over

crimes in past lives.

If H. Beam Piper did believe in volitional reincarnation, it goes a long way to

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explain his own suicide. While an inconvenience, death does clean the slate of

debts and financial obligations, and Piper at the time of his death felt weighed

down by both. I hope for his sake he was right.

* * *

The idea of parallel worlds is an old one in human mythology and folk tales,

with roots in mythical fairylands and astral planes. Edgar Rice Burroughs, A.

Merritt, and Henry Kuttner were some of the first writers to use this theme in

science fiction. A major treatment of the parallel worlds theme has been to create

a series of alternate worlds as part of a continuum of increasing social and

historical variation from a template world—usually a present or future version of

our own civilization. These variations are based on alternate historical

branchings at some time in the past; for example, Carthage winning the Punic

Wars with Rome or Germany defeating the Allies in World War II. The farther

in the past these historical branchings take place, the more bizarre the alternate

world appears to the travelers from the template world.

Piper's template world, the Home Time-Line, is an advanced civilization based

on Martian colonization of the earth some seventy-five to one hundred thousand

years in the past. The Home Line Paratimers use the Ghaldron-Hesthor

Transposition Field to travel between the ten-to-the-hundred-thousandth time-

lines. Piper created the Paratime Police to primarily guard the secret of the

transpositional field and to enforce the laws of the Paratime Commission and

Home Line society. As for the Home Time-Line and what it uses the

transposition travel for: "For over twelve millennia, the people of her race… had

been existing as parasites on all the innumerable other worlds of alternate

probability on the lateral dimension of time. Smart parasites never injure their

hosts, and try never to reveal their existence."

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Piper,H.Beam-Paratime(v1.0)(html)ScannedbyHighroller.ProofedmoreorlessbyHighroller.MadeprettierbyuseofEBookDesignGroupStylesheet.ParatimebyH.BeamPiperINTRODUCTIONJohnF.CarrHere,atlonglast,aretheParatimetales(withtheexceptionoftheLordKalvanstories*)byH.BeamPipertogetherinonevolume.Thesestories,first...

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