H. Beam Piper is one of science fiction's most enigmatic writers. In 1946 Piper appeared seemingly from out of nowhere, already at the top of his form. He published a number of memorable short stories in the premier science fiction magazine of the time, Astounding Science Fiction, under legendary editor John W. Campbell. Piper quickly became friends with many of the top writers of the day, including Lester Del Rey, Fletcher Pratt, Robert Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp. Piper also successfully made the turn from promising short story writer to major novelist, authoring Four-Day Planet, Cosmic Computer, Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen and Little Fuzzy, which was nominated for a Hugo award. Even those who counted Piper among their friends knew very little about the man or his life as a railroad yard bull in Altoona, Pennsylvania. This biography illuminates H. Beam Piper, both the writer and the man, and answers lingering questions about his death. Appendices include a number of Piper's personal papers, a complete bibliography of Piper's works, and an essay on Piper's Terro-Human Future History series.

H. Beam Piper's The Cosmic Computer has long been recognized as a science fiction classic and a major foundation of Piper's Terro-Human Future History. The planet Poictesme was the headquarters of the Terran Federation Third Army-Fleet during the war against the System States Alliance. While Federation commander General Foxx Travis was preparing for the final phase of the war, his plans came to a sudden halt when the System States unexpectedly surrendered. With the fighting over, the Federation Third-Army Fleet no longer needed to stay on Poictesme and suddenly departed, leaving behind war ships, fabrication centers, ammunition depots and supply caches. Almost as fast as the Federation forces abandoned Poictesme, the economy imploded, resulting in a poverty-stricken agricultural society with only a few exports, melon-brandy, tobacco and war surplus, which sold for only a fraction of its pre-war value. Persisting over the decades after the Federation's departure was the legend of Merlin, the super-computer which was credited with having planned the grand strategy which successfully concluded the System States War. Was there a real super-computer, one that devised the Terran Federation's overall strategy against the System States Alliance, or was it simply a myth? The inhabitants of the ramshackle world of Poictesme believe it still exists and will save them: "Merlin's a religion with those people. Merlin's a robot god, something they can shove all their problems onto. As soon as they find Merlin, everybody will be rich and happy, the Government bonds will be redeemed at face value plus interest, the paper money'll be worth a hundred Federation centisols to the sol, and the leaves and wastepaper will be raked off the Mall, all by magic." When young Conn Maxwell returns to Poictesme from Earth, with a university degree in computer science, he has strong doubts that Merlin was anything more than a war-time myth. Furthermore, he believes that finding the super-computer (if by some miracle it does exist) might be the worst thing that could possibly happen to his home world.

RAINBOW RUN is a novel of the far future, detailing a world where the normal rules have been turned over, and upside down. When one of its denizens awakens from a stupor, he discovers he's in the Rainbow Room, a triangular room filled with pitfalls where the first misstep will be the last. He quickly discovers that his memory has been stripped away, and he's left with no knowledge of himself or the world he finds himself inhabiting. With the help of Errox, a mysterious and malevolent stranger, who names him Rathe, he manages to escape the Color Wheel, only to discover that the danger outside in the urbodes is omnipresent and difficult to evade. Everywhere Rathe turns, everyone he meets is only interested in using him for their own advancement in the war of shades. In a world where the color of your wristlock determines your fate, Rathe is a lost soul desperately trying to learn the rules of a game that has no rules. Meanwhile, Rathe is on a quest to find out his true identity and why he was brainwiped. The answers are everywhere and nowhere. Most of the people he meets are so busy playing the Color Game they have little or awareness of the larger world they inhabit. In this world, only those wearing the rainbow wristlocks have universal access and immortality. Not only does he have to figure out who he is, but how to survive in the midst of growing chaos....

War World: Jihad is the third volume in a grand reissue of the War World anthologies presenting Haven's history in a chronological fashion. Jihad is a trade hardcover and includes seven new stories, a short novel and one previously published yarn. The CoDominium is fraying apart at the seams, and to save itself the Soviet/American coalition is exporting Earth's problems to the outer worlds, including exiling millions of Earth's fanatic Muslims on Haven. Nor is this volatile situation helped when off-worlders from Levant arrive to support the rebels with military advisors and advanced weaponry. When Dire Lake dries up, famine and pestilence arrive with a vengeance. The Faithful believe that this is a sign from Allah: the time has arrived to overthrow the corrupt CoDominium lackeys and their Company sponsors in the Northern Steppes. So the Mahdi declares a Jihad and warfare breaks out with only a thin blue line between the jihadists and what remains of civilization on Haven. In a last-ditch attempt to save the Haven colony, Admiral Lermontov sends in the 42nd Marines. Will the Marines arrive in time? And if they do, can they stop the jihadists and save the overwhelmed CoDominium Marine garrison at Fort Camerone? Or will they be undone by the Brotherhood and other off-world powers seeking the dissolution of the CoDominium?

THE SAURONS ARE HERE The battle between the Sauron Coalition of Secession and the First Empire of Man in the twenty-seventh century ended in a war of extermination and the all-out bombardment of the planet Sauron. The only surviving Sauron spaceship, the Fomoria, is commanded by Vessel First Rank Galen Diettinger. Fleeing Imperial pursuit, the Saurons land on Haven, a hardscrabble world of extreme temperatures, hard radiation, deadly flora and fauna and wastelands containing some of the toughest humans in occupied space. Born in rebellions and civil war, life on Haven is a constant struggle against the harsh moon's environment, as well as its other occupants-animal and human-all desperate to carve out their own niche. On this desolate moon, the Sauron Soldiers not only have to fight off the human inhabitants, but face a mutiny in their own ranks, as the Cyborg Super Soldiers make a bid to rule the last surviving colony. The Cyborgs are the ultimate product of Sauron's millennium-long eugenics program and as such are the end-point in the Race's military development. To the Super Soldiers it is unthinkable that a mere Soldier-no matter how brilliant-should command the new Sauron Homeworld. Meanwhile, Brigadier Gary Cummings, commander of the Haven Volunteers, has lost both his headquarters and military forts. But Brigadier Cummings has fought the Saurons before and knows that the Saurons have no mercy for human norms; this is a war of total domination. The Saurons want to own Haven and use her population as breeding stock for future Soldiers. To fight back, the Brigadier is starting a guerilla campaign in the outback. Castell City and Lermontovgrad have been bombed back to the stone age, but the humans of War World have been tested before.... The one thing the Saurons hadn't anticipated was a mutiny in their own ranks leading to a three-cornered war.

THE MERLIN GAMBIT by John F. Carr & Dietmar Wehr opens five years after the events in H. Beam Piper's classic novel, The Cosmic Computer. The planet Poictesme is in the middle of an economic boom and Conn Maxwell is both happily married and a new father. The Maxwell Plan is working even better than expected. Tri-System Interstellar spaceships are moving Poictesme's products throughout the Terran Federation and it looks like the bad times are finally over. However, storm clouds are gathering on the horizon. Space piracy has suddenly struck out of nowhere, but the pirates are only attacking Tri-System Interstellar freighters. It appears that someone is playing a deadly chess game with Merlin and the Merlin-12 Group. These new events cause Conn Maxwell to wonder if the Federation High Command built more than one super-computer. Is it possible that a Merlin double is working against them? In an attempt to uncover their mysterious opponent, Conn makes a trip to Terra to find the answers they so desperately need. Meanwhile, an unexpected series of discoveries made on Koshchei suddenly jeopardizes not only the Maxwell plan, but very heart of the Federation. This unexpected wild-card could change the balance of power throughout humanities' sphere of worlds, leading to the era of interstellar warfare that the Merlin-12 Group has worked so hard to prevent.

"Fitzgerald Baker may well have been conceived in an act of erotic terrorism. That was what his mother had told him and it can be verified that Felix Pendragon initiated her into the League of Erotic Terrorists. However, she was also known to sacrifice truth for entertainment in most of what she said." With these words, Phillip Wendell, lifestyle crisis counselor, relates to the reader the initial phase of the counseling of Fitzgerald Baker whose crisis was triggered by viewing Roald Vallen's documentary, The Crying Clown Rites. The painful initiation of youth into manhood, the bizarre clown makeup and the hunt that ended in a thrill kill were disturbing parts of the film to Fitz, a disenchanted architect in his thirties who is tired of the lifestyle of transient personalities and throwaway relationships. Baker-the great grandson of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe-believes that maturity has evaded him and he fears both assassination and suicide because both run rampant in his ancestry. The film about the secret rites of the Jackson Hole Enclave bring these fears to the surface. Phillip takes Fitz on a Candide-like journey through the psychiatric cults and treatments of the late twenty-second century. This strange journey culminates when Phillip uses hypnodrug psychodrama to recreate in Fitz's mind the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas with Fitz over-identifying with the victim. "The best psychological science-fiction novel since The Demolished Man...the tension mounts and mounts...I couldn't put it down...it might do your head as much good as an Encounter Group with the Marx Brothers " Robert Anton Wilson, Coauthor of the Illuminatus Trilogy