Review: All good reads in the fine old tradition
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 9, 2012
H. Beam Piper didn't invent the parallel universes concept, but he did more than almost anyone else to popularize it.Piper's Paratime is an infinite band of parallel Earths, each splitting off as the result of a decision somewhere in history. The resulting levels range from uninhabited Earths to Earths with high space-faring civilizations. And one of those Earths discovered how to travel between these worlds.Of course a paratime traveling civilization opens the possibility of all sorts of mischief and requires a police force. Since the Original Time Line has exhausted its resources, it needs paratime travel to obtain the resources it requires to continue to exist. It's the job of the Paratime Police to keep order among the paratimers and to keep the Paratime Secret at all costs.These stories are built around the career of Verkan Val, paratime policeman extraordinary, and his efforts to help his culture keep the Paratime Secret. It's not an easy job. In the course of these stories Val has to recover a Venusian Night Hound that has been let loose on our timeline (late-40's Pennsylvania to be exact), get his sometime-wife Dalla off a world where reincarnation is scientifically proven fact before she overturns the entire civilization, and battle a gang of trans time slavers whose roots reach into the very heart of the Original Time Line government itself.Most of these stories originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in the late 40s and 50s. Like most Astounding offerings, they're full of high action against well-thought-out backgrounds and spiced with interesting characters. It makes for a colorful offering.Although Piper had been writing science fiction for more than 15 years, he didn't attract real notice until his last Paratime story, Lord Kalvin of Otherwhen, and the unrelated Little Fuzzy. Unfortunately, depressed by financial troubles, he committed suicide just as his career was taking off. It's good to have this collection to help remember H. Beam Piper at his best.