H. (Henry) Beam Piper was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in 1903, and died, an apparent suicide, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 1964.  Piper's first published story, "Time and Time Again," (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1947), was adapted for radio and aired on the NBC program Dimension X on 12 July, 1951, and again on the NBC program X Minus One on 11 January, 1956.  His first novel was the 1953 mystery Murder in the Gunroom.  Piper's science-fiction novel Little Fuzzy was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1963.  His historical essay "Rebel Raider," published in True: The Men's Magazine in 1950, inspired the fictional teleplay Willie and the Yank, a three-part mini-series which aired on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color in January 1967 (and was later released theatrically as Mosby's Marauders).  Piper was a member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), the New York Authors' Club, and the Hydra Club.

The intellectual property rights to Piper's fiction were acquired after his death by Ace Books (now an imprint owned by the Penguin Group).  Author Jerry Pournelle was granted the right by Piper himself (and acknowledged by Ace) to publish stories set in Piper's fictional settings but apparently has decided not to take advantage of this opportunity.  In the early 1980's, Ace published two sequels to Piper's Fuzzy novels, William Tuning's Fuzzy Bones and Ardath Mayhar's Golden Dream: A Fuzzy Odyssey, before Piper's own unpublished sequel, Fuzzies and Other People, was discovered and published (by Ace) in 1984.  Author Steven Barnes has written a screenplay (1979) adapted from Piper's novel Little Fuzzy but it has apparently not (yet?) been produced.  Author and Piper biographer John F. Carr, who edited four anthologies of Piper's short stories also published by Ace in the 1980's, has authored three sequels (so far), Great Kings War (with Roland Green), Kalvan Kingmaker (with Roland Green), and Siege of Tarr-Hostigos, to Piper's Paratime novel Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen.