Jon Crocker  10-21-2017
03:30 UT
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He did have a lot of forward-thinking items in his work - I first
started reading him when I was 10? 12? I was genuinely shocked when I
first found out how old the stories were.
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David "PiperFan" Johnson 10-18-2017
04:38 UT
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~
". . . big, chocolate-brown Brigadier-General Themistocles M'zangwe. . . ."
That's
Carlos von Schlichten describing his deputy, the "Greco-African"
officer who has his old job as commander of Konkrook military district
on Uller.
M'zangwe is a South African surname. There also seems
to have been a Greek immigrant community in South Africa at the time
Beam was writing, composed primarily of folks who left Greece after
World War II and the Greek Civil War which followed. So, presumably
M'zangwe is a South African.
But here's the problem. At the time
Beam was writing, the Afrikaner-led Nationalist government in South
Africa had already implemented extensive elements of _apartheid_. No
one named "M'zangwe" was serving as a general officer in the South
African military when Beam was writing ~Uller Uprising~.
We
know that the Afrikaners remained a potent influence in the (second)
Terran Federation. Afrikaans is one of the component languages of
Lingua Terra, after all.
Beam gives us no details in his
Terro-human Future History yarns but clearly he imagined some sort of
course-reversal in South Africa, a course in which a "Greco-African"
could rise to general officer rank in the Uller Company army (and
presumably to at least field officer rank in the Terran Federation Army
before that) while speaking the "English-Spanish-Afrikaans-Portuguese
mixture" that was Lingua Terra.
Just another way in which the ideas Beam portrayed in his yarns were years ahead of his time.
Tchau,
David
--
"That's
probably why the Southern Hemisphere managed to stay out of the Third
and Fourth World Wars." - Carlos von Schlichten (H. Beam Piper), ~Uller
Uprising~
~
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David "PiperFan" Johnson 10-04-2017
04:10 UT
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~
Dale Ridder wrote:
> For that matter, being an historian, you would
> be surprised on how much of what you read is
> slanted in one direction or another, and how
> the approach to any given event changes over
> time.
The
interesting thing is, I think we can see evidence of Beam doing this
purposely in the Terra-human Future History. Consider, for example, how
pitiless Trask and the Sword-Worlders--putting aside the Space Vikings
themselves--are toward the hapless people in the Old Federation. These
attitudes place them well outside what passed for "polite society" at
the time Beam was writing. But these are folks, Beam is showing us, who
are the descendants not only of those who lived through the Atomic
Wars--which destroyed civilization on half of Terra--but also of those
who managed to escape the collapse of interstellar civilization itself
and the devastation of several entire worlds. What seems, at first, to
be an "error"--or at least an odd, unsettling characterization--turns
out to be some rather subtle story-telling.
> As for the problem of Niflheim's location, I
> suspect that he simply moved the star to make
> the story work better, given the speed at which
> he was using for his hyperdrive in Uller Uprising.
I
think there may have been several unusual things going on in this early
"shared world" yarn. For example, while he sticks with Nu Puppis as
Nifflheim's system, Beam moves his Uller from Clark's Beta Hydri, in the
southern constellation Hydrus, to Beta Hydrae, in the northern
constellation Hydra. That seems an odd mistake for him _and_ his editor
to make--especially if it was Fletcher Pratt doing the editing for ~The
Petrified Planet~. (Pratt's "The Long View" doesn't seem to mention
the system its Uller is in, but its original publication in ~Startling
Stories~ also included Clark's essay with the Beta Hydri reference.) On
the other hand, there is no obvious dramatic reason why Beam might have
made this shift.
I think you're right that Beam's primary focus
was writing yarns that sold and therefore that his universe-building
took a backseat to the dramatic needs he believed best-suited his
interests in selling his work. On the other hand, I don't think we
should be too quick to dismiss what seem to be errors or contradictions.
I'm sure Beam made errors, yes, and at other times deliberately
contradicted himself in a later work because that fit his dramatic needs
at the time. But it's also clear that he often wrote with great care
and that sometimes what seem to be inconsistencies--like the seemingly
"six months to everywhere" phenomenon--can actually be understood in
ways that reveal socio-political aspects of the universe he was
constructing.
Znidd suddabit!
David
--
"It is not . .
. the business of an author of fiction to improve or inspire or educate
his reader, or to save the world from fascism, communism, racism,
capitalism, socialism, or anything else. [The author's] main objective
is to purvey entertainment of the sort his reader wants. If he has done
this, by writing interestingly about interesting people, human or
otherwise, doing interesting things, he has discharged his duty and
earned his check." - H. Beam Piper, "Double: Bill Symposium" interview
~
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David "PiperFan" Johnson 10-04-2017
03:04 UT
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~
Jon Crocker wrote:
> Obviously Piper's ideas changed and grew, so some
> things from early on were left by the wayside.
Yep. I think Dale's right too that the source of this "growth" may often have been simply his desire to make a sale.
> It's too bad he never got a chance to compile a final,
> definitive version.
I
agree it's a shame he didn't produce more work but I suspect that had
his life not been cut short he still would never have lived long enough
to do this (and that had he done so and tried, we'd be arguing now about
many of the choices he made to "reconcile" bits here and there).
Cheers,
David
--
"Why
Walt Disney bought the movie rights to ['Rebel Raider'], I've never
figured out. Will Colonel Mosby be played by Mickey Mouse, and General
Phil Sheridan by Donald Duck? It's baffling. However, I was glad to
get the check." -- H. Beam Piper, The Pennsy interview, 1953
~
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Jon Crocker 10-04-2017
02:55 UT
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"A little under six months to Terra from Uller, and then a couple of paragraphs later, six months from Niflheim to Uller."
Those aren't mutually exclusive.
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Dale Ridder 10-04-2017
01:50 UT
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I am not sure if Piper really view his Terran Future History in that
light of having a final, definitive version, as he kept changing things.
If you go through his books, his hyperdrive travel times are all over
the map, sometimes in the same book. Then in Little Fuzzy making
mention of time dilation effects just adds to the confusion. He was
writing stories to sell, not history books. For that matter, being an
historian, you would be surprised on how much of what you read is
slanted in one direction or another, and how the approach to any given
event changes over time. How many history books covering World War 2
are out there that start with either Pearl Harbor or the invasion of
Poland, with no coverage of any of the wars going on in other places?
As
for the problem of Niflheim's location, I suspect that he simply moved
the star to make the story work better, given the speed at which he was
using for his hyperdrive in Uller Uprising. Remember that this appears
in Uller Uprising. "Oh, Orgzild wouldn't be crazy enough to try
anything like that," Commander Dirk Prinsloo, of the Aldebaran,
declared. "He'd get away with it for just twelve months—the time it
would take to get the news to Terra and for a Federation Space Navy
task-force to get here. And then, there'd be little bits of radioactive
geek floating around this system as far out as the orbit of Beta Hydrae
VII."
A little under six months to Terra from Uller, and then a
couple of paragraphs later, six months from Niflheim to Uller. As I
said, he was writing a story and wanted to have the communications lag
in there, similar to what existed between India and Great Britain during
the Indian Mutiny, which clearly is what Uller Uprising is based on.
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Jon Crocker 10-04-2017
00:00 UT
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Obviously Piper's ideas changed and grew, so some things from early on
were left by the wayside. It's too bad he never got a chance to compile
a final, definitive version.
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David "PiperFan" Johnson 10-02-2017
03:30 UT
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~
Gregg Levine wrote:
> Little Fuzzy, and in there a question looms
> regarding the lowest known sapient race,
> and someone mentioned the Yggdrasill one.
It's
interesting that while the Khooghras are mentioned in the Fuzzy novels
they don't seem to be mentioned, by name, in any other Terro-human
Future History yarns. Even the epithet "son of a Khooghra" only seems
to appear in the Fuzzy novels.
The Yggdrasil native sophonts are
also mentioned in ~Uller Uprising~ (though not in the abridged "Ullr
Uprising") and in "When in the Course--" but we don't get details in
either of those yarns which tell us much about the relative intelligence
of the Khooghras as compared to other sapient races.
What we do
get in the Fuzzy novels about the Khoogras is wide-ranging enough to
suggests that their "just barely sapient" character is more than simply
the subjective opinion of one or two folks like Holloway or Van Riebeek.
It seems reasonable to conclude the Khooghras of Yggdrasil are indeed
the least intelligent of known sapient races, at least at the time of
the Fuzzy yarns.
Yeek.
David
--
"I saw a man shot
once on Mimir, for calling another man a son of a Khooghra. The man who
shot him had been on Yggdrasil and knew what he was being called." -
Jack Holloway (H. Beam Piper), ~Little Fuzzy~
~
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David "PiperFan" Johnson 10-01-2017
19:28 UT
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~
Gregg Levine wrote:
> It would be interesting to find out if anyone
> did map out the entire region of space that
> the Terran Federation inhabits.
Nils Jeppe is your guy:
http://www.enderra.com/2011/11/17/mapping-h-beam-piper-part-1/
He has some thoughts about Niflheim too:
http://www.enderra.com/2011/11/24/mapping-...er-part-3-niflheim/
Enjoy,
David
--
".
. . in one of the big hollow buildings that had stood since Khepera had
been a Member Republic of the Terran Federation." - Lucas Trask (H.
Beam Piper), ~Space Viking~
~
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Gregg Levine 10-01-2017
17:53 UT
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I agree too! (To quote an oft used phrase.)
Everytime I read my copy
of Uller Uprising, or the e-book version, depending on which one I've
got available, that phrase pops up and naturally I end up musing on it.
Heck! my first book in the TF series of stories, was in fact Little
Fuzzy, and in there a question looms regarding the lowest known sapient
race, and someone mentioned the Yggdrasill one. It would be interesting
to find out if anyone did map out the entire region of space that the
Terran Federation inhabits.
"YEEK!"
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David "PiperFan" Johnson 10-01-2017
16:17 UT
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~
Are Yggdrasil and Loki in the same system?
"Once, on a
three-months' reaction-drive voyage from Yggdrasill to Loki, he had
taught a couple of professors of extraterrestrial zoology to play
_kriegspiel_. . . ."
That's Carlos von Schlichten musing about
his time on Yggdrasil in ~Uller Uprising~ as Paula Quinton is moving
forces around on her makeshift situation-map. (In this scene Quinton is
being a bit ruthless; it's cut from the shorter "Ullr Uprising.") A
"reaction-drive" (or "reaction drive") seems to be mentioned only one
other time in the Terro-human Future History. In "Graveyard of Dreams"
it seems to be some sort of normal-space drive. (In the slightly
different, corresponding scene in ~Junkyard Planet~, Beam actually uses
the term "normal-space drive" rather than "reaction drive.")
If
Von Schlichten traveled from Yggdrasil to Loki in three months on a
normal-space drive ship that would suggest the two planets are in the
same system. Yggdrasil and Loki, which are mentioned in several
Terro-human Future History yarns as planets with their own, respective
native sophont races, don't ever seem to be explicitly described as
being in the same system. In particular, when the ~Stellex~ explorers
on Freya establish a trading relationship with Yggdrasil there is no
mention of Loki being in the same system (even though the Loki Company
is mentioned in the yarn). I suppose it's possible that Loki was in the
same system but wasn't mentioned because ~Stellex~ is sent to Yggdrasil
specifically to trade for nitrates. Perhaps Loki wasn't mentioned
simply because it wasn't considered.
Still, it seems unlikely
that there would be two planets with native sophont races in the same
system. A Loki-Yggdrasil system would have to have a rather substantial
habitable zone!
It's possible, of course, that the
"reaction-drive" Von Schlichten described in ~Uller Uprising~ was simply
a "slower-than-hyperdrive-but-still-faster-than-light drive." This
was, after all, Beam's first Terro-human Future History yarn and it
should not surprise us that he had not yet worked out all of the
technology yet.
Znidd suddabit!
David
--
"I believe
the first one, also a General von Schlichten, was what was then known as
a war-criminal." - Carlos von Schlichten (H. Beam Piper), ~Uller
Uprising~
~
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