H. Beam Piper took his own life 1964 and not many people have ever heard of him, and a good portion of his books are out of print. It didn’t have to be that way.

Back in the mid-80’s, a friend of mine gave me a stack of Piper’s books to read. He knew that I loved speculative fiction books, knew that I was a fan of Heinlein (especially his juveniles), and thought that I would be happy reading books like Little Fuzzy, The Cosmic Computer, and Federation. He was right.

Piper wasn’t quite to the same level as Heinlein, but his books were involving and fun. As a man obsessed with history (in fact, he would much rather have written historical fiction), his books always seemed to work within their own historical context. In fact, The Cosmic Computer, which I just finished reading for what must be the fifth time, could almost have been one of Heinlein’s juvenile books. The main character is a youngish man learning to be a leader; he is confident, intelligent, driven, and just a little wet behind the ears.

While Piper didn’t capture the small moments as well as the best authors, and while sometimes the passage of time and the breaks between scenes can be confusing, his ideas were well worth exploring. He wrote about vivid characters, far off planets, and grand adventures of discovery. Politics, pirates, and the past were all the things that caught my imagination and wouldn’t let go.

Most of the Piper books that I read weren’t mine; they had belonged in my friend’s vast library. When he passed away--as much a victim of his own self-destruction as if he had committed suicide like Piper, himself--the books were gone. A few years ago, though, I started trolling eBay and Amazon’s used books to find the books that were out of print. Little Fuzzy and the Lord Kalven stories are back in print, and my collection is mostly complete.

Sadly, it’s a small collection. He died shortly after he made the transition from pulp magazines to novels and he wasn’t what you could call prolific. Let this be a note for you science fiction fans out there: if you haven’t read his work, they are well worth tracking down.

I’ll be starting in on Federation tonight with a little tiny bit of sadness. I’ll be thinking about both Piper and my friend--thinking about how they both died well before they should have. They died before they fulfilled their promise.

Federation is a brilliant compilation of some of the short stories that make up a specific period of Piper’s future history, but there should have been more. Piper is gone and, sadly, mostly forgotten.

It really didn’t have to be that way.