Thursday, July 13, 2006

The Complete Paratime by H. Beam Piper

The Complete Paratime by H. Beam Piper contains several short stories as well as a short novel in which uses the backdrop of Piper's Paratime universe. Basically this is a sort of multiple realities science-fiction witches become quite common these days. After all Star Trek has been making episodes about this for 40 years but when these stories was written the concept was quite new. Piper does a good job describing things. Basically there are five major timelines where a Martian invasion took over the planet Earth. There are five different outcomes and millions of minor variations inside each major time stream. The short stories are a mixture of police procedural [the police force is charged with keeping the secret of multiple realities] and part discussion of the outcome of changes past history affecting the current timelines. All sorts of fund for any historian. The alternate history genre at its best.




I've also reviewed Supertoys Last All Summer Long And Other Stories of Future Time by Brian Aldiss

For more Science Fiction and Fantasy book reviews take a look at My Science Fiction and Fantasy bookshelf.

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