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H. Beam Piper

H. Beam Piper

H. Beam Piper was born March 23, 1904, the only issue of Harriet L. (Mauer) Piper and Herbert Orr Piper. He had no formal education and at age eighteen went to work as a watchman for the Pennsylvania Railroad's Altoona yards.

Piper was very protective over his personal privacy and had a Victorian view of publicity and self-promotion.

He was largely self-educated; he obtained a deep knowledge of science and history "without subjecting myself to the ridiculous misery of four years in the uncomfortable confines of a raccoon coat."

He started writing as a teenager, but didn't sell his first story, Time and Time Again, until he was 32 years old. To others Piper appeared suddenly and from out-of-nowhere in 1947 at the top of his form and went on to write a number of memorable short stories in the premier science fiction magazine of the time, Astounding Science Fiction, under legendary editor John W. Campbell.

His best novels "Little Fuzzy," "Cosmic Computer," "Space Viking" and "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen" are considered SF classics.

A solitary man to the end, Piper did not tell his friends of his financial predicament. Instead, he took a way out that could only be reasonable to a man who abhorred state handouts and was determined not to burden his friends and family.

On November 6th, 1964, H. Beam Piper shut off the utilities in his apartment at 330 East Third Street in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, placed painter's drop cloths over the walls and floor and shot himself with a .38-caliber pistol.

In his suicide note, he gave an explanation that is pure Piper:

"I don't like to leave messes when I go away, but if I could have cleaned up any of this mess, I wouldn't be going away. H. Beam Piper."

John F. Carr

John F. Carr

John F. Carr lives in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania with his wife Victoria, an editor and columnist, and their two cats, Gemma and Jessica. They have two children, Jeremy and Nicole. John Carr was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania but moved to San Diego at age four, when his father went to work for the Naval Electronics Lab in Point Loma, San Diego. His father, an aero-space engineer, later worked for Convair and General Dynamics, helping to develop the Atlas and Atlas/Centaur missiles. John's grandfather, who received a degree in Electricity from Columbia University in 1908, was one of the Wizards of Menlo Park who worked under Thomas Edison. His tall tales of scientific wonders helped light the flame of storytelling in young John's mind.

John started writing his first novel while studying history at San Diego State University in 1968. His first published work was The Ophidian Conspiracy in 1975. He has since published over twenty novels, a score of short stories and edited over forty anthologies (many with Jerry Pournelle) and short story collections.

Carr edited the Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1976 to 1979, and later served as both SFWA Treasurer and Vice-President. He also worked as co-editor with Jerry Pournelle from 1975 to 1996 in Studio City, California. Together they published over thirty anthologies and story collections, including the Baen Books paperback magazine, Far Frontiers. In the mid-eighties he worked as an independent acquisition editor for both Tor Books and Baen Books. He was the Science Fiction editor of Popular Computing.

Carr is recognized as an authority on H. Beam Piper (a Pennsylvania SF writer) and his works. He edited four Piper short story collections for Ace Books and wrote H. Beam Piper: A Biography for McFarland & Co. and most recently Typewriter Killer, which focuses on Piper's writing and his Terro-Human Future History. He has written seven sequels to H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, the most recent being Down Styphon!, as well as two far-future sequels to Piper's Space Viking and the sequel to Cosmic Computer, The Merlin Gambit (with Dietmar Wehr).

The Kalvan Saga

There aren't very many alternate histories as beloved as the late H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, in which Corporal Calvin Morrison, Pennsylvania State Trooper and former US Army combat infantryman, is whisked to an alternate timeline, where early Indo-Europeans went east to Asia and then North America, rather than west, into Europe. In that timeline Corporal Morrison, known as "Kalvan" to the locals, makes better gunpowder, builds an army, wins battles, saves the princedom of his friends, marries the princess, and creates a new "Great Kingdom". And that's just in the first book!. In the process of all that, he makes an enemy out of Styphon, the local god of gunpowder (which is to say he makes an enemy of the corrupt priesthood feeding at Styphon's gunpowder monopoly trough), makes a couple of mistakes that turned out to be much worse than he could have anticipated, and finds himself on the short end of the financial and manpower lever. In short, he loses a key battle and finds out why Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, and most experienced soldiers, find retreat the hardest operation of all.

John has published seven sequels to Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen - Great Kings' War (John F. Carr & Roland Green), Kalvan Kingmaker, The Hos Blethan Affair (John F. Carr & Wolfgang Diehr), Siege of Tarr-Hostigos, The Fireseed Wars, Gunpowder God, and Down Styphon!.

War World

War World is a shared-world anthology that focuses on a barely-habitable moon, named Haven. The series takes place in Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium/Empire of Man future history (the background for The Mote in God's Eye and the Falkenberg novels). The stories concern the inhabitant's struggles to overcome their world's stark conditions and their rival two-legged compatriots. The series was created in 1989 by Jerry Pournelle and John F. Carr and published by Baen Books. Baen Books released two War World novels and five anthologies.

Jerry Pournelle gifted ownership of the War World shared-world series, based on Pournelle's CoDominium and Empire of Man future history, to John Carr in 1996. John has written (with Don Hawthorne) three new War World novels: The Battle of Sauron, The Lidless Eye and Cyborg Revolt, and one by himself, Falkenberg's Regiment, as well as four new War World anthologies: War World: Discovery, Takeover, Jihad! and The Patriotic Wars.


St. Bonaventure has become the home of the John F. Carr collection, under the stewardship of Dennis Frank, at the Freidsam Memorial Library. This archive includes published as well as unpublished works and materials relating to his career.

John can be contacted at: Otherwhen@aol.com

Alan Gutierrez

Alan Gutierrez

Alan Gutierrez, is a well-known cover artist who has done countless book and game covers. He has illustrated books for Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, David Drake, Gordon Dickson, and Greg Bear to name a few.

He has also done toy packaging (for Tonka Toys) and his work has been seen on the covers of many magazines, such as Popular Mechanics, Final Frontier, Analog, and Astronomy. He has also illustrated spacecraft concepts for NASA. Alan is the Pequod Press artist and has done all the covers for John's books as well as those of Piper and other authors.

Art directors and publishers seek out Alan's work for its eye-popping color and drama. You can see more of his work at: http://alangutierrez.com

Victoria Alexander

Victoria Alexander

Victoria Alexander is the Editor In Chief of Pequod Press and a former columnist for the Centre Daily Times. She has done copyediting for various authors, including Jerry E. Pournelle, Cindy Keith, John F. Carr and Ken Hull.

She can be contacted at EditoratLarge1@aol.com

 

Mark Richardson

Mark Richardson

Mark Richardson is a software designer living in the UK and has designed and runs all of John's web sites. Mark is no stranger to designing web sites, in fact during his time at one of the companies he worked for, he spent many years designing a wide variety of business web sites for the company's clients.

Among Mark's many interests is Medieval History, he runs the web site of the Lance and Longbow Society - Britain's premier medieval interests society. He is also researching his family tree and trying to find out the stories behind his own family history.

Contact details, plus links to some of the web sites he has designed, along with information on the services he provides, can be found on his web site at www.dark-moon.net.