Junkyard Planet by H. Beam Piper (book review).
H. Beam Piper is known for his ‘Fuzzy’ stories, but he did other stories as well. Back in 1958, his ‘Graveyard Of Dreams’ short story appeared in ‘Galaxy Magazine.’. He expanded it and, as a novel, released it in 1963 as ‘Scrapyard Planet.’. Ace Books released it under a new title, ‘The Cosmic Computer,’ later, just in case you thought they were two different novels.
Conn Maxwell received funding for his university computer education on the planet Poictesme from his own people. His homeworld is littered with military equipment from the last war, and there is a rumour that a very large supercomputer, called Merlin, is hidden there. All well and good, but they also needed someone to program it once found, hence Maxwell’s education. He was also supposed to find out where it was hidden, but he had no luck in that regard and thinks it’s just a myth. However, to please his sponsors, he endeavours to go around the planet to look for it and reuse anything else they find.
As I’ve only read Piper’s ‘Fuzzy’ books, this is more a traditional SF book. He spent a lot of time establishing a long list of characters and what they were doing towards the effort of taking over military equipment and hidden spaceports, even with the legalities of companies to do it. He also addressed the issue of space pirates and their apparent romantic interest in Conn Maxwell.
However, despite the initial assumption that Conn Maxwell would be the main focus of the book, he ultimately becomes a mere cog in the search for Merlin, with his attention diverted to other matters. Whether Piper intended this or not is debatable. Perhaps he realised there was more ground to cover and adjusted his strategy accordingly. If anything, the novel becomes more of a focus on select people on Poictesme restoring the planet’s economy by taking advantage of old but usable equipment left after the war. It might not be as spectacular as an SF novel, but as a realistic approach to showing how this could be achieved, then ‘Scrapyard Planet’ has a lot of depth from over 60 years ago.
GF Willmetts
January 2025
(pub: Wildside Press, 2007. 166 page enlarged paperback. Price: varies. ISBN: 978-1-4344-0079-6)
check out website: www.wildsidebooks.com
