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 in 1963 as ‘Junkyard 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 had his university computer education on Terra paid for by his own people on the planet Poictesme. His homeworld is littered with military equipment from the last war and there is rumour that a very large superior computer 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 and had no luck in that regard and thinks its just a myth. However, to please his sponsors, endeavours to go over the planet to look for it and re-use anything else they find.
As I’ve only read only 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. Oh and a little matter of some space pirates and an obvious love interest for Conn Maxwell.
However, although you would think from the beginning that Conn Maxwell would be the focus of the book, he ends up being one cog in the entire process in looking for Merlin but focusing on others things as well. Whether Piper intended this or not is debatable. Maybe he saw a lot more ground (sic) needed to be covered and changed his game plan. If anything, the novel becomes more 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 spectacular as an SF novel but as a realistic approach to showing how this could be achieved then ‘Junkyard 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
