Teaser

The System States War has left dozens of planets in abject poverty. One of these worlds is Poictesme, but the locals have an idea of how to solve their issues. What they need is the supercomputer known as Merlin. The problem is that no one knows where Merlin is, or even if it really exists . . .

Review

I approached this book with equal parts trepidation and anticipation. It’s no secret that I hold H. Beam Piper’s Space Viking as one of my favourite books of all time, and certainly among the most formative for myself as a science fiction fan. I’ve read several more of his books in the decades since, and while great, none have quite captured my imagination in the same way. Nostalgia is a powerful thing, after all. Nostalgia for that one book is what led me to hunt down the rest of the series through bookshops across two continents. The Cosmic Computer is the last novel in that series that I am yet to read. There are other series, and anthologies, but this is, for me, the last of its kind. Anticipation and trepidation. Yet as I come through on the other side of these two and a half hundred pages, I’m confronted by a stark realisation. Strip away the nostalgia, and The Cosmic Computer is every bit as good as Space Viking.

The Cosmic Computer reads like a checklist of all the good stuff I like to see in my science fiction. Kicking it all off is a galactic empire (the Terran Federation) that is quite clearly in a state of decline. We won’t see the full effects of that decline until later stories, but that sense of a world worse off than it was yesterday pervades the entire book. We don’t need to have seen the war to see its effects on the people of Poictesme. On the topic of that war, the real-world history Piper cribbed for this book was apparently the US Civil War, a conflict about which I know very little. I can’t say for certain if the economical shenanigans in this book are based on reality, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Either way, it’s a nice change of pace from the usual military strong-arming we see in this sort of book, and is marvellously executed.

Then there’s the computer of the title. It feels a lot like the Machine from Person of Interest in the way it is described, though it predates that show by about half a century. There are also shades of Asimov’s psychohistory to be found in Merlin’s divinatory purpose, and I can’t help but wonder what hand John Campbell had in this book, or if it’s a case of two authors coming up with similar ideas independently. Either way, it’s a great idea. I also think it’s worth noting that for almost the entire book, we don’t know if Merlin is real or not. What matters most if the fact that people believe it is real.

That belief lies at the heart of the book. Strip away all my favourite tropes, and you still have a great moral quandary. Is it acceptable to lie to the people in order to make them do the right thing? Arguably, that’s what all politics is. I mean, we all need some kind of incentive. You can also draw parallels with faith of other kinds. Merlin is upheld as perfection. If only Merlin were here, it would solve all our problems. Why should we listen to fallible human leaders when Merlin can simply give us the answer? Piper doesn’t give any easy answers, even when the truth is uncovered, but throughout the novel we see manipulation done with the best of intentions, and truth distorted and ignored in order to get the job done. It might be a slim book, but it’s got a whole lot of food for thought.

Of course, all this is delivered with Piper’s usual clipped style. Not a word is wasted here, and the action comes thick and fast. Perhaps owing to the historical inspiration, there is a decidedly American feel to the book. As a sidebar, there’s something incredibly American about space opera in general, notably the ubiquity of firearms, but that’s a digression for another time. What does flesh the world out more is in the names. Not everything as Anglocentric as it on the surface appears. The cast of this book may not be described physically, but from their names alone it’s easy to picture Piper’s future as a true cultural melting pot.

The Cosmic Computer ends up as one of my favourite books of the year, and yet another reason to be grateful for picking up Space Viking all those years ago.

Book Stats

• A Novel of the Terro-Human Future History
• Federation (#3)
• First Published 1963
• This edition published by Ace
• 249 pages