H. Beam Piper: The Most Influential Writer You've Never Heard Of

by Guy Stewart


I first stumbled across Little Fuzzy when I was 21 years old. The story seemed like a straightforward gosh-wow adventure of the kind promoted by Analog (nee Astounding) editor John W. Campbell. I’d been reading Analog since I was thirteen, checking out the magazines from the library. This was the science fiction I knew and loved! Little Fuzzy led me to the rest of Piper’s books, and I devoured them, too.

I didn’t know it then, but Piper’s books changed me forever. It me took another thirty years to figure out why.

At one time or another, I’ve owned all of Piper’s books. (Except for Murder in the Gunroom — ‘cause I didn’t read "that mystery stuff" any more!) I’ve read a few of the biographies, garnering enough information to know that he was a private man and that no one really knows why he took his own life in November of 1964. These biographies typically point out his influence on science fiction writers like Ursula K. LeGuin, Jerry Pournelle, Charles Stross, Elizabeth Bear, Michael McCollum, and Robert Adams. Few of them miss the fact that Piper was setting women up as talented, intriguing and strong characters long before it became "politically correct" to do so.

You would think all of this would cause the meteoric rise of this once-forgotten writer. In the 1981 edition of Federation, a collection of some of his short stories and part of his Terro-Human Future History, in the introduction, biographer John Carr predicted, "With the availability Piper’s short stories...we should see a reevaluation of Piper’s work and stature within the SF field."

Sadly, this never happened, and while most of his books remain extant, there was never a consequent elevation of his name among signature writers like Harry Harrison, Poul Anderson, Gordon R. Dickson, and even his close friend, Jerry Pournelle. He remains obscure and mostly known for the insufferably cute aliens he created that he called "Fuzzies." Artists depicted them as only barely this side of Teddy bears in terminal cuteness.

But in my experience, I think we missed the biggest of Piper’s boats because we have so integrated the idea and taken for granted Piper’s biggest contribution to the SF canon. I propose that Piper created a meme— (a term coined by Richard Dawkins, it refers to an information virus similar to a gene, but informational rather than genetic) —when he titled the novel that eventually became Fuzzy Sapiens.

Fuzzy Sapiens bore a very different title when it was published in 1964. A sequel to Little Fuzzy, it continued the story of Jack Holloway and Little Fuzzy, the intensely adorable alien creature that Jack discovers has a Human-equivalent intelligence. His discovery totally changes the status of the corporation that owns the planet Zarathustra, for whom he does prospecting work. Obviously in an attempt by Piper’s publishers to strengthen the "cute factor" of the original illustration, they tipped their hat to the original title, but made it far too subtle for people like — say, ME, when I was 22.

The Other Human Race, Piper’s original title, carried an extremely subtle implication; so subtle that it seems to have escaped notice. Star Trek adopted the meme whole and eventually had to "logically" explain why everyone (except the Horta) in Rodenberry’s universe looked like Humans. In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Chase" panspermia by an ancient humanoid race is the explanation. Piper’s meme finds its way into the movie Mission to Mars (2000), where the idea of the "humanness of all aliens" forms the basis of the aliens who built the Face on Mars: we are their descendants and it is implied that there may be others also. While Klingons find the idea of calling everyone "human" to be racist (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), the idea nonetheless that aliens will just be "humans in rubber masks" is one SF writers continually struggle to shed.

Rather than fight it, Piper embraced it, and promoted it. Based on the original title, his Fuzzies were simply the OTHER Human race. The packaging was different, but the essence was the same.

Therein lay H. Beam Piper’s greatest legacy and the reason his work should come up to your attention. He created the idea that no matter how "alien" a life form may seem, it is an extension of our essential humanness—or if you feel like being politically correct ahead of time, we can say that we are an extension of Little Fuzzy’s essential Fuzziness.

Implicit in this concept is the possibility of understanding anyone we meet out there. Beyond smarmy Trek, Piper calls us to understand the aliens of Independence Day rather than to visit genocide on them, cheering afterward. He calls us to find the right white flag to wave before the Martians before we drop the bomb on them. He calls us to go back and try to figure out what Solaris is saying rather than giving up.

To my mind, this is H. Beam Piper’s enduring bequest—and why he is the most influential writer you’ve never heard of.

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Guy Stewart has sold fiction to Analog, as well as to Christian and youth-oriented magazines. He blogs about Christianity, Faith, Science Fiction, and Writing at faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com.