From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Apr 22 2003 - 19:09:15 MDT
--- Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 4/22/2003 5:30:04 PM Central Standard Time,
> mlorrey@yahoo.com writes: This sequel was written by John F Carr and
> Roland Green and is called "Great King's War".
>
> Mike,
> As I recall Lord Kalvan was in Analog. How about the sequel?
There was an excerpt published in one of the Baen/Pournelle
anthologies, I think one of his "There Will Be War" anths. The whole
book was published, I believe, in 1989, and I am unaware of any
serialization. The published excerpt I read depicted a Holy War
launched by Styphon's House against Great King Kalvan, where the
overwhelming numbers of the combined forces of the other four Great
Kings defeated Kalvan, though he and his entourage escaped to the wilds
of the North American plains while his castle exploded as it was taken
by the enemy. Agents of the Paratime Police, who had been studying the
accidentally transplanted Kalvan (he was originally a Pennsylvania
State Policeman in our timeline and a Korean War veteran) and this new
timeline, were captured by Styphon's House, which obviously is a big
security problem for the PTP.
The Lord Kalvan story was originally, it seems, a story from his future
history, without a Lord Kalvan and with a separate world of human Great
Kings and Styphon's House (i.e. not a parallel earth), visited by human
space explorers who introduce democracy and constitutions as they help
Prince Ptosphes overthrow his enemies. John Campbell thought the idea
of parallel human evolution so abhorrent that he told Piper to rewrite
it as a Paratime story.
I found that all of Piper's Paratime novels were very impressive, as
was his other future history series that depicted tens of thousands of
years of human history in space. I believe he was the inspiration for
Heinlein to eventually merge many of his stories into one contiguous
history. The one drawback of Piper's writing is that he seemed to hold
a belief that humankind originated on Mars, migrating to earth as their
environment became untenable. His Paratime Civilization was based in a
timeline where Mars never lost its atmosphere and dried up, and there
are minor comments alluding to such a theory in many different areas of
his writing.
He was also, like Heinlein, a swordsman, and had a significant
collection of firearms and swords when he killed himself. His suicide
note I have always found to be rather typically dashing Piper, "Sorry
about the mess, but if I were able to clean it up, I wouldn't have
left." He had been left penniless by an ex-wife who apparently married
him for an expensive Paris honeymoon, and his agent was so disorganized
that he never got around to sending Piper his royalty checks. By his
death he was reduced to shooting pigeons from his apartment window for food.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
"Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid
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