Ok, I've read a couple of interesting stories by H. Beam Piper in the last few days. Both are available on Gutenberg. The first, titled 'The Answer,' is about some post-holocaust brainiacs who invent and test an antimatter bomb. Without dropping any spoilers, it is an interesting twist on the old storyline of who would be the aggressor in a nuclear war between the Soviets and the U.S.A. The second story, titled 'He Walked Around the Horses,' is a lovely twist on the true story of an English diplomat who allegedly disappeared from sight in front of several witnesses during th Napoleanic War, never to be seen again.
Piper was an interesting man, but unfortunately, perhaps the most interesting thing about him was that he ended his life with a pistol after spreading dropcloths and writing a suicide note in which he stated that he was sorry that he couldn't clean all the mess up. Piper wrote a wonderful, delightful novel called 'Little Fuzzy,' (also available at Gutenberg) which was probably his masterpiece. Ace reprinted it in the early 1980's, which was the edition that I read as a kid. The world of Little Fuzzy was picked up by at least two different authors later on, and influenced several others.
If you haven't read Little Fuzzy and you like first-contact sci-fi, you've done yourself a disservice. By all means, read Little Fuzzy and while you're at it, check out some of his short stories at Gutenberg.
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