H. Beam Piper

Ministry of Disturbance and Other Sf H. Beam Piper

Included in this volume are five novelettes from the last decade of Piper's career. The title story, "Ministry of Disturbance," appeared in the December 1958 issue of Astounding, (where Cambpell blurbed it, "Sometimes getting a job is harder than the job after you get it -- and sometimes getting out of a job is harder than either!"). Also included are "A Slave is a Slave," from the April 1962 issue of Analog ("There has always been strong sympathy for the poor," said JWC, "meek, downtrodden slave -- the kindly little man, oppressed by cruel and overbearing masters. Could it possibly have been misplaced. . . ?"); "Oomphel in the Sky," from Analog, November 1960 ("Since Logic derives from postulates, it never has, and never will, change a postulate. And a religious belief is a system of postulates . . . so how can a man fight a native superstition with logic? Or anything else. . . ?"); "Omnilingual" from the February 1957 issue of Astounding, ("To translate writings, you need a key to the code -- and if the last writer of Martian died forty thousand years before the first writer of Earth was born . . . how could the Martian be translated. . . ?"); and last though hardly least, "The Keeper," from Venture Science Fiction, July 1957 ("Evil men had stolen his treasure, and Raud set out with his deer rifle and his great dog Brave to catch the thieves before they could reach the Starfolk. That the men had negatron pistols meant little -- Raud was the Keeper. . . .")