H. Beam Piper. Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (1964)

    H. Beam Piper. Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (1964) Calvin Morris, a Pennsylvania state trooper, is slipped sideways in space-time, into a medieval version of vaguely Greek “Aryans” who moved east instead of west and ended up on the eastern side of N. America. He of course takes over, what with his superior knowledge of warfare, honed both in history classes and in combat in Korea, etc and so on and so forth. The local Prince not only takes him in, but promotes him, and eventually subjects himself to him! Kalvan also gets the girl, but apart from some comradely joshing (she’s good with a sword, and very, very smart), and a reference to how nice (!) it is to be married to her, there’s no hint of sex.
     Calvin/Kalvan’s predicament attracts the attention of the Paratime Police, who decide to leave him be, and study what happens when a disturbing factor is inserted into a time stream. Academics disguise themselves to blend in and insert themselves into the same “level”. One of them becomes a commander in Kalvan’s army!
      A typical adolescent nerd’s fantasy, IOW. A hero with close to superpowers, attractive to women, a natural-born leader, etc. Fun, and in a couple of places very funny, too. The book reads very much like a novelette that could eventually be expanded to novel length. It has a number of dangling plot lines, and the characters lack depth, but they feel unfinished rather than merely two dimensional. The Paratime motif is not well worked out. Presumably, some of the Level Five people who operate the Paratime Police will be seduced into staying in this primitive but exhilarating culture. There are hints of this, but the loose ends stay loose. The social and political consequences of Kalvan’s arrival feel like sketches towards a more thorough treatment. The locals accept Calvin too easily; there should be more resistance to his reforms and changes, not because people disagree with them, but because they are new. But pulp fiction moves fast.
       Piper takes a good deal of trouble describing the battle formations and developments, which sound like description of real battles. Has he used actual Civil War battles as his models? I don’t know enough to decide. He also tosses in all kinds of tidbits, such as the local word for mother: madh. He clearly despises anything that smacks of theocracy, or domination of state and society by a religion. He likes strong men, and clearly believes that strong men (and women, I suppose) make history, not the other way round.
        The book belongs to the alternative history genre, which since the 1960s has developed into very sophisticated and much more carefully thought out stories. I’ve started reading a couple of these, and find that compared to this swiftly moving pulp fiction, they are boring, with too much attention to making the alternative history academically plausible, and not enough interest in character and plot. Many of them read like the fictions based on games: the rules constrict and constrain, so that the stories feel more like puzzles and calculations than fictions. But I liked this novelette, it’s unassumingly designed to entertain. The hints of deeper themes and nuggets of fact are a bonus, just the kind of thing that feeds a nerd’s yearning for insight.
     This was Piper’s last book. He suicided shortly after finishing it, and before it was published. Pity. **½ (2008)