H. Beam Piper’s Time Crime

H. Beam Piper’s short novel Time Crime was originally published in two parts in the February and March 1955 issues of Astounding Science Fiction.

H. Beam Piper (1904-1964) was an American writer of science fiction (and wrote in other genres as well).

The premise is definitely interesting. At some point in the distant future human society has entirely exhausted all the resources of Earth. Human civilisation would have been doomed but for a lucky discovery - the discovery of billions of parallel universes and, even more importantly, the development of technology to allow humans to move from one timeline to another. With all those worlds to exploit the future of humanity is guaranteed.

This human civilisation is essentially a parasite civilisation, exploiting the resources of other civilisations. It is however a mostly benign parasite civilisation - humans have learnt to keep their exploitation of other worlds within strict limits, and to limit their interference in those other worlds. Making sure that those limits are respected, and keeping the timeline-jumping capability a secret from those other civilisations, is the job of the Paratime Police.

Now there’s a problem. An officer from the Paratime Police has discovered a shipment of slaves in the Esaron Sector and those slaves are from a different timeline. Slavery is a local custom in that timeline so the Paratime Police aren’t worried about that issue but transposing people from one timeline to another is forbidden and is a major security problem. In fact it’s a crisis.

Verkan Vall is the timecop who has to get to the bottom of the situation. He gets valuable assistance from his wife Hadron Dalla (recruited as a temporary timecop). He soon finds that he’s uncovered a vast conspiracy and it has major political repercussions.

The crime investigation aspect of the story is handled reasonably well but it’s the central idea (and the detail with which it’s developed) that makes this novel worthwhile. Each timeline represents a different history of human civilisation on Earth, ranging from Stone Age cultures to fairly advanced civilisations.

Piper makes the exploration of alternate timelines as adventurous as other writers made the exploration of other planets. In the Paratime world human civilisation is limited to Earth, Mars and Venus with interstellar travel having apparently never been developed. But with billions of timelines to choose from humans have access to much wider frontiers than even interstellar travel could have offered and of course the advantage is that in every timeline Earth is an inhabitable planet.

Piper went on to write a number of other Paratime stories and novels.

Don’t expect any attempts at characterisation or any emotional sub-plots - this is classic ideas-driven golden age science fiction. What matters is whether the ideas are good enough, and in this case they are.

There is some action, including a full-scale planetary assault.

Apart from having several divisions of highly armed troops at their disposal the Paratime Police also have access to high-tech mind control technology - they can erase memories and create false memories. This adds an additional layer to the novel.

There’s an interesting amorality to this story - this is an unapologetically exploitative society in which cynicism, corruption, deception, manipulation and political repression are taken for granted. And these are the heroes of the story. They’re the good guys. The difference between the good guys and the bad guys is that the good guys are better at lying and cheating. If you like idealism in your science fiction you won’t find any here.

Armchair Fiction have re-issued this book as part of their wonderful series of double-header paperbacks (this one has been paired with Leigh Brackett’s Last Call from Sector 9G).

Time Crime is a bit convoluted at times and it’s hard to keep track of the many characters since none of them has even a shred of personality and they all have similar sorts of names. It’s still recommended as an interesting early exploration of the infinite parallel universes idea.