The Paratime Police Chronicles: Vol. I

H. Beam Piper's Paratime stories concern the Home Time-Line on First Level, an advanced civilization based on the outcome of Martian colonization of the Earth some 75,000 years ago. The five Paratime levels met with vastly different outcomes, ranging from the highly-civilized Paratimers on First Level, where colonization was successful, to Fifth Level--the probability of the complete failure of Martian colonization where no human population was established and only indigenous quasi-human life evolved on Earth. For over 12,000 years the people of First Level have been using temporal transposition travel to loot and steal from the innumerable other worlds of alternate probability on the lateral dimension of time. Smart parasites never injure their hosts, nor do they reveal their existence. It's up to the Paratime Police to guard the Paratime Secret and their outtime activities, as well as hunt down and prosecute First Level criminals and illegal syndicates.

Paratime was one of H. Beam Piper's most inspired creations and this collection contains all of Piper's Paratime Police stories, except for "Time Crime" and the later Lord Kalvan stories put together as Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. New stories include "The Transtemporal Man," a story about what happens when an outtimer suddenly appears with the ability to transpose to different timelines without a transtemporal conveyor; "Paratime Parasites," a story about a conveyor missing for 10,000 years and Verkan Vall's efforts to find out what happened to the original Paratime Survey Team; "Paratime Paradox," the story about an outtimer who somehow unwittingly taps into the actions and secrets of the Paratime Police; a trait which threatens the very foundation of First Level--the Paratime Secret.


Genre: Science Fiction