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Originally Posted by JeremyR
H. Beam Piper, a science fiction author.
He was a somewhat popular author in his day, but not popular enough to make a living at writing (he killed himself because he was broke and couldn't sell any more of his writing, apparently).
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Not exactly. The cause was the unexpected death of his agent. The agent had been keeping Piper's affairs in his head, and his death threw Piper's finances into chaos. At the time of his death, John W. Campbell at Analog Magazine was trying to locate him, because he'd just
bought one of Piper's stories and was trying to get a check to him.
Piper
had been making a living up to that point.
There was also a suggestion that suicide was also aimed at his wife. It wasn't a happy marriage, and one of her conditions for marrying him was that he take out a large insurance policy with her as beneficiary. Committing suicide voided the policy, and she couldn't collect. His work was out of print for years because she controlled the rights and had an exaggerated idea of what they were worth, and asked more than publishers were willing to pay for reprint rights.
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His politics would probably rub a lot of people the wrong way nowadays (and back then, even - he'd be at home at a Tea Party event), but pretty much define his works.
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Piper probably classifies as a Libertarian, but so did a lot of writers of his era, with Robert A. Heinlein the most noteable example.
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Every time I read his most famous novel, Space Viking, I can't help but thing it's very very relevant to today.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47980
(His work is out of copyright in the US, but I guess not Canada? Go figure. Gutenberg has it, as do a lot of places)
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The stuff at PG is mainly magazine versions. Those had separate copyrights, and dated from the days before the US became a signatory to the Berne convention, and copyrights expired and had to be renewed. Often, they weren't, and some stuff by living authors falls into that category. Someone forgot to renew it. (It's really weird when you see stuff turning up in PG by people you
knew.)
But seconded. Piper's work counts among the classics, particularly _Little Fuzzy_. He was one of the first to write stories set in a coherent universe, with his "Federation" and "Paratime" series. His death by suicide was a tragedy for the field.
About the only thing of Piper's that
isn't in the public domain now is _Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen_, in the Paratime universe. But that was put together from novelettes published in Analog magazine, so it's possible we'll see the magazine versions at some point.
MR poster HarryT has omnibus collections of all of Piper's work in the eBook Uploads area.
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Dennis