UNLIMITED Audiobooks and eBooks
Over 40,000 books & works on all major devices
Get ALL YOU CAN for FREE for 30 days!
The Cosmic Computer
H. Beam Piper
Book Overview:
Conn Maxwell returns from Terra to his poverty-stricken home planet of Poictesme, “The Junkyard Planet”, with news of the possible location of Merlin, a military super-computer rumored to have been abandoned there after the last war. The inhabitants hope to find Merlin, which they think will be their ticket to wealth and prosperity. But is Merlin real, or just an old rumor? And if they find it will it save them, or tear them apart?
Conn Maxwell returns from Terra to his poverty-stricken home planet of Poictesme, “The Junkyard Planet”, with news of the possible location of Merlin, a military super-computer rumored to have been abandoned there after the last war. The inhabitants hope to find Merlin, which they think will be their ticket to wealth and prosperity. But is Merlin real, or just an old rumor? And if they find it will it save them, or tear them apart?
How does All You Can Books work?
All You Can Books gives you UNLIMITED access to over 40,000 Audiobooks, eBooks, and Foreign Language courses. Download as many audiobooks, ebooks, language audio courses, and language e-workbooks as you want during the FREE trial and it's all yours to keep even if you cancel during the FREE trial. The service works on any major device including computers, smartphones, music players, e-readers, and tablets. You can try the service for FREE for 30 days then it's just $19.99 per month after that. So for the price everyone else charges for just 1 book, we offer you UNLIMITED audio books, e-books and language courses to download and enjoy as you please. No restrictions.
"I want to find Merlin as much as any of you," he said. "More. Merlin was the only thing I was trained for. We'll look there first."
Somebody asked where, approximately, this underground Force Command headquarters was.
"Why, it's in the Badlands, over between the Blaubergs and the east coast."
"Great Ghu! We'll need an army to go in there?" Tom Brangwyn said. "That's where all these outlaws have been coming from, Blackie Perales and all."
"Then we'll get an army together," Klem Zareff said happily. "Might make a little of that reward money that's been offered."
"We'll need more than that. Well need excavation equipment, and labor. Lots of labor," Conn said. "It's a couple of. . . Read More
Download now for FREE!
"Love your service - thanks so much for what you do!"
- Customer Cathryn Mazer
"I did not realize that you would have so many audio books I would enjoy"
- Customer Sharon Morrison
"For all my fellow Audio Book & E-Book regulars:
This is about as close to nirvana as I have found!"
- Twitter post from @bobbyekat
Community Reviews
From my lofty perspective of the 21st century, it is amusing how many classic sci-fi authors were able to imagine computers of near-godlike capacity... and yet never imagine miniaturization. I suppose the former follows, while the latter was dependent on advances and discoveries not currently in...more
Short and almost pointless. Not the best example of H. Beam Piper.
It was just barely okay.
The planet Poictesme is in a deep economic rut: the original Gartner Trisystem colonies was almost exclusively an export economy, and when its trading partners gained manufacturing capabilities the Trisystem economy collapsed. After a long depression the System States War briefly returned prosper...more
The Cosmic Computer is basically a story about economic development. It features the same sorts of hardy capable men as Four Day Planet did. It also includes a hardy capable woman. It's set in the same fictional galaxy, as well.
The adventure isn't quite as rollicking as in Four Day Planet. But no...more
The book takes place in a "universe" that is a forerunner to the "Firefly" universe. There was a big war of unification/consolidation, and after the war the backwater planets are poor while the core planets remain wealthy. The residents of one of the backwater planets intend to better their situa...more
The Cosmic Computer is set in a post inter-galactic war society. The economy of the planet the story centers around is in the midst of a depression, and things are only getting worse. During and after the war rumors circulated about a super computer that could solve the problems of mankind, and r...more
You know that asshole friend of a friend who is always going around telling people to read The Fountainhead or, heaven forbid, Atlas Shrugged as a way to really get excited about capitalism? And it always turns out that the only things those books do is to produce another asshole who blames his...more
Well, this was enjoyable--especially because it was so compact! It clocks in at 190 pages, for a story that would almost certainly require 300 or more these days. Part of that difference might benefit the modern version, as a novel like this now would probably go to more trouble to flesh out the...more