Talk:Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen

Battle of Barnet

Is it worth mentioning that the battle against Sask is a direct copy of the real Battle of Barnet 14/04/1471? Avalon (talk) 13:20, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

More sequels

The Hos-Blethan Affair, set between "Kalvan Kingmaker" and "The Siege of Tarr-Hostigos". Currently available only in hardcover. John F. Carr is currently working on "Down Styphon!", to be published in 2016. Bizzybody (talk) 08:54, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Second Kalvan story written out of History

Lod Kalvan of Otherwhen is an expansion of two H. Beam Piper stories published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Gunpowder God (November 1964) and Down Styphon (November 1965.) Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 23:50, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Notes

Notability

@Cunard Anything you can find here? ISFDb doesn't list any awards and their list of reviews is not very impressive: https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?3049 (one magazine, one fanzine, and what is media type: CHAPBOOK?) _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:11, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

See my reply on Talk:Kalvan series. It's been in print almost continuously for the last 58 years, and has been translated into French, German, and Italian. I do not see the word "chapbook" anywhere on the linked page (except in the menu options). Unfortunately, you adding a "notability" tag to this article gives rise to very natural suspicions that you're doing so in order to get back at me for comments I've made in other discussions, in which case your edit is tantamount to vandalism. If you're trying to convince me of your bad faith, then you're certainly doing a very good job of it! AnonMoos (talk) 06:34, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I've found Piotrus to be a good faith editor when interacting with him at AfDs and on book talk pages and don't consider his edits here to be vandalism or in bad faith. Cunard (talk) 09:43, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi Piotrus (talk · contribs). Here are some sources about the book Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen:

1. McGuire, Paul (November 1977). Geis, Richard E. (ed.). "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen". Science Fiction Review. Vol. 6, no. 4 #23. p. 28. Retrieved 2023-07-16 – via Internet Archive.

   The article notes: "Which makes for a novel worth reading, especially when the Paratime Police start slipping agents in, and... The characters are not unusual but Piper made them both more complex and simultaneously more human. In contrast, his hero's actions always seemed the more extraordinary. In simple straight-up prose, Piper, using familiar enough plots, would people and pace his novels with uncanny insight. He did what everyone else did, but he did it a lot better."

2. Robbins, Jan C. (1979). Remington, Thomas J. (ed.). "The Uses of Military History in Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen". Selected Proceedings of the 1978 Science Fiction Research Association National Conference. University of Northern Iowa. pp. 75–104. Retrieved 2023-07-16 – via Google Books.
3. Walton, Jo (2009-11-06). "Competence is really attractive: H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen". Tor.com. Archived from the original on 2023-07-16. Retrieved 2023-07-16.

   The review notes: "This is one of those books that I read when I was twelve (under the British title Gunpowder God) and loved uncritically. It’s hard to overstate just how much fun it is—this is a vastly enjoyable book. It’s military SF with added history of technology, and I think it might have been the first thing on those lines I read, and it set the pattern."

4. Brown, Alan (2016-10-04). "When Wishes Come True: Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen by H. Beam Piper". Tor.com. Archived from the original on 2023-07-16. Retrieved 2023-07-16.

   The review notes: "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen is compact and quickly paced, and the characters are well developed and appealing. The story sweeps you up, and by the time it is over, while the end is satisfying, you want it to continue. It is easy to see why the SF community mourned Piper’s loss so intensely, as this book is a masterful piece of work."

5. Fahnestalk, Steve (2016-05-06). "Two Classics: H. Beam Piper and Keith Laumer". Amazing Stories. Archived from the original on 2023-07-16. Retrieved 2023-07-16.

   The review notes: "One of my favourite types of story is the modern-day person adrift in another time or, in the case of “Lord Kalvan,” another dimension. ... In Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, Pennsylvania State Trooper Corporal Calvin Morrison got caught in the fields of two “dimensional conveyor heads” that overlapped, and was sent to a dimension in which the whole history of the world was changed, although the time was the same."

6. Pringle, David (1995). The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction: An A-Z of Science-Fiction Books by Title (2 ed.). Aldershot, Hampshire: Scolar Press. pp. 215–216. ISBN 1-85928-071-4. Retrieved 2023-07-16 – via Internet Archive.

   The book notes: "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (1965) ✪✪ Novel by H. Beam Piper (USA). A policeman transplanted into another world (by the bungling of Varkan Vall's Paratime Police, familiar from Piper's short stories) uses his knowledge of science and military history to break the monopoly of local religious leaders over gunpowder and set himself up as emperor. A straightforward adventure story, notable for its spiritual pessimism and the pleasure its protagonist seems to take in military activity. Published in Britain as Gunpowder God. Belated sequel by other hands: Great Kings' War (1985) by Roland J. Green and John F. Carr.

7. Espley, John L. (Summer 1980). "H. Beam Piper: An Annotated Bibliography". Extrapolation. 21 (2): 174. Retrieved 2023-07-16 – via Internet Archive.

   The book notes: "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. New York: Ace Books, 1977, 249 p. Trooper Calvin Morrison of the Pennsylvania State Police is accidently transported to a different time-line, where gunpowder and firearms are controlled by one of the local religions. The novelettes "Gunpowder God" (M10) and "Down Styphon" (M05) cover the same events as approximately the first fifteen chapters of Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. The chapters in the book are expanded, and some of the scenes are set in a different order."

8. Foote, Bud (2003). "Escape into Paratime: H. Beam Piper's Alternated Pennsylvanias". In Slusser, George; Barricelli, Jean-Pierre (eds.). Genre at the Crossroads: The Challenge of Fantasy: a Collection of Essays. Riverside, California: Xenos Books. pp. 168, 173. ISBN 1-879378-48-5. Retrieved 2023-07-16 – via Internet Archive.

   The book notes on page 168: "Just so, the hero of H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, who in his own time was a humble Pennsylvania State Trooper, becomes, in an alternate universe, Great King of a good bit of Pennsylvania. "The fact that he was only able to become a minor police officer on his own time-line," says an observer, "shows how these low-order cultures allow genius to go to waste." If that is not Miniver Cheevyism, I have never heard it; and if Miniver Cheevyism is not escapism, it will do until something better comes along."

   The book notes on page 173: "In Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, a novel which holds up remarkably well today and which my students are continually discovering with delight, Calvin Morrison, a Pennsylvania State Policeman who has been chasing a bad guy, stumbles into a Paratime Field and is moved to the Styphon's House Subsector of the Aryan-Transpacific Sector."

9. Major, Joseph T. (August 1993). Lovisi, Gary (ed.). "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen" (PDF). Paperback Parade. No. 35. Gryphon Publications. pp. 72–99. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-07-16. Retrieved 2023-07-16.

   The article notes: "While it is established in Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen that its hero Calvin Morrison also served in Korea along with Hawkeye, Trapper John, Duke, Spear-chucker, et al. and was even wounded there, H. Beam Piper was of course never in a position to have anything to do with this other work, and so never had any opportunity to do a tie-in to it with a story of Corporal Morrison at the 4077th M*A*S*H. ... Starving and depressed, on November 5, 1964 he killed himself. As his legacy to science fiction, he left a just completed novel, Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen."

10. Watson, Tony (November–December 1977). Ostrander, C. Ben (ed.). "Down Styphone! A review". The Space Gamer. No. 14. p. 43. Retrieved 2023-07-16 – via Internet Archive.

    The review notes: "In 1965, noted SF writer H. Beam Piper wrote a novel entitled Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. It is the story of a Pennsylvania state trooper who is trans- ported to a parallel Earth substantially different from our own. On this strange world, the eastern seaboard to the US is populated by a civilization of a technological and social level on par with that of early 17th century Europe. The Pennsylvania he has just left is part of Hos Harphax, a large kingdom subdivided into five lesser principalities."

11. Thesing, William B. (1981). "H. Beam Piper". In Cowart, David; Wymer, Thomas L. (eds.). Dictionary of Literary Biography. Volume 8: Twentieth-century American Science-fiction Writers. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Gale. p. 70. ISBN 0-8103-0918-1. Retrieved 2023-07-16 – via Internet Archive.

    The book notes: "The two stories "Gunpowder God" (1964) and "Down Styphon!" (1965) were expanded to form Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (1965). ... In his equally disappointing last book, Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, Piper returns to the concept of multidimensional time and the idea of policing alternate time modes. Pennsylvania State Trooper Corporal Calvin Morrison undergoes paratemporal transposition to Hostigos in the Aryan Transpacific Sector. Because of his knowledge of military strategy and his ingenuity for making gunpowder or "fireseed" from saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur, he is elevated in position to Lord Kalvan and ultimately to Great King Kalvan. ... The book's concepts are somewhat tedious, and the plot is diffuse. Interminable passages are devoted to describing pseudomedieval battle scenes as well as the geography surrounding Hostigos."

12. Pierce, John J. (1987). Great Themes of Science Fiction: A Study in Imagination and Evolution. New York: Greenwood Press. p. 180. ISBN 0-313-25456-7. ISSN 0193-6875. Retrieved 2023-07-16 – via Internet Archive.

    The book notes: "De Camp's story set the pattern for H. Beam Piper's Paratime stories, such as Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (1965), in which Calvin Morrison, a Pennsylvania state trooper, becomes warlord of Hos Hostigos, a primitive land that an alternate time track has placed on the territory of the Keystone state. An authority on firearms, Morrison finds the weapons used in Hos Hostigos laughable: He can certainly improve on those. He can also introduce rapiers; all the natives know about are broadswords. ... Piper's alternate world adventure is one of the best of its kind, and it has led to a sequel, Great Kings' War (1985), by Roland Green and John F. Carr."

13. Hacker, Barton C.; Chamberlain, Gordon B. (Winter 1981). "Pasts That Might Have Been: An Annotated Bibliography of Alternate History". Extrapolation. 22 (4): 367. Retrieved 2023-07-16 – via Internet Archive.

    The book notes: "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. New York: Ace, 1965; New York: Garland, 1975. This is a fix-up of two stories published in Analog: "Gunpowder God" (Nov. 1964) and "Down Styphon" (Nov. 1965); the British edition was published as Gunpowder God (London: Sphere, 1978). Crosstime adventure among the descendents of the prehistoric Aryan settlers of North America. Other stories in the Paratime Police series, all in Astounding—"Police Operation" (July 1948), "Last Enemy" (Aug. 1950), "Temple Trouble" (Apr. 1951), and "Time Crime" (Feb. and Mar. 1955)—are essentially exotic adventures which merely mention alternate history in passing or bear no relation to known history."

14. Mullen, R. D. (November 1975). "The Garland Library of Science Fiction". Science Fiction Studies. Vol. 2, no. 3. p. 287. JSTOR 4238981. Retrieved 2023-07-16.

    The review notes: "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen is similar though more modest in the scale of the story proper, which is set in a pre-industrial feudalistic world, on a time-track in which the Aryans, instead of turning south to invade India, instead went east across Siberia and Alaska, eventually reaching the eastern parts of what is in our time the United States. Here our hero is a member of the Pennsylvania State Police who finds that his skills are sufficient to make him an emperor in the world into which he has been tossed by an error on the part of the Paratime Police."

15. Davidson, Dan (1983-10-07). "Piper revival for Scifi fans". Whitehorse Daily Star. Archived from the original on 2023-07-16. Retrieved 2023-07-16 – via Newspapers.com.

    The article notes: "Lord Kalvan deals with one of the perplexing problems of time travel. From time to time out-time natives get picked up by the backwash from the tmie travel device the dragged along to some other line. ... It is an interesting fact that well written science fiction stands the passage of time better than a lot of other types of literature. Precisely because it is about fantastic things and places, it contains fewer references to date it. Such is the case here. In terms of his portrayal of women and his breadth of concepts, Piper was ahead of his time when he wrote and reading him is still a pleasure."

Cunard (talk) 09:43, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

@Cunard Thanks. I thought this would be rescuable, now we can change {{notability}} to {{Sources exist}}. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:26, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Ps. If you care to take a look at the other book in the series, they all are in about as bad of a shape, and ISFDb (nor my BEFORE) is generally not very helpful here. For now I've tagged them all with notability templates. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:26, 17 July 2023 (UTC)