Crossroads of Destiny: Science Fiction Stories

by H. Beam Piper

This new collection of H. Beam Piper's classic short stories includes: "Crossroads of Destiny," "The Return," "He Walked Around the Horses," "The Mercenaries," and "Time and Time Again."

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories

128 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1959

About the author

Henry Beam Piper was an American science fiction author. He wrote many short stories and several novels. He is best known for his extensive Terro-Human Future History series of stories and a shorter series of "Paratime" alternate history tales.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clever, but not memorable. And, no need to know the other works referenced or to have familiarity with the mc, as this stands alone.

[Wordaholic · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good short story. Introducing an idea and building up to the conclusion, in such short story, it is a job well done.

[SciFiOne · Rating 4 out of 5]

2019 grade B

A mixing of alternate realities short story.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those stories that comes along and gets no popularity and publicity aside from a bunch of positive reviews, so I knew pretty much nothing about it going in. It's basically a near-future, not quite adventure story time traveler's kinda deal. What I really liked about it was the almost believable vision of the future. So many science fiction stories have the future, even when it's not far off, being full of flying cars and robotic bovines and all that, but this thing is somehow believable, to a point anyway. It's also kinda sad to think that this could be what humans become. There's a fair bit though, that I didn't quite get. One of the laws of time travel says you can't do the nasty death with someone who has more than 25% of the same DNA as yourself, even though they're not related in anyway, but why is there so much parallel world and paradox type deals going on when obviously there's no problems with alternate worlds? For there to be so many problems with time travel paradoxes or whatever it must be happening non-stop? Or did I miss something? And what happened to traditional time travel to avoid the possibility of a not-quite all-out war? It's all kinda confusing, but I guess there'd be no point to the story if those things were explained. I quite liked this anyway. It's not fast or action packed, but as a sci-fi fan I enjoyed the vision of the future and the prediction of time travel and the general story. It's worth reading if you like this type of thing.

[Star · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story was brought to my attention about containing Time Travel as a central point of the story. I expected actual Time Travel but was disappointed in lack of actual Time Travel, instead we got dimension hopping.

No time Travel other than the normal 60 seconds for every minute passed. Story is about a group of men discussion making a show that looks into alternate-historical events and discusses what would happen under different choices back in history. They bring up related subjects of time-travel, alternate history, multiverse time-streams, and leaks and hops between time-streams.

No actual time-travel up and down the time-stream is done.

Other than that, it was okay.

[Chris Aldridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part of LibriVox Short Science Fiction Collection 005. Quite similar to the previous story about a group discussion on the possibility of alternative futures which lead to contemplate of alternative realities. Fairly predictable that the stranger turned out to have actual evidence that the story is actually set in an alternate Earth.

[Drew McCaffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many of the classic SF short stories I've been reading lately, this one has a wonderful twist. While it's not particularly compelling—more of a hypothetical thought experiment with little actual applicability—this was nevertheless a fun little surprise.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came across this story and having already read some of Piper's work in the past gave into the urge to read it. It was a pleasant way to spend half an hour.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm shook

[Timothy Morrison]

this alternate time stuff is weird

[Groucho42 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re-release of short story about possible parallel words. Very simple and standard.

[Tony Ciak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scifi short story by a master, well done!!

[Matt Kelland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun little alt.history story with an unusual perspective, beginning by seeing it through the lens of a TV show.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blurbs for books. Days are we write so many of them we could just . . . well. But it's clear we aren't the only ones who feel this way. H. Beam Piper sold "Crossroads of Destiny" to "Fantastic Universe Science Fiction," which published it in their July 1959 issue. "No wonder he'd been so interested in the talk of whether our people accepted these theories!" they said of the story. We aren't at all certain what they meant by that, but you'll probably have a clue. The blurb for "Hunter Patrol" ("Amazing Stories," May 1959 -- a collaboration with John J. McGuire) is equally oblique: "Readers who remember the Hon. Stephen Silk, diplomat extraordinary, in "Lone Star Planet (FU," March 1957), later published as "A Planet for Texans" (Ace Books), will find the present story a challenging departure -- this possibility that the history we know may not be absolute. . . ." On the other hand, when "Dearest" appeared in "Weird Tales," in March, 1951, the folks at that magazine blurbed it, "Many men have dreamed of world peace, but none have been able to achieve it. If one man did have that power, could mankind afford to pay the price?" An interesting thought, we say. And it seems to us that they had a lot more to say about the story than the SF mags did (above). On the other other hand (it makes us feel like such "Moties" to say that), when "True: The Man's Magazine," published "Rebel Raider" in December 1950 they said, "Jeb Stuart left John Singleton Mosby behind Northern lines 'to look after loyal Confederate people.' But before the war was over, Mosby did a lot more than that. . . ." (We think they actually read the piece before they published it, by golly!) And on the lasthand of all, there's no evidence that anybody at the house that published "The Science-Fictional Sherlock Holmes," (1960 -- another collaboration with John J. McGuire) even read "The Return" -- they didn't say a word about it! Harrumph.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

An OK read but nothing to get excited about and track down. I'm a huge Piper fan (Lone Star Planet! Yee Haw!!) but this tale was very typical 1950's SF in that it could have been any of a dozen writers who knocked it out. Not bad, but not what I expect from this author.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short sci-fi story with a nice twist at the end.

[Ralph McEwen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Downloaded from Librivox.com

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short science fiction tale with a rather surprising ending...

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent short story! Very well written, great premise, and fun to read!