I Read Books: The Ullr Uprising
In an unsubtle repetition of the British Raj, the Terran Company rules over the native peoples of the planet Ullr, dominating their own kings. (They’re four-armed bipedal lizards). Because no one has learned a damn thing in several centuries, even after World War IV, there is an uprising that closely mirrors the Indian Revolt of 1857.
There are some science fictional twists; the Terrans cannot eat local food, so rely on their own farms; if they can’t maintain control then they will starve before help can come. Although they have the majority of the flying lorries and cars (and especially gunships) they don’t have a monopoly, so they have a mobility advantage yet the enemy can also raid and strike in places. There are no nuclear weapons on the planet, but there is plutonium for power, and one of the princes in the uprising spent time on the planet of Niflheim* where they use nuclear bombs in mining. There’s a sub-plot in which they uncover the exact details of how to build a nuclear bomb in a closely researched romance novel set in WW2.
This early and minor novel of H Beam Piper has one or two interesting features but really it’s a simple re-telling of the Indian Revolt. With most of the stranger and far-reaching elements stripped out to streamline the story (and get to the fight). For example the various religious parts of the history are removed in favour a narrative that the Terrans, believed to come from uninhabitable Niflheim, are going to wipe out the locals and live on Ullr, which is so uninteresting a plotline it drops out of the story after being referred to once.
Read This: For H Beam Piper completists or if you want a fast-moving undemanding military science fiction story
Don’t Read This: If you want something actually interesting either science fictional or about the Indian Revolt
Out of Copyright: And available online
* For some reason H Beam Piper uses Norse Mythology for naming planets in the Terran Federation, an Earth based empire created after the Northern Hemisphere was destroyed in two World Wars.
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