Book detail for The Cosmic Computer (Junkyard Planet)

Cover tagline

LOST: One cybernetic monster. REWARD: You name it!

Back cover text

"Is there really a Merlin?"

Everybody on the war-torn planet Poictesme believed it existed. And they all believed that when this super-gigantic computer was located amid the mountains of surplus equipment that was the planet's sole source of revenue, it would mean Utopia for everyone.

Conn Maxwell knew different. He had studied the records on Earth and he thought he knew the true fats about this cosmic computer. To tell them would be to panic Poictesme, so instead he set about a new search in his own way — with startling results.

H. Beam Piper, author of Space Viking, has again produced an original and unusual novel of the space future.

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Interior text

Conn Maxwell told them: "There are incredible things still undiscovered; most of the important installations were built in duplicate as a precaution against space attack. I know where all of them are.

"But I could find nothing, not one single word, about any giant strategic planning computer called Merlin!"

Nevertheless the leading men of the planet didn't believe him. They couldn't, for the search for Merlin had become their abiding obsession. Merlin meant everything to them: power, pleasures, and profits unlimited.

Conn had known they'd never believe him, and so he had a trick or two up his space-trained sleeve that might outwit even their fabled Cosmic Computer ... if they dared accept his challenge.