Hayford Peirce - Books

Books

Although highly improbable in their plots, all of Peirce's stories do fit into the category of science fiction rather than fantasy, as evidenced by the fact that they were mostly published in the "hard science fiction" magazine Analog. He was greatly encouraged in his writing by Ben Bova, the multiple-Hugo winning editor of Analog. It was Bova who suggested that he expand a short joke letter sent to Bova into what turned out to be five stories in the popular Chap Foey Rider series. "Chap Foey Rider", the name of an Anglo-Chinese businessman in New York City who gets Earth invited to join the Galactic Postal Union, is actually an anagram of the author's name.

As Peirce's career progressed, his stories became even more imbued with satire and irony, culminating in two stories written in the early 1980s, "Taking the Fifth" and "The Reluctant Torturer". The lengthy "Taking the Fifth" examines the process and the consequences of first promoting, and then achieving, an Amendment to the American Constitution that would permit the use of testimony in court derived from the application of a foolproof truth serum upon suspected criminals. "The Reluctant Torturer" considers the unintended consequences to the city of San Francisco, and to the luckless protagonist, of hiring a Municipal Torturer to deal with—initially at any rate—only those terrorists who threaten to destroy the city. A number of these stories were reprinted in anthologies such as Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year, Fifth Annual Collection, and The Best of Omni Science Fiction.

In 1987 Tor published his first novel, Napoleon Disentimed, a parallel-universe and time-travel story of some complexity. It is written with Peirce's characteristic wit, irony, and jauntiness and is almost Wodehousian in its zaniness and complications of plot. Two more novels followed swiftly. The Thirteenth Majestral, later reissued as Dinosaur Park, was another intensely complex time-travel novel, but this time written—in both style and theme—in the somewhat rococo manner of the great science-fiction stylist Jack Vance. Phylum Monsters, written in the first person, was far more straightforward than the first two books but perhaps even zanier in its plotting as well as having an unexpectedly poignant ending. "Phylum Monsters (1989) employs genetic engineering in a wryly irreverent fashion."

All of these books were translated into various languages and enjoyed a certain amount of success in Europe and Russia but none of them were commercial successes in the American market and Peirce returned to writing short stories, expanding into the mystery field as well. Drawing on his years in Tahiti, he wrote two series of mystery short stories, primarily for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. One series features an American private eye (and ex-Foreign Legionnaire) in Tahiti, Joe Caneili, and his rather picaresque adventures. The other stars Commissaire Tama, Tahiti's fattest man and the Chief of Police of Papeete, its capital city. Both are written in the fast-moving but evocative style Peirce uses in his science fiction and involve unlikely plots that are unique to Tahiti, such as a banker falling dead upon the delivery of his own coffin to his front door, or the complete disappearance of a fastidiously constructed house from its foundations in the wake of a hurricane. Rich evocations of the modernized Tahitian culture and the lush Polynesian landscape are important elements in these stories.