The Cosmic Computer

Poictesme was once the strategic heart of a galactic empire. Now it's a dying farm world, selling salvaged war machinery for pennies on the dollar while its people nurture a single desperate hope: Merlin, the cosmic computer that supposedly won the war. Find Merlin, and all their problems vanish. Young Conn Maxwell has just returned from Earth with knowledge that could locate the machine, and the terrible truth that finding it would destroy everything. The planet's salvation is also its extinction. What follows is a brilliantly constructed inversion: the hero must hide the very answer everyone seeks, convincing a desperate people that their only hope is a lie. Piper writes with sharp economical prose and a dry wit that makes the philosophical weight feel effortless. This is science fiction at its finest: a compact, propulsive story that uses the future to illuminate the present's hunger for easy answers and our dangerous faith in machines to save us from ourselves.