The Cosmic Computer

2.5 stars, Metaphorosis reviews
Summary
A backwater planet littered with war materiel has sent its best and brightest to learn computer science so that they can find the mythic Merlin - a superlative computer. But he comes back with a more complex scheme to restart the local economy.

Review
While the book centers around the search for a mythic, all-powerful computer, I actually prefer the original, Junkyard Planet title, since it better captures the setting. But Piper apparently preferred The Cosmic Computer.

The setting is actually the more interesting element, along with the protagonist and his father's attempts to galvanize a moribund community into helping itself. There's a lot of libertarian, by-the-bootstraps, competent men at work feeling here – occasionally helped out by girls, because by golly some of them can push buttons as well as the men. If you're a fan of the early Heinlein, you might find this up your alley, except that Heinlein was much more adept at creating engaging characters and extrapolating trends.

Piper, whom I and many others encountered via his LittleFuzzy books, doesn't bring that charm to bear. This is all smart, honorable men of action helping those who can't see the way for themselves. Unfortunately, it's layered on some fairly creaking premises. The first is that the planet is jam-packed with war paraphernalia, including shipyards, tools, weapons, etc., but that it takes the rumor of a supercomputer to galvanize anyone into action. That part has some flaws, but makes an interesting story. The computer itself? That's so full of holes that they're hard to overlook. The computer can pretty much do anything, it's thought, but somehow the Federation that created it only made one, then abandoned it, and never thought of making another. Piper also borrows heavily from Asimov's Foundation for some of the elements.

I liked Piper's Fuzzy books years ago, but I found this one pretty slow going, and not only for heavy-handed sexism that was already dated at the time. It just feels like kind of a kludge, and not a very careful one.