A running theme in Piper’s work is that history repeats itself; past events will have direct and clear analogues in the future.

When the book was published, he had been writing and selling science fiction for many years to the leading magazines, and that he was highly rated among readers for his skill and imagination. He had published several novels, mostly SF, but also including mysteries and juveniles. But that blurb was written just before he took his own life in the noise and nonsense that comes out of divorce … sigh. Some things happen so large upon our lives that they seem to blot out all that goes before… 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! – Is there really a Merlin? That’s what Conn Maxwell asked, and the question irked those who heard it. Of course it did! Merlin meant everything to the folks on the planet Poictesme: power, pleasures and profits unlimited. But the leading men of the planet didn’t believe him. They couldn’t! The search for Merlin had become their abiding obsession. Everybody 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 facts about this cosmic computer. To tell them would be to panic, so instead he set about a new search in his own way – with startling results.