One of the Best from One of the Best

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	• Space Viking H. Beam Piper Leisure/Wildside, 2008 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

One of the Best from One of the Best

This is classic sci-fi in its space opera format. I read this when I was a teenager because I'd read Lord Kalvan (Paratime series) serialized in Analog. It's quintessential escapist fiction--one of the most popular sub-genres in sci-fi. Taken as part of Piper's grand Future History saga, this is one of the best.

One of the Best

If you ever played Traveller, or GURPS or anything else like that, you will love this story. Very well written and entertaining. Piper's death was a loss that the SCIFI community will never recover from, especially with books he wrote like this one.

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juvenile at best

This novel reads like an adolescent fantasy. What would I do if my new bride were murdered? Become a space viking of course! And start an empire, and then everyone would respect me!

I found the messages disturbing as well. A couple that come across include the idea that stealing from and killing those weaker than you is OK, and the concept that those in power shouldn't tolerate lower classes working toward equality.

For the price of the Kindle edition, it wasn't awful, but I'll take an early Heinlein any day.

A science fiction classic!

I picked this book up the other day at a used bookstore. I decided to do this when I saw that the book was in better shape than the one I have in the basement and the price was great (only $3.00, not bad at all for a book that I love). Having picked it up, I immediately started to read Space Viking (again for the upteenth time). As with many of Mr. Piper's books, Space Viking is as much a look at society and political systems as it is a space opera. In this case a futuristic feudalism is examined while remnants of the Old Federation raid their poorer neighbors.

For me this is a five star book. The story telling is descriptive, the plot; while simple it does have a style that enables the space opera to move forward nicely while Mr. Piper explores space feudalism (and other forms of government) and the impact when people leave one country/planet to seek their fame and fortune. While this book was written in 1963, Mr. Piper does a great job making this a timeless classic. More science fiction writers would be better if they'd emulate Mr. Piper's works.

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The Echo of a Name

_Space Viking_ (1963) was a four-part serial in _Analog_ in 1962-63 and was accompanied by some marvelous John Schoenherr illustrations. It was reprinted by Ace shortly thereafter to modest attention. Since Piper's death by suicide in 1964, a number of his admirers have tried to make a case that the novel is a classic. Well, it isn't. It is a well-crafted space adventure that has some intelligent things to say about politics and warfare. But there is nothing highly original about the novel in plot, style, or content. It doesn't have the sparkle of his own Little Fuzzy novels.

Briefly, the story is this: The Galactic Federation has collapsed, and planets are now at the mercy of marauding Space Vikings. The hero is a nobleman named Lucas Trask whose bride is murdered on their wedding day by a madman. To catch the killer, Trask becomes a Space Viking and begins a series of conquests across the galaxy. But gradually, he finds that he is also rebuilding...

One of the characters in _Space Viking_ is an admiral named Otto Harkaman, who becomes a right hand man to Trask. The name sparked an echo in my mind when I reread Piper's novel. And then it clicked. It reminded me of the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in Frank Herbert's _Dune_ (1965), another _Analog_ novel. One man is essentially heroic, while the other is essentially villainous. But both are politically savy. Orson Scott Card once complained that most science fiction writers knew little about politics. They would have politicians in their stories say things that politicians would never say in real life and do things that real politicians would never do. This is not true of Piper and Herbert. You sense that their depictions of political meetings are authentic and that the policies that they make are realistic. Granted, their politics are somewhat on the medieval and Machiavellian side, but they are realistic nonetheless.

In any event, I heartily recommend _Space Viking_. Classic it may not be, but it deserves more attention than it has received in the past.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

Illustrated by Schoenherr

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