After my
recent set of books, I was looking for something different. As usual, B&N's SF/F section was pretty much a bust. Grabbed Ben Bova's
Moonwar (I'm giving him one more chance... again.) and a book i later realized we already owned. At least this is the paperback edition.
But then I saw it. H. Beam Piper -
Space Viking.
Why don't they write them like this anymore? I last read this book when I was about 12, so it was fresh to me. Starts with action, stays there, and keeps the plot moving. The best part? Piper assumes his readers don't need a guided tour of the universe! The only time things are explained is when it is important to the tale being told. Through well-written scenes we learn that there used to be a Galactic Federation, it fell, many worlds fell into barbarism, and the people of the Sword Worlds supplement their Gross Planetary Product by raiding these worlds. Everything else is told through example; such as the scarcity of starships, the effects of weapons, etc. Add in memorable characters and you've got a classic.
A couple of very nice touches. The Space Vikings use hours as the default timescale for everything. Not only is it a good measure of speed for their ships (1ly/hour) but since things like day length and years will vary from world to world, a standard hour makes the most sense for a star-faring culture. Used in conversations, it showed that these people think differently than us, talking about information that was "800 hours old" as opposed to information that was about a month old. Having the habitable worlds spread out all over the place (hundreds of light years seemed to be the norm) was a nice nod to the realities of finding Earth-like worlds. Finally, the little flavor text about Space Viking crews tending to have esoteric hobbies as a time-passer while in hyperspace both made sense and added to the story (one of the major characters is a history buff.)
The entire book is a testament to good story telling, good Imperial SF, and economy of words. The edition I bought weighs in at 240 pages, and not one of them wasted.
Five penguins.
