Cattle die, kinsmen die,
And so too oneself.
Yet one thing lives on,
The fame of a man’s deeds.

-Sayings of the High One

Space Viking, written by legendary Science Fiction author H. Beam Piper, is surely among the finest titles ever to grace a Science Fiction novel. In two words it seizes the imagination with a bold image. Every literate person knows what Vikings are: pirates, mercenaries, explorers, settlers, and conquerors. The Viking era gave Western literature many of its best larger-than-life characters. Beowulf, Sigurd and Brunhild in their many guises, Ragnar Hairy-breeks, Hrolf Kraki, and Amleð, better known as Hamlet, have inspired writers as varied as Tolkien, Poul Anderson, Wagner, and Shakespeare. Append to the iconic image of the Viking the word “Space” and you have a new creation, rooted at once in the legendary past and the 20th century’s self-made mythology of Science Fiction. Together those words tell the reader this is a tale of adventure in an era when an old civilization has crumbled and a new one is not yet born.

Space Viking came late in Piper’s career. It first appeared as a serial in Analog running from November 1962 to February 1963. It was published by Ace in 1963, among the last of Piper’s novels to be published before his death in 1964.

Piper might be called a writer of Sociological Science Fiction. His stories are very much about the workings of society in a futuristic setting. Novels and short stories such as Little Fuzzy, Uller Uprising, “Oomphel in the Sky”, and “When in the Course” deal with concepts of sentience, religious belief, the technology of war and how these impact economics and the exercise of power. Piper’s fiction does not lack for adventure and a sense of wonder, while staying true to the concept of Science Fiction as a literature of ideas.

The “Terro-Human Future” stories, which Space Viking is a part of, chronicle the rise and fall of galactic civilization. Humanity, equipped with faster-than-light spaceships, spreads across the galaxy and establishes the Federation. The Federation eventually succumbs to political and economic decay, and in turn a new entity, the Empire, rises from the ashes to begin the cycle of expansion, greatness, and decline again.

Space Viking’s setting is the era between the fall of the Federation and the rise of the Empire. Some planets retain faster-than-light travel, others sink all the way to squalling barbarism, all are beset by crisis and decay. The Sword Worlds—named for legendary swords such as Gram, Durandal, and Excalibur—retain their industrial technology, albeit under the rule of feudal warlords. When not squabbling amongst themselves, the Sword Worlders sally forth in their spacecraft to pillage the remains of the Old Federation. As the story opens, Lucas Trask, the protagonist of Space Viking, is offered a place in Duke Angus of Gram’s latest Viking expedition.

Trask does not initially approve of the Vikings’ activities. It’s not that his principles are opposed to murder and robbery on other planets, at least not that he admits. Rather he sees the Vikings as draining off the Sword Worlds’ best and brightest. Trask believes that the Sword Worlds’ human capital should stay at home and shore up civilization against the decay wrought by internecine wars. Moreover, the loss of so many high-IQ technicians is dysgenic, leaving each generation a little less capable than the preceding (Piper anticipated Idiocracy by many decades with “Day of the Moron” in the September 1951 issue of Astounding). Trask is committed to settling down with the love of his life, Elaine Karvall, heiress to a fortune built on steel mills. United with Trask’s mining interests, the marriage will produce not only domestic felicity, but a valuable feudal-corporate enterprise, providing prosperity and peace for the betterment of all.

Alas for Lucas’s principles, fate intervenes in the form Andray Dunnan, Elaine’s stalker ex-boyfriend. Dunnan machine guns the wedding party, steals the Duke Angus’s best spaceship, and flees, leaving Trask alive in body but dead inside.

It’s a classic revenge story set up. A hero, driven by a crime against those he loves and must protect, seeks, if not justice, then vengeance. Of course as Shakespeare knew, the inner life of the protagonist, a meditation on vengeance itself and its spiritual cost, is every bit as compelling as the external complications. And Lucas Trask is every bit as conflicted as Hamlet.

In order to achieve his revenge against Dunnan, Trask must plunge headlong into what he opposes, the practice of being a Space Viking. What was academic becomes real. But in heroic fashion, Trask determines to be the best, the boldest of Space Vikings, disdaining mere “chicken stealing.” With the backing of Duke Angus, Trask takes the lead in the violent looting of people that have done him no harm. The darkest moment comes when Trask encounters one of his victims.

“They found themselves alone, in a great empty hallway; the noise and the horror of the sack had moved away from them, or they from it, and then, when they entered a side hall, they saw a man, one of the locals, squatting on the floor with the body of a woman cradled in his lap. She was dead, half her head had been blown off, but he was clasping her tightly, her blood staining his shirt, and sobbing heartbrokenly. A carbine lay forgotten on the floor beside him.”

Trask shoots the man dead, remarking, “I wish Andray Dunnan had done that for me.” There’s bleak, and then there’s nihilistic.

Yet Trask is not a nihilist. Still haunted by Elaine’s ghost, Trask does what he does to build a power base for his pursuit of Dunnan. But there’s a subtle change in Trask, belying his determination to destroy for vengeance. Dunnan is an elusive foe and to build is to plan for the future. Raiding gives way to trading. Trask is increasingly absorbed in the details of developing the planets he rules under the overlordship of Angus, now angling to be King of Gram, and the growing sense that someday Trask and his miniature empire will need no overlord.

Trask doesn’t flag in his efforts to settle accounts with Dunnan. His quest brings him into contact with the Gilgameshers, an ethno-religious group devoted to trade (in effect Space Jews). Trask also encounters space voyagers from the planet Marduk, with their own grudge against Andray Dunnan.

In Piper’s Terro-Human Future Marduk plays a critical role. Marduk is a constitutional monarchy retaining a high level of technological ability. The ruling classes are enlightened and progressive, adhering scrupulously to the rule of law. In the Terro-Human Future, Marduk will eventually found the Empire, an interstellar union joined in a Pax Mardukis, restoring the ancient glory of the Federation. Marduk is Space England if you will.

Trask finds reason to bond with the Mardukan royal family. There’s a shared hatred of Andray Dunnan, Trask’s romance with a Mardukan princess, and opposition to Zaspar Makaan, a particularly odious demagogue with a hatred for Gilgameshers (Makaan is in effect, Space Hitler). Space Viking makes another subtle shift, becoming an exploration of politics. Trask makes his final break with his homeworld of Gram, and a break of sorts with the painful memory of Elaine, and even the need for revenge.

The final showdown with Dunnan, long delayed, comes almost as an anti-climax. Trask is no longer looking for Dunnan. The man who wished Dunnan had killed him has found something to live for.

Trask’s arc is complete. He begins as a man sure in his ideals, committed to a life turned inward, to the comforting arms of love. Fate, that most Viking of plot devices, strips him of his comfort, drives him from his home to seek a new type of comfort, one indistinguishable from torture, in action. At last he finds a means to peace, putting his hard-won ability for action in the service of his old ideals, now hardened in the reality of bloodshed, to make a better world. People are no longer capital to be developed, or exploited, but an end in themselves. A better future, not revenge, is what Trask leaves as his monument. Wealth dwindles, loved ones die, but Trask’s deeds will live on.

I’ve used a number of terms here, such as Space Jews, Space Hitler, and Space England that may seem dismissive. They are not meant to be trivializing, let alone dismissive. Like the term Space Viking, they are ways to produce images that resonate with readers. Space Viking is a parable of sorts. Like parable tellers from ages past, Piper used the common imagery of his readers’ culture, mated with new imagery of fantastically advanced science to convey his message. Man might live on a thousand worlds and travel faster than light, but wherever he goes, he is himself, and cannot outrun his fate. The Vikings had nothing more advanced than boats powered by wind and muscle, yet they knew that to be true.

David Hardy is an award-winning scholar in the field of Robert E. Howard studies. Hardy is also a prolific author of historical adventures and tales of sword-and-sorcery. His stories can be found on Amazon. One of David's recent tales is Three Black Deeds, an homage to space opera novels like Space Viking as well as the Norse sagas.