James Nicoll Reviews

Space Viking

H. Beam Piper

Ace Books [1963]

243 pages

Synopsis: The Federation has fallen, civilization collapsed and high technology is preserved on only a few worlds, among them the Sword Worlds, home of the Star Vikings, who prey on weaker worlds as their namesakes preyed on weaker communities in Europe. On one such Sword World, Gram, Lucas Trask, a noble, gets married. Less than an hour after his wedding to Elaine Karvall, Trask is badly wounded and his new wife is killed by Andray Dunnan, a mad would-be suitor of Elaine’s. Dunnan escapes immediate vengeance by fleeing Gram, stealing the starship Enterprise [no relation]. Trask, who up until now has seen the activities of the Star Vikings as draining the Sword Worlds of vital skilled labour, no longer cares about the larger picture and only wants revenge. He stakes his holding to pay for a new ship, the Nemesis and sets out to find and kill Dunnan.

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Omnilingual (from the collection Federation)
H. Beam Piper
Ace 1981
54 pages

That 1981 is very misleading: Omnilingual dates from much earlier. For some reason, Federation doesn’t give the details of prior publication. IMS Baen was running Ace’s SF line at that point and insufficient notation of prior publication used to drive me up the wall when Baen Books started out. I think it came out in 1957 in ASF.

Synopsis: Near the end of the twentieth century (Carr gives the year as 54 AE, AE = 1945), a post-Atomic War Earth is unified under the Federation. Advanced and wealthy, the Federation is funding interplanetary exploration. Omnilingual takes place on Mars where a fair-sized group of archaeologists are exploring the ruins left by a very recently extinct race of intelligent Martians. Mars is a dying planet, past the point of non-technological occupation by humanoid species, with the richest life found in the ancient seabeds, where depth and scaleheight give the animals enough air to breath.

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