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Space Viking by H. Beam Piper
I thought that Space Viking by H. Beam Piper (1963) was going to be a pulpy, paint-by-numbers space opera. I was wrong, and quite delighted by what I got instead: a contemplative look at the nature of civilizations and the arbitrariness of human social organization.
You may be able to guess by the title, but Space Viking is about space vikings: raiders who travel from world to world, trading and pillaging and being a general space nuisance. Lucas Trask is a noble on a technologically advanced, feudal world; he loathes the space vikings, because while his world might not be a target of space viking raids, the spacefaring marauders manage to recruit the best and brightest from his planet, contributing to a brain drain whose effect, in the long run, is more or less the same, if less violent in its execution.
But when a deranged rival attacks his wedding, murders his new bride, and steals his liege's new spaceship, his attitude takes a drastic turn; in despair, he trades his landhold for a ship of his own and turns space viking himself, so that he can get revenge on the man who ruined his life. What follows is less an old school space opera adventure, and more a methodical form of kingdom-building fiction that one might find in a modern LitRPG novel, as we watch Trask construct a base of operations, cultivate trade relationships, and build up a fleet of like-minded raiders.
The kicker is when he visits Liberal Democracy Planet (not its real name), where he watches as their elected government ignores and downplays the threat of a recent upstart fascist demagogue. What follows is a critique of liberal democracy that would be familiar to readers of de Tocqueville, Schmitt, Derrida, Agamben, etc...and it comes as little surprise that not long after Trask departs from the planet, he learns of said demagogue's ascension to Chancellor and his subsequent self-coup. The book references Hitler's rise to power, of course (reading up on ancient history is a favored pastime of some space vikings during their long interstellar voyages), but, well...
Usually I'd lament this kind of injection of obvious politics into a book—Piper's brand of twentieth century American libertarianism was a frequent offender in science fiction of the time—but given the current moment it's hard to simply roll your eyes at the critique. Moreover, it's not particularly preachy, with Trask acknowledging that his own form of "government" is hardly perfect; that none of them are, and that if history has taught us anything, no system lasts forever.
You may be able to guess by the title, but Space Viking is about space vikings: raiders who travel from world to world, trading and pillaging and being a general space nuisance. Lucas Trask is a noble on a technologically advanced, feudal world; he loathes the space vikings, because while his world might not be a target of space viking raids, the spacefaring marauders manage to recruit the best and brightest from his planet, contributing to a brain drain whose effect, in the long run, is more or less the same, if less violent in its execution.
But when a deranged rival attacks his wedding, murders his new bride, and steals his liege's new spaceship, his attitude takes a drastic turn; in despair, he trades his landhold for a ship of his own and turns space viking himself, so that he can get revenge on the man who ruined his life. What follows is less an old school space opera adventure, and more a methodical form of kingdom-building fiction that one might find in a modern LitRPG novel, as we watch Trask construct a base of operations, cultivate trade relationships, and build up a fleet of like-minded raiders.
The kicker is when he visits Liberal Democracy Planet (not its real name), where he watches as their elected government ignores and downplays the threat of a recent upstart fascist demagogue. What follows is a critique of liberal democracy that would be familiar to readers of de Tocqueville, Schmitt, Derrida, Agamben, etc...and it comes as little surprise that not long after Trask departs from the planet, he learns of said demagogue's ascension to Chancellor and his subsequent self-coup. The book references Hitler's rise to power, of course (reading up on ancient history is a favored pastime of some space vikings during their long interstellar voyages), but, well...
Usually I'd lament this kind of injection of obvious politics into a book—Piper's brand of twentieth century American libertarianism was a frequent offender in science fiction of the time—but given the current moment it's hard to simply roll your eyes at the critique. Moreover, it's not particularly preachy, with Trask acknowledging that his own form of "government" is hardly perfect; that none of them are, and that if history has taught us anything, no system lasts forever.