Not Getting Enough Space Opera? Try Piper’s Space Viking!

Waiting for David Weber to write another installment in his epic Honorverse saga is one of the most frustrating experiences, a scifi fan can have. But if you’re suffering withdrawal symptoms from having to wait 18-24 months for the next book, take heart from the fact that (in my humble opinion) the best space opera of the early 60’s, is alive and well with new sequels even though the author, H. Beam Piper, died in 1964! Piper’s most famous novel(s) were the Fuzzy series, starting with Little Fuzzy. Many fell in love with those cute, adorable, furry people and several sequels by other authors have been written in the past decade or so. Technically, the Fuzzy books aren’t really space opera per se, even though they take place in Piper’s Terro-Human History, which IS the setting for his space opera books. The book, which is THE best example of space opera from that era, is Space Viking. Don’t let the title fool you. This novel is serious space opera. Revenge, death, huge spherical spaceships, space battles, ground battles, political intrigue and yes, even a bit of romance too (but not too much) make this very readable even today. When I first discovered it back in the 70’s, I couldn’t put it down until I’d finished it and then wanted more. The problem was, Piper hadn’t written any more Space Viking sequels. The closest thing was another book, set 800 years earlier in the same Piper universe, entitled Cosmic Computer, which introduces some of the planets, that show up again in Space Viking. It was more of a prequel.

But now that Piper’s works are in the public domain (www.gutenberg.org), other authors (including myself) have taken on the task of writing sequels to Space Viking (and to Cosmic Computer). To the best of my knowledge right now (June, 2013), there are four of us with at least one more to come. Please forgive me for starting with myself. My sequel to Cosmic Computer is: Cosmic Computer Legacy: The Tides of Chaos. Aside from the main story line itself, ToC is also meant to connect, in a very direct way, Piper’s Cosmic Computer and his Space Viking. My series of Space Viking sequels begins with Space Viking Legacy: The Tanith Gambit, that literally begins where the original SV left off. I’ve tried to write it as I imagine Piper would have written it although I’ve made the space combat scenes more detailed and realistic and introduced the same type of technological/strategic/political/economic undercurrents that David Weber is so well known for. If Piper had collaborated with David Weber, this is the kind of book that I think they would have written. The next book in the Space Viking Legacy series, The Loki Gambit, is also on sale now (all my books are available on Amazon, with The Tanith Gambit also on Smashwords and a version of The Loki Gambit, with bonus material, will soon be available in non-kindle formats from my website: www.DwehrSFwriter.com) with at least one more sequel to come after that. I plan to write another sequel every 3-4 months so you won’t have to wait 18-24 months to get your next space opera fix.

Other SV sequel writers are; Mike Robertson, who co-wrote The Last Space Viking and Space Viking’s Throne with John F. Carr. John Carr is also working on his own Space Viking sequel, tentatively entitled Revenge of Space Viking. Terry Mancour has also written two SV sequels (so far), Prince of Tanith and Princess Valerie’s War. Jerry Pournelle’s SV sequel, The Return of Space Viking, is expected to be released in 2014.

I think that David Weber’s space opera books are popular, in part because he thinks big. When I first read about Superdreadnoughts in his Honor Harrington books and the description that they massed almost 9 million tons, a chill went up my spine. With the exception of Weber’s Dahak ships, that are the size of our moon, as far as I knew then, an 8.7 million ton superdreadnought was the most massive spaceship of any space opera book. Then I corresponded with a reader of my Tanith Gambit book, who pointed out that one of Piper’s Space Viking battleships, which is a sphere with a 2,000 ft. diameter, has an internal volume of 4.2 BILLION cubic feet and with the collapsed matter armor, that has a density of somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 metric tonne per cubic centimeter, the minimum mass for that ship, would have to have an average density of not less than the density of water (so that the ship could sink to the bottom of oceans) which works out to 131 million tons! Wow! I’d love to see David Weber top that.

I do realize that there are other space opera writers out there and while I can’t mention them all, I do feel that Ian Douglas and his Star Carrier series, as well as Jack Campbell and his Lost Fleet series, deserve to be mentioned too. They’re both writers who think big.

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