Space Viking is recognized as one of H. Beam Piper's finest works and a science fiction classic. In the words of legendary SF Editor, John W. Campbell: "Space Viking itself is, I think, one of the classics-a yarn that will be cited, years hence, as one of the science-fiction classics. It's got solid philosophy for the mature thinker, and bang-bang-chop-'em-up action for the space-pirate fans. As a truly good yarn should have "Lord Lucas Trask of Traskon is no admirer of the Space Vikings and despises their parasitical forays into the ruins of the former Federation, both for the destruction and death they bring with them and because they take the best and brightest men away from the Sword-Worlds. Then a madman murders his wife on their wedding day and leaves on a spaceship for a Space Viking raid into the Old Federation. Trask trades his fiefdom for a second ship, vowing to hunt down the killer Andray Dunnan. Lucas Trask is forced by the enormity of his task to raid worlds for both material and intelligence on his enemy at the risk of becoming one of the very Space Vikings he so much deplored before his wife's brutal death.