#space viking

H. Beam Piper’s Space Viking — this is the 1977 Ace edition, fronted by a typically fantastic Michael Whelan painting.

Gotta admit, when I first picked this up, it was as a joke because the title struck me as fairly hilarious. However, it is actually extremely good! The title sets expectations — the novel is a sprawling interplanetary science fiction yarn concerning war, politics, murder and revenge that maps broadly to the action of Viking saga. It is a very different sort of book, really, but I think it kind of rhymes with Poul Anderson’s Broken Sword in a funny kind of way?

I was reading about "plot holes" in Thor. They brought up the rules for going to Valhalla in Thor Love and Thunder not agreeing with the other movies. And someone said, "Frigga" and everyone else didn't turn into dust.

And I PROTEST. Frigga did turn into sparkle dust. And I know this because I care too much about Frigga.

She just didn't turn into dust right away. She turned into dust at the end of her funeral. (And immediately after she turns to dust, it cuts to Heimdall and I always wondered if he could SEE where she went. See? I told you I care too much about Frigga.)

So I have presented a theory in which, the Valkyrie or whoever, have between 1 second and one day to decide if your corpse should go to Valhalla or not. So just because they didn't immediately disappear into gold dust, it doesn't mean it's ruled out because the sparkle dust fairies could've come when the camera was not on that corpse.