Why you should watch “Norsemen” on Netflix

Comedy + Vikings ? I’ll buy that for a dollar

IMDb user review, “Norsemen” TV Series (Norwegian: “Vikingane”)

Author: OneEyedOdin from Texas

 

And Now for Something Completely Different

Having stumbled into this show while randomly flipping through streaming content, one may initially be slightly confused about what awaits them. However, I can assure you that if you are desperately seeking for a remake of the popular TV show “The Vikings” you have unmistakably come to the wrong place.

That parrot is no more! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

Not understanding this reference to Monty Python certainly doesn’t mean that you won’t thoroughly enjoy this wonderful new show “Norsemen.” It may just mean that you haven’t yet been exposed to the type of comedy and dark humor that this amazingly well-made and acted Norwegian comedy has in store for you.

While…

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Why Were Viking Children Buried With Big Razor Sharp Knives?

What if Viking children already as newborns got a beautifully made knife from their families – a tool that would follow them from childhood, through their adult life and all the way to Valhalla?

What if they brought with them their dearest and most useful object in their travel to Afterlife?

Blacksmith and knife maker Tor Aune in Central Norway makes traditional knives for hunting, fishing and work. (Photo: ThorNews)

The Danish archaeologist Henriette Lyngstrøm has examined about forty knives found in Danish Viking child graves dated to the period from 800 to 1050 AD. It turns out they were big and razor sharp, and did not stand out from knives that belonged to adult Vikings.

The knife blades examined were found in Viking child graves containing four to six year old children at Langeland and Lejre in Denmark. When the blades were cut up and placed under the microscope, it was determined that they were made of steel and iron and had been really sharp.

Lyngstrøm, who is Associate Professor of Archeology at the University of Copenhagen, thinks the discovery is a big surprise.

– I thought it was quite remarkable that the knives were so big and sharp. They…

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THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Niven and Pournelle are 2 of my most favorite writers

What Has Been Read Cannot Be Unread

What a great sci fi book, and yet, not.  It’s one of those books that you really enjoy while you are reading it, while at the same time thinking, ‘Things that make you go hmmmmm.’

Official blurb:  “In 3016, the 2nd Empire of Man spans hundreds of star systems, thanks to faster-than-light Alderson Drive. Intelligent beings are finally found from the Mote, an isolated star in a thick dust cloud. The bottled-up ancient civilization, at least one million years old, are welcoming, kind, yet evasive, with a dark problem they have not solved in over a million years.”

It was written in 1974, so that might account for some of its hmmmm issues. I am going to give you a link to a review by somebody who can really write and think, and has described all my issues with the book so much better than me.   It is HERE. …

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TIME’S EYE by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter

Call me slightly paranoid, but these supposed collaborations I think are just some writer using some really great author’s name to sell a book.

What Has Been Read Cannot Be Unread

I am not sure what to call this.  Part sci fi, part fantasy, part alternative reality, part speculative fiction, and all weird.  Of course, you know who Arthur C. Clarke is.  And Stephen Baxter is a powerhouse sci fi writer in his own right.  So what to say about this book, other than it is the first of A Time Odyssey trilogy?

The official blurb is really long.  Shall I just copy and paste it for you?  Might be easier.  OK, you talked me into it.

For eons, Earth has been under observation by the Firstborn, beings almost as old as the universe itself. The Firstborn are unknown to humankind until they act. In an instant, Earth is carved up and reassembled like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly the planet and every living thing on it no longer exist in a single timeline. Instead, the world becomes a patchwork of…

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Recommendation for Science-Fiction and Fantasy written by AAPI Authors — A Work in Progress

I know this post is late. I’m sorry! I hope you enjoy it anyways. Science-fiction and fantasy is the next stop on my recommendations of books written by AAPI authors. Again, I want to state that these are my personal recommendations for books that I’ve read and loved or books that are on my TBR […]

via Recommendation for Science-Fiction and Fantasy written by AAPI Authors — A Work in Progress

SEA OF RUST by C. Robert Cargill

Read this, and enjoyed it

What Has Been Read Cannot Be Unread

A sentient robot story.  I love sentient robot stories.  Robots with personality and feist.  I bet that is not a word.  OK, spunk.  Personality and spunk.

The year is, ummm, I don’t know.  The future sometime.  It is thirty years since the humans lost the war with the robots, and there are no humans left on earth.  We meet Brittle, a Caregive model robot who makes her living scavaging parts in the American midlands, now a desert, filled with ruins, hulks and rusting machines.  Brittle salvages parts from dying robots, to trade for parts she needs or will need for herself, because apparently nobody is manufacturing robot parts anymore.

The robots thought that after fighting for legitimate personhood with the humans, and being denied, that having eliminated all humans, they would have an ideal world, but it was not to be.  Turns out that sentient AIs can mess up just…

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GREAT NORTH ROAD by Peter F. Hamilton

I liked this as well

What Has Been Read Cannot Be Unread

I love the sci fi of Peter F. Hamilton.  It is all epic stuff, quite a bit of it in various series and trilogies.  Here’s what I had to say about Pandora’s Star.

Great North Road is a stand alone.  Whew.  Thank the Great Spaghetti Monster for THAT!   It is built around an interesting premise – that of cloning and what happens to ones clones.  The first guy, Kane North used his family trust money to establish a cloning program.  The first several were not viable, but eventually there were three clone sons, Augustine, Bartram and Constantine, who became the founders of Northumberland Interstellar Corp, and developed gateway systems to other worlds.

On St. Libra, a planet of the Sirius star system,  production of a fuel, bioil, is developed, by growing a kind of algae which produces it.  Earth’s population is in decline as eight other human settled worlds…

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BRIDE OF THE RAT GOD by Barbara Hambly

I picked this book up on the strength of this review and although fantasy is not my usual fodder, I find that lately I’ve been going a bit further afield. Pleasantly surprised that I liked this book

What Has Been Read Cannot Be Unread

Chrysanda Flamande was the sultriest vamp of the silver screen in Hollywood, California, in the year 1923. Then an elderly Chinese gentleman warned her that a trinket she’d worn in her last movie had marked her to be the bride of an ancient devil-god of Manchuria.

A mash-up of the twenties Hollywood movie industry scene, old Chinese mythology, a bunch of made-up fantasy, and a mystery.  Da Shu Ken, the Great Rate of the North, the Kara-Kudai.  Bringer of plague, misfortune, and death.  He is not really part of Chinese folklore.  He is created for this book, so you can forget looking him up.

Ms. Flamande was given a fabulous necklace by her producer, a necklace supposedly from some ancient Chinese dynasty.  It actually belongs to the rat god and whoever wears it he claims as his bride and takes with him into his hell world.  So now he is…

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FOR WE ARE MANY by Dennis E. Taylor

Great review of a novel and well written book

What Has Been Read Cannot Be Unread

This is the second of the Bobiverse space opera trilogy.  I missed the first book, and had a bit of catching up to do in this volume, because they are not true stand alones;  each builds quite a bit on what went before.

The basic idea is this:

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it’s a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.

Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. The world is in a state of apocalypse with a kabillion population, and humanity quickly on its way to total annihilation.   He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the…

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SIX WAKES by Mur Lafferty

Mur is a favorite. She was the voice of Escape Pod for a while

What Has Been Read Cannot Be Unread

A fun closed-room space ship murder mystery featuring ….. ta-da …. clones!   The six person crew of a generational ship on it’s way to a distant planet, its hold containing 2000 sleeping bodies, and a bunch of mindmaps in a special computer, are abruptly pulled out of their cloning vats to discover they were all murdered.  And to prove it, there were their previous bodies, ripe with evidence and bleeding horrifically.

The ship, a-sail for twenty five years now, has suddenly been hacked, sabotaged,  the AI running the behemoth (about 3 miles long) not working, and the course has been altered, the ship is slowing down and off its original course.

Interesting ideas about cloning.  In this future time, cloning is for basically eternal life, not for multiplying oneself.  You can only have one clone going at a time, and you have to be dead.  You can, however, leave…

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