e.e. "doc" smith, you disappoint me

Cafe Society
1

And get some capital letters while you’re at it.*

So, I was in my favorite little used book store, checking out the pulps and I checked the smith section, idly wondering if they got the first Lensman book in. Aha, Triplanetary. That’s the first book…sort of.

So, as far as I can figure, there are actually seven books in the series and the way these were all put together is only slightly less confusing than trying to explain the pre-Crisis DCU to someone unfamiliar with the book.

I’ll try my best to relate what I’ve gathered. If I’m wrong, please let me know:

So, there was a guy who decided that he would single-handedly start “modern science fiction” and write the first sci-fi work that was to be published in a series (as well as having the dubious honor of creating the “space opera” genre). He then wrote the four books of the series.

So far, so good except that for some ungody reason, he decided that it wasn’t enough and thought that perhaps there should be some prequels to explain What In Christ’s Name Was Going On. He then took a story he had previously written and changed some details and called it the first book of the series. Following that, he realized that it still made no sense and then wrote book two to exlpain What In The Hell book one had to do with the series proper. Eventually, he let some other guy write book seven to the series, and over a decade after this actually occured, the book was published and promptly ignored like most ill-conceived sequels are.

Now, somewhere along here, smith figured that perhaps trying to shoehorn what I gather to be a “find & replace” style revision and a patch book into an existing and highly regarded series was a bad idea and he then rewrote the four main books to conform to whatever the first two books said.

OK, whatever. That’s cool. There are precedents of reworking older stories into a successful new run. Art is protean and all, up with the primacy of the author’s vision, but seriously.

My version of Triplanetary is a reprint of the 1948 edition which, I gather, is pre-retconning so apparently I’m reading gibberish. But, not having read the other books, I don’t know any better.

When I was going through the racks, I figured I’d just pick something I could read on the train in case I forgot my crossword puzzles and, two days of my laughably short commute later, I’m about 70 pages into it. I decided that I’d try to make a little more progress and tried reading it at home, nice and quiet-like, where I can think.

This is my problem. It’s only mildly annoying to read on the train when I can’t focus my full attention on it, but when I do, it’s crippingly poor. Scatterbrained, hamish and about as deep as a miser’s pocket.

And that’s after allowances given to it from being old and the predecessor of a massively popular and familiar genre.

What am I missing here? Anything?

  • I assume that it’s just my edition that has the lowercase name, but I figured I’d complain about that as well.
2

Infidel, prepare to be devoured.

3

I have to admit, part of the reason I was anxious to read the series were from your recommendations in other threads.

4

You are sooooooooo dead!

Just OD on thionite right now, and save yourself some pain. :smiley:

You done dissed The Man.

5

Well, I can’t say I can relate to your complaints very well, but I understand them. I was indoctrinated into the series long ago, so when I re-read, it sort of flows for me. I do note the corny “space opera” cliches, but tend to think they give the series a lovely baroque feel.

But Triplanetary was probably the weakest of the series, and did represent a “backfill” effort to bring some coherency to his story, which was scattered across years and multiple issues of pulp SF magazines.

And if you’re annoyed by obsolete concepts, and heavy cigarette smoking by heroes, it can be distracting.

But I do enjoy the rest of the series more than Triplanetary, so if you’re so inclined, give it a go. Smith is not timeless literature, nor does he rank with Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, or even Van Vogt or Leinster. To me he’s a pre-cursor of the “Star Wars” genre, massive epics of good vs. evil, foes in collision, universes manipulated, along with gals with great gams thrown in!

De gustibus non est disputandem.

6

It’s been a decade or so since I’ve read the series, so I’ve forgotten a lot of the details, however, ISTR that the book gets better as it goes along, and that the later books in the series are much better. The introduction of the Lens is pretty cool, and points out the problems with trying to stop counterfeiters.

My favorite works by “Doc” was the Skylark of Space series.

7

Just wait until Conway Costigan arrives on the scene. Things pick up then. :smiley:

IIRC, that’s about page 100 or so.

8

Yeah, it turns into classic space opera pretty quick with Conway on the scene.

9

I read through the series a couple of years ago (on the advice of a friend whose taste I usually regard as suspect, but I had at least heard of “doc” smith and was curious). The first book took me quite a while to get through. The other books were… well, not fabulous, but they did not make me want to gouge my eyes out. They were an interesting read, just as a historical wossname thingy.

(And I had an Ah ha! moment when I ran across the Mercotan :wink: )

10

The thing is, while the whole thing reeks of space-opera clichés, they weren’t clichéd when Doc Smith wrote them. He and Jack Williamson between them essentially invented the space-opera sub-genre, with derring-do and ultra-scientific planet-destroying dooflickies galore. It’s because their stories caught on so well that they became clichés. It’s sort of like complaining about Tolkien as using all those fantasy-quest clichés about elves and dwarves and magic talismans.

A lot of Doc Smith’s stories are hackneyed now – but they weren’t when they were written – and Heinlein, who was a close personal friend, points out that great parts of what goes on as background in the stories, including the improbable characters, are drawn straight from life – things Doc Smith or his wife had actually done in reality in their own lives. (See his essay on Smith in Expanded Universe for full details on this.)

11

Personally, the only thing about those books that really bugged me was the wily-nily technological escalation.

“Oh, no! The enemy has Super-Shields that resist our weapons!”
“That’s OK, I just invented a Super-Gun in the middle of the battle that can penetrate those Super-Shields”
“Now they have Super-Ultra-Shields! What’ll we do now?”
“Here, use this Super-Meta-Weapon! Nothing can resist it!”
“Except for the Super-Meta-Ultra-Techno-Shields!”
“Yeah, but we can break through those with Super-Hyper-Mega-Ultra-Über-Techno-Blasters!”
But I do have to admit, I have no complaints about all of the scantily-if-at-all clad redhead babes :).

12

AKKA!

13

Jack Williamson was part of a Swedish soft-rock group?! :eek:
(BTW, he’s still alive and writing – I think it was Analog published a story of his recently – he began writing SF in 1928!

14

The ultimate weapon in ‘The Legion of Space’ and ‘The Cometeers’. What with this winter’s green comet,
I’ve been scouring the local libraries for copies. Looks like I’ll have to buy them.

15

The roots of Dragonball Z laid bare! :slight_smile:

16

I was going to jump in and flame you, but hell. I agree. Triplanetary starts off hella slow.

But it really, really picks up when Conway enters, like everyone says. He’s the man.

If you want a better idea of the series, pick up Masters of the Vortex. It’s set roughly in the same setting and times as the later Lensman novels but isn’t in the same continuity, so you don’t get too many spoilers by reading it out of order.

I also have an unreasoning fondness for Spacehounds of IPC, which is not a Lensman novel. It’s just a fun book. The Skylarks are great, too, but I got a little bored of them near the end for pretty much the same reasons Chronos pointed out. Ho hum. Another book, another order of energy to discover. Look, yet another bad-ass metallic compound to build our new bigger Skylark out of. Yay.

17

I appreciate the Lensman series simply for Smith’s penchant for using entire planets as ballistic missiles. I loved how they’d nonchalantely go find a few dozen lifeless planets, install inertialess drives, and bring them along with their fleet to fling at their enemies. You can’t accuse Smith of not thinking big enough. I also liked the bit in the first Skylark book that goes, essentially:

“We went faster than the speed of light! I thought that was impossible!”
Shrugs “It was only a theory.”

18

I reread all the Lensmen books a few years ago. Funny how he anticipated the Reagan Star Wars in Triplanetary. But I did want to point out that they were written after the first Skylark book, which really started space opera - and that was written about 1919, though not published until a few years later. Smith was so ahead of his time in terms of imagination that its not funny.

Jack Williamson - who moved to New Mexico as a child in a covered wagon! - tossed planets around also. I also recommend some of John Campbell’s books. Besides writing things like Twilight, he was one of the big space opera writers very young, before he took over Astounding.

19

If you enjoy the innocent, “gee whiz” school of space opera, then try “Invaders From the Infinite” or “The Black Star Passes”, or “Islands of Space” by Campbell. I especially liked how they kept inventing perpetual motion without quite admitting it. The molecular motion ray, tapping the energy of space, and all that.

Fun stuff, but Campbell has no female characters at all. And since Dorothy Seaton was the subject of my early adolescent fantasies, Campbell tends to lose out to Smith in my Favorite Authors list.

Regards,
Shodan

20

If you like Smith, try to find a copy of **Harry Harrison’s ** Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers. A total hoot!