He wrote all those books in the 1930’s and 40’s…basically laying the groundwork for amazing science fiction.
Skip the first three books, start of with #4 and go from there. THat’s when it starts to get good. Galactic Patrol is good, second stage lensmen is better, and gray lensman is awesome.
Children of the lens I didn’t care much for… but it’s still a great read from a great storyteller.
e.e. got me hooked on science fiction when I was a kid…
D.
Seconded! The ending was a real shockeroo to this young teen.
I hereby present to you:
… the page that answers the immortal question, What if arenak was for real?
Smith also had a way with alien names. Who can forget Pilinixi the Dexitroboper? Klazmon of Llurdiax? Nadreck of Palain VII?
And Doc Smith always capitalized his initials! the e.e. thing was an attempt by a paperback publisher to boost sales by subliminally associating the books with e. e. cummings!
I think I feel opposite most of you.
I read and loved “Triplanetary” last summer and after searching high and low for “First Lensman” I recently found a copy checked in at the library. It seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the first book except that Costigan was in it (albeit as a secondary character, and where was the girl that he was in love with in the first book?)
I was trying to just power my way through it but I finally gave up less than 30 pages from the end when I realized that I really didn’t care how it ended. I read the last page to see who won the election, and read the epilpogue, which was cool, but I don’t think I’ll be picking up the rest of the series.
That seems contradictory. I should’ve said that, while I guess I was slightly curious how everything turned out, since I had invested ~280 pages, I wasn’t willing to read two more chapters to find out.
Actually, I got to the part where Costigan shows up. The book certainly does get a bit zany after that (I’m ony about 40 pages past where I was yesterday).
As for it being the first book of a new genre: I’m certainly aware of that and indeed mentioned that I was making allowances for it in my OP. Doesn’t help that I find the writing insipid. I mean, Stout and Rohmer and Spillane had the most basic of plots, but their writing styles more than made up for the lack of imagination in the plots/conventions.
That part about using the planets as missiles is absolutely brilliant. I don’t think I’ll be sticking around to check that out though.
[sub]Oh, my.[/sub]
Overwhelming, isn’t it? 
Too bad Smith never told us what arenak’s density is. Then that page could have some hard numbers for exactly how big the arenak supporting struts in a building would have to be.
Well, it’d have to be denser than fourth dimensional top soil. Just get a sample of that, measure it and you’d have a good ballpark figure.
OK, finished the book. Not quite as bad as I thought…well yes, it was.
I will keep you all for my researches into sex and then follow it up with a chapter titled, “Inside Roger’s Planetoid.” That was great.
I’m OK with scientific jargon as used to set the mood, but when the characters start discussing their equations, I figure that either a) the author’s completely full of shit b) I haven’t been properly introduced to the Mysterieis to understand the significance and how to apply it to my own Okkult studies or c) I should just pick up whatever book the hot chick across the aisle has (in this case, The Once and Future King. I have Munn’s Merlin’s Godson sitting on the desk, so perhaps that’s close enough).
I did like Conway Murphy Costigan and the helpless chick whom he immediately fell in love with (I was having Mike Hammer flashbacks at that) and when he [spoiler]Convinced the Nwhatevers that he needed a chemistry set to play with and promptly created Vee-Two gas and killed off the entire city. Take that, giant eyeball monsters![/spoilers]
Some of the ideas were interesting, but I’m one of those goofs that expects to get an entire story out of a book, even if it’s the first part of a series (Mundy didn’t seem to have any troubles with Tros).
I also got a bit of the, “ah, they are falling into our Ultimate Death Cone tactic. The fools. Oh wait, they’ve figured out how to get out of it using their Superior Weaponry. We’ll have to adapt. Uh oh, there’s a viscous red beam of something taking all of our iron. No matter, let’s just invent something that fixes it and hope that the enemy doesn’t figure out how to one-up that.”
I also thought characterizing the humanoid aliens as evil was interesting.
My rating: D. The goofiness was pleasant, but the poor writing and lack of focus really killed it.
That is a cool article!
Although I was under the impression that the “salt water and electricity” process that hardened arenak was a repeatable process. So you would not necessarily have the problems of disposal and demolition mentioned by the article.
Although I once attempted to design a weapon to be used against arenak hulls. It was a giant electrified squirt gun filled with salt water.
I wonder what dagal was like, or inoson. The only thing I remember was that inoson was purple.
Regards,
Shodan