Please don’t spoil the series for me. I’ve never read 'em and I’m really looking forward to the fun!
I’ve been meaning to read the “Doc” Smith Lensman books for decades now, and somehow end up not. I’m not in the right mood, or I get interrupted by a book I can’t wait for, or…something.
Well, I decided that this weekend I was going to read one of the Lensman books. They’re fantastically important to SF, and what’s more people who’s tastes I respect have recommended them.
So I start with Galactic Patrol (It was the first one Smith wrote, 'though not first chronologically and I’ve been told that it’s better to read 'em for the first time in the written order, not the internal order) and I get to this paragraph, about two pages in:
And then my head exploded.
Yes, Smith was a man of his time. Yes, I can (and do!) appreciate older novels for the POV they give of the author’s mores.
But… :: shakes head :: Wow. Can you imagine a current writer saying that?
And here I thought Starman Jones was weirdly anachronistic. That one sentence topped every weird “slide-rules and log-tables in hyper-space” from the Heinlein for culture-shock.
Enjoy, Fenris! Lensman is a great series, although I would recommend you read them in “chronological” order. When you finish that, you can get more campy fun from the “Skylark” series…TRM
And what the consensus opinion of the folks at rec.arts.sf.written seems to be is that it’s best the first time to read the Lensman stuff in published order (to preserve some of the mysteries), but for re-reads, chronological order gives more of a feeling of scope.
You know the thing that best sums up the Doc for me was in a book called “Illegal Aliens”. An ok humerous sci-fi novel.At one point a colossal space battle breaks out and the next 3 pages are filled with steadily more apolalpytic descriptions of the ensuing carnage. All of which are just a lead-up to the pay-off lines
“It was horrible, it was carnage , it was WAR! Worse
it was like a E E Doc smith space battle…only more so.”
Which i had to admit raised a chuckle.
I also had the advantage of reading themn when i was 13-4 which is pretty much the ideal time, i have read them since however and they are still entertaining. You’ll never forget the
Sunbeam.
I haven’t read the Lensman books in…crikey, almost two decades. I mostly remember lots of shields groaning under the hammering blows of coruscating incadenscent beams of fury. The Doc taught me what “coruscating” meant, because he loved that word.
Never read any Doc Smith, but I have to give a shout out to anyone else who’s read Illegal Aliens, a book that has always given me a level of enjoyment entirely disproportinate to the quality of the writing.
I always liked how invalids recovering in the hospital considered the best cure to be a huge inch thick steak, still dripping blood. And how the doctors tended to agree with them.
(Lucas could take a few pointers from the Docster on how to do a romance in a Sci-Fi story.)