In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
I grew up in an era when E. E. “Doc” Smith was considered a bit old-fashioned, an author whose heyday had occurred back when Analog was still called Astounding, at a time when science fiction was still in its lurid and overblown youth. But I was also aware that many of my favorite authors listed Smith as one of their influences, counting the Lensman series as some of their favorite books. So, back in the early 1970s, I decided to give the series a try, starting with Triplanetary, which I found in a bookstore with a nifty new cover by Jack Gaughan. I didn’t enjoy the book, and put it down partway through, in fact. But I recently ran into more of Smith’s work in some anthologies, and while it was very pulpy, I enjoyed its enthusiasm. I wondered if perhaps my tastes had changed, and decided to give Triplanetary another try.
At the start of this second approach, it was immediately apparent to me why I’d stopped reading Triplanetary the first time. The book opens with a series of vignettes, the first of these taking place “[t]wo thousand million or so years ago…” It reminded me of the massive books that mainstream author James Michener used to write, which often started out with a description of the geological forces that shaped the region where the stories took place, meandering through pages after pages of history before the main characters were introduced, and then followed whole generations of characters before the book was over. For a reader like me, who cut his teeth on science fiction short stories that got right to the point on the first page, this epoch-spanning approach was like nails on a chalkboard.
While researching this article, however, I found references to the fact that Triplanetary had been rewritten to fit into the Lensman series. I was able to find the original version on Project Gutenberg, and when compared it to the paperback version I had encountered in my teens, and immediately saw the problem: The material that Smith inserted to make Triplanetary fit the rest of the series was what bogged the narrative down. The first six chapters are all backstory for the Lensman saga (which, like quite a lot of backstory, could have remained in the author’s notebooks without any objection from readers like me). The original tale, a pulpy action story that never slows down, starts with the seventh chapter, which boasts the eye-catching title of “Pirates of Space.” So, I’ll divide today’s review accordingly; first covering the backstory, and then covering the good stuff.
About the Author
Edward Elmer Smith (1890-1965), who wrote under the pen name E. E. “Doc” Smith, is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Space Opera.” He studied chemical engineering in college, earning a PhD, and spending much of his career in the food preparation industry.
Smith started writing in 1915, began focusing on his fiction in earnest in 1919, with his first novel being The Skylark of Space. It took him a long time to get that novel published, and it finally appeared in three installments in Amazing Science Fiction in 1928.
Smith wrote Triplanetary for editor Harry Bates at Astounding magazine, but when financial problems at the magazine prevented its publication, he instead sold it to Amazing, where it appeared in 1934. Later, back at Astounding, new editor F. Orlin Tremaine, who had revived the magazine, was interested in launching a new series. He committed to buying four novels from Smith—the books that would become the core of the Lensman series, which followed the adventures of an interstellar police force. While some critics argued that Smith’s characters were unrealistically capable and competent, Robert Heinlein, a friend of Smith’s who referred to the author as his “main influence,” said that Smith and his wife were not unlike those admirable heroes. While Smith’s bombastic and colorful writing style went out of vogue as the science fiction field expanded and matured, he continued writing until his death. He was a beloved figure in the science fiction field and a frequent guest at science fiction conventions.
Smith’s two most popular series were the Skylark series and Lensman series. His work also inspired sequels by other authors, including a continuation of the Lensman series, and some of his short works (Subspace, Family D’Alembert, and Lord Tedric) were also later expanded into additional volumes. In 2004, Smith was voted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
As with many authors who were writing in the early 20th Century, a number of works by Smith can be found on Project Gutenberg, including the original version of Triplanetary.
[Note: I had always known that the name of my favorite convention, Boskone, which takes place every winter in Boston, Massachusetts, did not just come from mashing together the words “Boston” and “Convention,” but instead originated in Smith’s Lensman series. What I didn’t know was that Boskone refers to the evil galactic conspiracy behind the Eddorian efforts to control the universe…]
Triplanetary (Chapters 1-6; Lensman Backstory)
The book begins by describing how two races, the Arisians and Eddorians, previously alone in their separate galaxies, become aware of each other when those galaxies collide. The Arisians are peaceful and humane, with a benevolent, cerebral bent. The Eddorians, amorphous, asexual creatures, arose on a planet described as poisonous and foul, and while their powers are formidable, they are described as “intolerant, domineering, rapacious, insatiable, cold, callous and brutal.” (There are no shades of grey in this narrative.) There is telepathic contact between the two races, but the Arisians use mental powers to make the Eddorians forget their existence. They do not want to destroy them, but start preparations for an inevitable future conflict.
The Arisians begin to groom four client species to assist them in the coming struggle, one of these being the humans of Earth. But the Eddorians have again become aware of the Arisians, and take measures to thwart their efforts. They assign an operative, Gharlane, to disrupt these efforts and suppress the development of the human race. We encounter a longish vignette where two operatives attempt to stop a nuclear war between Atlantis and its rivals, but they fail, and civilization is destroyed. This is followed by a vignette describing how an assassination of Nero fails, and since Nero is an agent of the Eddorians, the Arisians experience another setback. Then we get a third vignette, set during World War I, in which a pilot named Kinnison is quite heroic. It does not seem to fit the larger narrative unless you know that one Kimball Kinnison, obviously a descendent of this pilot, is the hero of the Lensman series. The next vignette follows another Kinnison as he works as a chemical engineer, manufacturing munitions during World War II (a story reportedly inspired by Smith’s own experiences during the war). And the final vignette follows yet another Kinnison as he and his cohorts attempt to stop a nuclear attack on the United States. They fail, and another dark age begins. When civilization arises again, they rename the planet Tellus and form a civilization centered on three planets: Tellus, Mars, and Venus, the setting of the original version of Triplanetary. All of these historical setbacks were the result of the machinations of Gharlane, and Smith weaves the evil Eddorian into the narrative of Triplanetary by revealing that the evil space pirate that sets the plot into motion is really Gharlane in disguise.
This background section fills 90 pages out of a 240-page book, and it is easy to see why a young reader might get bogged down and surrender. Much of the material, as is often the case in prequels, does not work well for a reader who does not know the stories that come later in the fictional timeline. I would not recommend that someone interested in the Lensman saga start with this book, unless they are willing to slog through a fair amount of exposition and vignettes that won’t make much sense until later.
Triplanetary (Chapters 7 through the End; The Good Stuff)
While the early added-on chapters are stiff and sluggish, the narrative begins to fizz with exuberant energy once we finally get to the original story. We join Captain Bradley of the Interplanetary liner Hyperion, who is tense and edgy—ships have been disappearing in this region of space, and he doesn’t want to become another casualty. In the passenger compartments, his First Officer, Conway Costigan, is showing Clio Marsden, a pretty young passenger, how to use a telescope to look back at Earth. He suddenly smells Vee-Two gas, a banned substance that can bring death if not treated immediately. After gasping out a warning to the bridge, he is able to get himself and Clio to safety and revive her. They don spacesuits and make it to the bridge just as the ship is attacked by a pirate vessel. Fortunately, Costigan is an agent of the Triplanetary Special Service, an especially competent agent with some tricks up his sleeve. The Hyperion is destroyed, but the three survivors are taken prisoner and brought before a mysterious gray man who leads the pirates. The pirate leader goes by the rather mundane name of Roger (with all the hyperbolic energy in this story, this was the best Smith could muster?), and they are taken to his secret planetoid headquarters. Clio is turned over to Roger, who is actually the evil Eddorian Gharlane, to be tortured. The two men escape and rush to her aid. Fortunately, Arisians who have been monitoring the situation telepathically up to this point decide to intervene and incapacitate Gharlane, which allows the three captives to escape in a small spacecraft. This abrupt deus ex machina leaves the reader to wonder why the Arisians didn’t also intervene when Gharlane destroyed human civilization so many times in the past…
A Triplanetary League fleet, led by the heavy cruiser Chicago, is searching for the Hyperion when Special Service agent Lyman Cleveland is ordered to reveal his secret identity to the Captain and take control of the situation. They attack the pirates with a variety of ray beams and remote-controlled atomic dirigible torpedoes, using defensive screens to protect themselves. They are gaining the upper hand, when (with not only no warning for the characters in the book, but also no advance clue to readers from the author) a previously unknown ship full of aliens from the solar system Nevia, searching for a material precious to their society, suddenly enters the fray with disastrous results.
The Nevians are amphibians from a water-covered planet, from a system almost devoid of iron. (Never mind the fact that iron is the sixth most common element in our galaxy. Smith, while a chemist, is not letting science get in the way of his fiction.) And the Nevians have found a way to use the disintegration of iron to generate immense power. Nevian Captain Nerado has been given ten precious pounds of the element to power his ship, in the hopes that he can find additional sources in systems that appear to be richer in iron. The ship can generate force fields capable of drawing the iron out of any object, transforming it from a metal into a heavy, viscous red material. The Nevians find an object and draw the iron out of it, only to find that they have destroyed a spaceship. But they don’t think the builders of that ship are advanced beings like themselves, so when they find even more spaceships, containing unthinkable quantities of iron, they continue to gather everything they can. These ships being targeted by the Nevians constitute the fleet of the Triplanetary League, however, which is quickly destroyed. But Roger/Gharlane has no time to celebrate the destruction of his enemies, as the Nevians then turn their force fields on his planetoid. He uses his advanced technology to hold them off for a while, but eventually he must flee. The Nevians capture the space cruiser occupied by the fleeing Bradley, Costigan, and Clio, take them as prisoners for further study, and then head for home, their ship sluggish with the vast amounts of iron they have harvested.
The Nevians and the captives learn to communicate, and Smith gives us a glimpse into Nevian society. It turns out there are also other intelligent species in the deeper parts of the Nevian seas, species that are at war with the amphibians; the captives take advantage of the strife to escape, only to be recaptured again.
Back in the Solar System, the Chicago investigates the destruction of their fleet, and the humans launch the experimental ship Silver Sliver. They figure out what happened to their fleet, and develop systems that can protect them from a similar attack in the future (Lyman Cleveland is a clear inspiration for the science fiction engineers who can whip up a new system or weapon on the fly when needed). The body count begins to rise as the Nevians send another expedition to gather iron from Earth, and their human captives are willing to inflict hideous casualties to escape and return to Earth.
I’ll leave the summary there, so I don’t reveal too much of the ending. Although I doubt too much about that ending will surprise modern readers. It’s amazing how much happens in the scant 150 pages that make up this section of the book. The protagonists barely have time to catch their breaths as they zigzag from one adventure to the next. The evil Gharlane, or Roger, makes for a menacing villain. And while the protagonists are stock characters from central casting, they are very likeable, with Bradley gruff and thoughtful, Costigan competent and resourceful, and Clio brave and plucky. Even the Nevians turned out to be pretty decent sorts, once they and the humans take a break from their conflicts long enough to have a conversation.
Final Thoughts
I’m glad that I decided to give this book second chance. Once it got going, it turned out to be a rousing and exuberant adventure tale with lots of fun twists and turns. It has whetted my appetite for more, and I plan to give Smith’s Lensman series another look.
And now, what are your thoughts? Have you read Triplanetary, or other books in the Lensman series? If so, do you recommend that I continue my reading? Are you willing to overlook some dodgy science and hoary literary conventions in pursuit of a good story? And what other space operas have you read that would fit in the tradition of the Lensman books?
Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.
I barreled on through this one (and the next one, written as a bridging volume between this and the original four books) as a young reader. I had a bit of whiplash when I hit volume 3, if I remember correctly, but I kept going, and on my many re-reads came to greatly prefer those original four.
A couple of notes: the Eddorians were not from another galaxy, but from another universe, where they were the only intelligent species that ever existed. This was because Smith went with the old model of solar system formation which required two stars to pass very near each other, meaning that planets were a very rare thing indeed. Smith had it be the case that the Milky Way had passed through another galaxy (“Lundmark’s Nebula”), causing millions of such close encounters and resulting in many millions of planets. This was stated to be unique among all the universes which Eddore surveyed, and they came to our universe so that they could have lots of other races to rule. We now know there is a lot wrong with this whole picture, but it wasn’t totally unreasonable for where the state of astronomy was in Smith’s day, and I usually make a brief reference to this when I teach astronomy.
(Smith does show in a few places that he’s aware of theories and models that disagree with what he’s using, whether that’s an off-hand reference to relativity being just a theory, or noting the nebular model of planetary formation by saying it didn’t end up working out.)
Just goes to show, I loved the first few chapters setting everything up and as soon we got to the main story I got bored to tears.
A) I have always loved EE Smith; Lensman>Skylark (less women screaming and being kidnapped, and less scientist-splaining). There’s a reason Lensman ran a close second to Foundation for the Hugo for best series Of. All. Time.
B) Triplanetary was retrofitted and it still doesn’t fit as well as the other books. Nevertheless the concept of Gharlane meeting another member of the Innermost Circle at the Eddorian version of a businessman’s lunch is just adorable.
C) One of the best things about Lensman is that it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between Mentor of Arisia and Gharlane of Eddore if you just listen to them speak, although Gharlane is sometimes less of an insufferable condescending snot…
D) Full disclosure: my father also got a PhD (Chemistry, but he studied chemical engineering) and worked most of his life in the food production industry. Sadly he never once used the phrase “Hotter than a Valerian clambake”
Can we hope for a re-read of the entire Lensman series (except of course Masters of the Vortex which, like the Hobbit films and Jar Jar, doesn’t actually exist as far as I am concerned)?
The Lensman books were some of the first science fiction that I read – I guess the very first may have been Out of the Silent Planet, though I may not have really realized it at the time. I think I found them in my school library when I was in 7th grade in the very early 1980s. I ended up getting copies of all the Lensman series, but I particularly read and reread Galactic Patrol, Gray Lensman, Second Stage Lensman, and Children of the Lens. I think that all those books really held that similar energy that you mentioned after the stage is set in Triplanetary, because I remember them being extremely fast reads. Unfortunately I no longer have my paper copies due to having moved too many times and it has been many years since I read them, but I still have extremely fond memories of those books and the way that they introduced me to Galaxy bookshop in Sydney, Australia, which led me to many other Fantasy and SciFi books and series over the years.
In terms of other space operas, I can speak only of the classical era and say that there are only three series out there of note:
Skylark–EE Smith before Lensman. Big ideas but more stereotypical characters. Spoiler alert—one of the neat things about Lensman is that at a certain point the heroes realize that thinking will get them farther than punching. This does NOT happen in Skylark…
Lensman–see all above
Arcort Wade, and Morey (The Black Star Passes, Islands of Space, Invaders from the Infinite) by the immortal (and controversial in current thought) John Campbell, the famous editor who groomed and developed authors like Asimov and Heinlein. These are in my mind way to far out in the “let’s use superscience to solve everything and let’s scientistsplain along the way” as in “let’s pause in the middle of the battle to point out that everyone should know that gravity, as explained by Newton, depends on the mass of the objects”
Been a long time since I read this, but my memory is that–outside of the Lensman setup chapters–it was basically a Cagney mob movie IN SPACE!
Even as a teenager in the sixties I found Smith unreadable. Just such a terrible writer. And the horrible dialogue.
I found these back in the early 70’s when I received a gift certificate to a local department store that happened to have a small book department. I don’t remember which I read first, but I soon bought them all, and the Skylark series as well. I loved them all then, and had no problems at all with Triplanetary. One interesting point – Many folks had commented on the ‘unrealistic’ way the characters rescue themselves from a asteroid shipwreck, involving smelting iron and blacksmithing out replacement parts among other things, until they learned that Smith COULD DO ALL THOSe THINGS HIMSELF!
DON’T START WITH TRIPLANETARY.
DON’T START WITH TRIPLANETARY.
DON’T START WITH TRIPLANETARY.
The first book is “Galactic Patrol”; the reading order is 3,4,5,6,1,2; and if you haven’t read them by the time you’re twelve you’re too late. There’s also the dated sexism. But the aliens are great. Nadreck (who first appears in book 5) is obviously an overly-literal on-the-spectrum engineer that Smith worked with :-)
BTW, now you also know where “Arisia” comes from. “Why” is still a contentious issue in fandom after almost forty years :-)
8 / charlie – isn’t the smelting-up-the-technology-chain bit from “Spacehounds of the IPC”? Which has a very similar spaceliner-attacked-by-mysterious-forces, lead character barely escapes / humans develop technology to fight back” plotline to Triplanetary. I’ve wondered if it could also be fit into an even-earlier phase of the Lensman universe….
Let’s see: According to isfdb (my memory ain’t that good any more) Pyramid started reissuing the Skylark series in 1958 with the last volume appearing in 1966 (it had serialized in IF the year before). They put out Triplanetary in 1965 and finished that series also in 1966. I do remember that I bought them all as they came out, so I would have read them between the ages of 9 & 17. I do remember enjoying them at the time, but I don’t think I would now. My Overton Window for Willing Suspension of Disbelief has moved way up the Mohs Scale of Hardness. (I sincerely apologize for that ghastly mixed metaphor.) It’s harder for me to accept time travel (unless written by Connie Willis, of course) now that it was 20 years ago. Ditto psychic powers (unless Lyta Alexander is involved). I’m starting to struggle with FTL. I can still reread Cordwainer Smith, whose science is really no less dated (When the People Fell, a story that I love, being an egregious example), but I reread that Smith for prose style. I would hazard a guess that people don’t read Doc Smith for prose style.
@9
regarding the sexism: I have thought about this and I note Smith’s evolution. In Skylark, the ladies are mostly there to say “oh, you great big man,” scream, and get kidnapped; it’s not as bad as, say, Scar’s relationship with Star in Glory Road but it’s not what we would want to see by today’s lights.
In Lensman it’s a bit different. Cleo in Triplanetary screams a bit but she seems pretty self-sufficient. Jill Samms in First Lensman kicks Boskonian butt and is not only described as the equal of any of the guy characters but is described as “not needing a Lens;” and the incomparable Clarissa McDougal, the Red Lensman in all subsequent books, is described as the equal of any regular monotone Lensman.
I think these books are perhaps the least sexist of their era, and are only outdone in their time in terms of female equality/empowerment by I, Robot’s Susan Calvin.
@12
I don’tread EE Smith for his prose style. I read him because his stories are FUN
Gutenberg should give you free use of their site or something for all the traffic this post’ll send their way!
Oh wait….
My history with Lensman goes back to 1974 when I was taking a summer high school program away from home. I tripped across a copy of Galactic Patrol in a bookstore and devoured it. As it said on the cover: Space Ships and Space Pirates!
And that’s probably the best book to start with because it h as none of the complicated backstory about the Eddorians (even though I adore them and root for them) and is a straightforward Cowboys In Outer Space story. After that I did Grey Lensman which gave the deeper story and after that I went back to Triplanetary and First Lensman and then finished it out. All in that one summer. I have never seen the anime (and I am afraid to, having seen what animation did to A Wizard of Earthsea) but I would love to see an old-style Flash Gordon-esque serial made from this. No high-budget special effects; give me old fashion Buck Rogers cheesy stuff as that would fit the era of the story.
The stories are fun, though I will confess that I read Galactic Patrol first at age 12. The prose is … definitely purple. For some people, that’s part of the charm; for some people, it’s unbearable. But I think one needs also to consider the sheer scope of the story involved, and Smith’s daringness at expanding the story.
Many of the aliens are very memorable and interestingly non-human, particularly in their thought-patterns (the Nevians are just a warm-up for Worsel and Tregonsee and Nadreck and the Lyranians). Kinnison’s growth in understanding of alien minds and mindsets is a well-done piece of characterization.
And Smith’s women are very capable — even if some of what they get up to doesn’t make it on-screen. (Clarissa puts up with a lot, and does a lot, and is in no way a damsel-in-distress).
I admit that I’ve never gotten very far with these. I kind of knew about them in a vague, ethereal way, then read the essay by Heinlein where he reminisces about Smith and decided to give them a try, but couldn’t make it. Maybe I’ll give it another go one of these years.
Triplanetary is often given a bad rap, but I actually like it more than First Lensman or even Children of the Lens.
The framing material is indeed pretty boring, but I love to go on the ride in the stories proper, and every time there is a story about mining, or munitions production or even the life of a space opera author I get a kick out of the peek I get into the author’s life.
But more than any sexism of the time, the bummer that brings me down is the eugenic aspect of both Skylark and Lensman. And if I recall First Lensman right, the electioneering goes way into banana republic dictatorship territory. Now as an adult it’s hard to read about my heroes doing that.
Alan finally writes an article about a book I’ve read!! I forget when I first heard about E.E. Smith, but I’m pretty confident it was in the comments article of a Tor article some years ago. I’ve read Triplanetary, First Lensman, & Galactic Patrol and heartily enjoyed all of them. They’re great fun, what can I say?? Are we allowed to link to our own reviews? Here’s something I wrote on First Lensman: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2887734991?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
And Alan – wonder if you’ve read any of Stableford’s Grainger series? That’s another “old” sci-fi series that I much enjoyed, although it’s not nearly as far back as E.E. Smith.
Getting back to Triplanetary though…this was the first of Smith’s I read, and yes, it’s a bit dated and yes, the prose isn’t the best but you know what? I don’t care. I found myself smiling often while reading these adventures.
One enjoyable thing is when you see Smith poking a bit of fun at his own prose–such as when Kim goes undercover as science fiction writer Sylby C. White, and has to actually write a science fiction novel:
Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the afterbulge of the tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmex-like snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactile tongue crunched out, crashed down, rasped across. Slurp! Slurp! At each abrasive stroke the groove in the tranship’s plating deepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely. Fools! Did they think that the airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? And the stowaway, that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall…
Or when a character in First Lensman quotes the narrator from Triplanetary describing a force-field around a building, and we learn that he’s quoting from the over-the-top dedication speech of the building.
Oh, yest I had almost forgotten; Sylby White and my college hero, Qadgop the Mercotan and that human wench Cynthia.
In Children of the Lens there was a section where the Gray Lensman was kidnapped by Eddorians and subjected to hallucinatory visuals; exclaimed that “even Sylby wrote better stuff than this.” I love when the author is able to poke fun at himself.
When I read the Lensmen series as a kid, I couldn’t reread them enough. I could relate, and I wanted to be in those universes, in spite of the… social issues.
I reread the Lensmen as an adult, and oy, the cringiness of the heroic-based sexism. I still would prefer those universes. *wry look*
Also, I loved Triplanetary, all of it.
I read the Lensman books in my early teens, and I started with Triplanetary… I enjoyed it. I was young and uncritical and the books were full of outrageous action and inventive aliens, and it all zipped along at breakneck speed and I didn’t notice the dodgy bits.
These days, I am old and very critical, but you know what? I still enjoy the Lensman books. OK, Smith’s attitudes and science are dated, and his ideas don’t bear close examination, and you can see the stitches where Triplanetary was put back together, and Smith’s uncertain plotting and hyperactive adjectival prose aren’t something I’d like to emulate… but the fast action and gleeful inventiveness are still there, and those are still enough for me.
“Vortex Blaster” is also part of the Lensmen universe; a side story off the main path but another good read.
@10 I noticed that as well, but did not want to revisit old wounds…
I loved them as well. Asimov once remarked that he tried to reread them years after reading them and loving them for the first time, and he found himself unable to do so. Something similar happened with me; I was less comfortable with the sheer fun of the story, and noticed the over-written battle scenes much more.
“The zappy weapons fired with so much energy that it was inconceivable that any matter could exist for even a zillionth of a second in its path! Then the shields went up, and those stubborn, iron-hard shields held even under that enormous zappy-ray!! Then more powerful zappy-rays came on, so much more powerful than the others that the others were like a candle compared to a ton of duodec!!! The outer shields flashed all kinds of neat-o colors!!!! Then they failed, but the inner shields held up even under that inconceivable load!!!!!” And so forth. (If Smith had survived into the ’90s or so, I’m sure some reader would have felt obliged to say, “You keep using the word ‘inconceivable.’ I do not think it means what you think it means.”)
Also, in the last two(?) books, we see a little social satire, as Kimball Kinnison and company run into a planet full of feminists who are obviously not nearly as cool as the women who know their place around men. You can see Smith had seen the dawn of what we might today call second-wave feminism, and thought it was pretty silly.
Are those books still under copyright? I don’t see any e-books.
@5: I ran into the Arcot, Morey and Wade novels when I was in high school – just the right age, but didn’t get to Smith until some years later (too late, really, though I did read most of the Lensman books). Harrison’s Starsmashers of the Galaxy Rangers (a title that must be shouted!) seemed to be a direct parody of the Campbell (but since I never read Skylark, I may be missing a connection there).
Triplanetary was fun, though. I like a guy who can save the day while holding his breath to avoid the poison gas he detected (very quickly).
@25/mndrew: I have fond memories of Vortex Blaster. I eventually gave away all my Smith books, but I held onto that one years after I had already thrown out all the others. I liked that the main characters were middle-aged, that the heroine was a former chess grand master and the hero’s superpower was calculating, and that it had a peaceful solution involving making contact with aliens and understanding their needs.
Anyone recall the fond pastiche by Randall Garrett, “Backstage Lensman”?
I only read Skylark, never tackled Lensmen, but is the latter so fond of genocide as a practical and moral solution to conflicts as the former?
Even as a kid, I found some of the justifications offered a bit specious..
And oh, yeah, eugenics. Tons and tons of eugenics.
It’s been a very long time since I last read a Lensman book, but there was certainly plenty of mass slaughter (I don’t think it ever quite amounted to genocide, though). Our noble, manly hero would spend half a second considering his moral dilemma, proceed to the slaughter, and then carry on as if nothing had happened.
I was probably in my early teens at the time, but even at that age I knew that was cheating – either these folks are shining heroes, or they are pragmatic people doing dark deeds for the survival of humanity. The narrative seemed to want it both ways – although Dr Thanatos did point out above that it can be hard to tell Mentor and Gharlane apart, which now makes me wonder whether my reaction was what the author was hoping for all along …
Others have said above that they consider the sexism in the series has been exaggerated. Well I felt at the time that it was a sexist series, even though most sexism went straight over my head in those days (or worse, seemed like the natural order of the universe). It didn’t stop me reading it and enjoying it (I’ve always loved space opera, even though at the time I didn’t have a name for it) but I’ve no wish to read it again.
I wanted to read Lensmen series because one of my most fond childhood memories was watching Lensman anime series (not the Movie) and tv channel dropping it 5 episodes till completion. I went thru Triplanetary and first 3 lensman books just fine, however when I got to book #4 & 5 I just go so bored of stupidly overpowered supermen with zero internal conflict or any real danger.
FYI: I never found any dub/sub version of Lensman tv series ever again. Movie yes, series no.
There’s a certain amount of genocide in the Lensman books (notably Jarnevon, Ploor, and Eddore itself, plus the Velantian reaction to the Delgonians), but there’s also a lot of effort showing the Lensmen trying to re-educate and salvage various Boskonian planets and cultures… Smith is very aware of the difficulties involved in nation-building, however, though we only get brief allusions to the massive amount of work involved in Civilizing Lonabar and Thrale. Generally we do get the idea that the Arisians are long-term benevolent (“freedom for all is the only principle with which a truly philosophical mind can be content”) while the Eddorians are out to dominate and control for the fun of making other people do what they want (“POWER!!!!”), but the Arisians are very definitely Not Nice either.
It helps that (grace of Arisian dei ex machinae) the Lensmen are incorruptible and mind-reading, so the whole “how far can I trust this supposedly reformed person?” or “am I just exploiting these people for my personal gain?” doesn’t really come up. But you kind of have to accept that the Arisians don’t pick corruptible people to be Lensmen, or the series doesn’t work at all.
(The Eddorians, on the other hand, do, but we don’t see much about how that works since they only try setting some evil Lensmen up in the sixth book.)
I think the problematic stuff in the Lensman books is interesting because it’s often very different from other media that are problematic on the same issues.
The sexism is what I think would be called full-on gender essentialism: men and women are fundamentally different, such that women cannot use a Lens. While this does keep women off the main stage of most of the action, we see that women can still be incredibly capable, brave, etc. And the one woman we see a lot of gets a Lens, though she’s called out as an exception to the big rule…while still being presented as “feminine.” (It’s probably not fair to linger on the Children, since they’re not exactly human.)
Eugenics, in the sense of breeding humans for certain traits, is a key underlying idea…but not focusing on the usual eugenics goal of improving a population, and nothing on preventing the breeding of “undesirables.” It’s all about breeding traits into two specific family lines with the goal of one particular pairing.
Racism is mostly passive erasure. Race is almost never mentioned, and while everybody certainly feels mid-20th-century-white-American, white skin is only explicit for a few characters and plot-irrelevant beyond tiny details.
@35 Regarding the “eugenics” in Smith’s novels, it occurs to me now that that’s one specific aspect of his writing that may have directly influenced Heinlein; viz. the Howard Families “breeding” for longevity. It should also be noted that at the time Smith was writing, eugenics was still considered a legitimate branch of biological science that was researched and promoted at premier universities around the United States, and had not yet acquired the stigma and repudiation that came with the rise of Nazism.
I’ve never read Skylark but genocide isn’t a go-to solution in Lensmen the way it sounds like in Skylark. Some planets do get destroyed (planets are even used as weapons, later on), and a few very non-human species do get wiped out. The Overlords are a species of obligate sadistic intellivores, the Eddorians lacked empahty to begin with and are immortals who replicate by mental fission so literally the entire population is a bunch of war criminals bent on domination, and I’m not sure about the Ploorans, though they kind of seemed like the closest “our universe” got to evolving something like the Eddorians.
Eugenics in a broad sense hasn’t been ‘debunked’; if you kept selecting humans for hereditable traits, you wouldget results, just as with pigeons, corn, and dogs. There are big ethical problems obviously, plus would-be eugenicists had a tendency to select on traits that were irrelevant or more environmental.
“On August 23, [eugenicist] Hermann Muller shocked his [eugenicist] audience by condemning the idea that poverty and crime in the United States were due to heredity. Only in a society where people’s needs were met—where children could grow up in the same environments—could eugenicists ever hope to improve humanity.”
The Arisians can be assumed to know what they’re doing. The ethics of perhaps mentally nudging their desired breeding partners together are another matter.
In one of David Kyle’s sequels Kinnison encounters … another female Lensman! And he is PISSED. He immediately calls Mentor and says “WTF?”
Mentor replies “Clarissa was never meant to be the only woman Lensman, just the first.”
I suppose that’s one way to retcon :-)
And the Nudist Killer Lesbians from Lyrane are the closest thing Smith has to “neutral” in the Lensuniverse. They only want to be left alone and let the men do what men do …
@39 Nudist Killer Lesbians from Lyrane would be a great name for a band!
I’m more or less with Oerkfitz on this, except that I didn’t encounter Doc Smith as a child. I slogged through the Lensman series in connection with retro Hugo reading and found the writing hard to take, but some of the ideas reasonably engaging. It seems to me now that it was more about the vastness of the galaxy and the potential of science than about the characters. Or at least that’s what made sense to me. I think it would probably have been a lot of fun at the time to talk with the author about science over a beer. More fun than reading him.
I was first introduced to E.E. Doc Smith through his Skylark series. I picked up the first book to read on a family road trip as a teen and soon sought out and read the next four. After than I jumped to Galactic Patrol. This was actually the third book of the Lensman series, but the first book to introduce Kimball Kinnison, the protagonist for most of the rest of the books. It was not until I finished the rest of the series, that I went back an read the first two books (Triplanetary and First Lensman). I’ve still got a well read two volume omnibus hard cover of the whole Lensman series on my bookshelf.
You are probably correct, it could very well be Spacehounds that I remember…
I like this series so much that on the Babylon 5 newsgroup I was planning to sign in as Kim Kinnison to balance out Gharlane, then Potter had to go and die on me… :-(
I still game as Kim, though.
Try reading the Lensman series in the original magazine versions, if you can; at least Gray Lensman is better in the magazine version than the latter book version. Smith was committed to a four-book series but dramatically the first two (Galactic Patrol and Gray Lensman) are a unit and comes to a satisfying climax and denouement. Smith did admit that Second-Stage Lensmen (which then followed) was something of a fixup, to set up matters for the final book (Children of the Lens); and Smith had to add a fourth second-stage Lensman here. I’m tempted to group Galactic Patrol, Gray Lensman, and Second-Stage Lensman as a package called The Adventures of Kimbal Kinnison; with First Lensman and Children of the Lens as Prologue and Epilogue.
I still liked Masters of the Vortex (often labelled as Book 7 in the Lensman series) but it’s only set in the same universe and really no connection to the real saga.
Finally, there’s continuations to Smith’s saga: New Lensman, The Dragon Lensman, The Lensman from Rigel, and Z-Lensman–well, fun but distinctly inferior to the original series. The three books by Kyle (Dragon, Rigel, and Z) bring back the second-stage lensmen as heroes in their own right, but Kyle’s writing and plotting seems to be overly complicated and to me lacks the punch of Smith’s prose. New Lensman is actually a side story to the events in First Lensman but was approved by Smith to be written, and actually appeared in, I believe, Astounding/Analog where the original Lensman novels appeared. Although well written, because it’s a side story, it’s basically a footnote.
In summary, I really liked the original four novel series, especially the first two books which were written first; and liked (not “really liked”) the other books in the same universe.
The Lensmen were part of my Golden Age of 12 too (I think later books in the series might have been the first time I special ordered books at the library). I’ve reread them enough that the zowy prose doesn’t bother, but the genocide aspects do.
The occasional vivid vignettes are why I occasionally reread them. Given EE Smith’s background, not too surprising two of my favorites are mining related: mine disaster in FIrst Lensmen, and asteroid mining in Grey Lensmen. But there are a number of others: Kimball’s hospital stay, Samms discovery of Rigellian advertising, the North American electioneering, and Kimball’s infiltration of Thallia.
Only some of these are public domain (though I think maybe more in Australia). Unfortunately some of the commercial books are of really poor quality. I first noticed this, when picking up a replacement (my second hand paperbook of 2nd Stage Lensman had fallen apart) in the UK, there were a shocking amount of typos. The kindle book editions must of come from the same masters, it is evident not even a quick edit pass was performed. Though I do admit I cracked up when reading about the un-describable denizens of the plant “Floor”. The audio books also vary quite a bit in quality.
Oh yes, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Japanese Lensman inspired series, one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman_(1984_film). Both the original and the anime version were inspirations for the authors of the Mekton board and role-playing games.
My favorite Doc Smith book is without a doubt Masters of Space, co-written by someone else with a bunch of E names.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22754
It’s Doc Smith, boiled down to the super-competent characters, and world smashing. I’ve read it a dozen times, if not more.
E.E. “Doc” Smith has been a go-to for me since my mid-teens; not mind-stretching or challenging, but more the equivalent of SF “comfort food”. I came to SF via boys adventure stories (Robert Heinlein for example), so E.E. “Doc” Smith’s stories helped to span the move from adventure to challenging SF.
I have often felt that the best “Doc” novel is Harry Harrison’s “Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers”. Partly homage, partly piss-take, partly social commentary, entirely a lot of fun.
I’ve been reading through the Hugo award winners and nominees for a few years now, which is how I discovered Smith, and I’ve done the skylarks, along with the first few lensman novels. They’re hard reading at points, but enjoyable overall. The characters are supermen, but then pulp writing was full of impossible heroes. Conan the barbarian (who was contemporary) was the same as the lensmen: unkillable, never daunted, always pulls a new skill out of the bag if he’s in a tight spot. Take it lightly and enjoy the ride.
A lot of my favourite authors were inspired by Smith (or inspired by those that were), so I understand that he was massively influential. Alas that it be so full of superlatives. The “best” science of one world will routinely be outmatched by the “greatest”, which in turn falls to the “ultimate”, which is outdone by “supreme”. Fun, pulp, not so great today.
One thing I hate Smith for though, is the word “every”. Whenever he was setting up an event, a spaceship/journey/battle etc.. “Every part was checked, every crewman was trained to perfection, every screen was tested to the minutest tolerance imaginable. Every weapon was proven, every last erg was coaxed out of those terrible engines, every man crouched over every control desk, giving his task every ounce of concentration he had”. EVERY EVERY EVERY!! I read that word in Smith now and I just skip half a page.
@48 FungiUg
I like Star Smashers too, but it’s not Doc Smith-like at all! I mean the skin is somewhat, but the bones are all Harrison. And for some reason Harrison didn’t even parody some of the most extreme Smith writing tics (though I only read Star Smashers once, back in the 1980s so my memory is hazy).
I think like Heinlein, Smith is best appreciated for his early work. The later you go, the more you run into authoritarian supermen as being the best form or government and the more superior breeding seems to matter. When I got the Skylark DuQuesne my hair stood on end!
When I first read the Lensmen series it was in a series of small paperbacks starting with, I think, the Grey Lensman. Each of the books had a Lensman colour in the title, ending with the Red Lensman who was female. I may have read Children of the Lens at a later date but I’m not sure. I took this series for what it was, entertaining space opera. I have looked recently and have never been able to find the books published in these title formats. I have never read Triplanetary (or the First Lensman, I think – bit confused here) – judging by comments not sure I have missed much. Everything seems to have been re-titled so now I am really confused. Was this an attempt to make this series into some sort of Si-Fi classic saga? Does anyone else remember these books being titled by the Lensmen colours or is my memory playing tricks on me?
Somewhere in the sixties Analog wanted to publish a story set in the Triplanetary universe. They prefaced it with a note from Doc Smith, graciously giving the author permission.
I said, “Only in Science Fiction can someone call on a neighbor and ask, ‘Can I borrow a cup of your universe?’”
I didn’t realize it at the time, but… That was the first example of the now-commonplace SF institution, the Franchise Universe.
The Thieve’s World series gets the credit. But Doc Smith did it first.
THANK YOU for the public service of pointing out that the first 6 chapters in many ( some? most? all?) current editions are BACKFILL PREAMBLE. I picked up my copy of “Triplanetary” easily three decades ago for all the same reasons–Lensman, Doc Smith, namecheck, namecheck, must read, influenced Golden Age everyone, etc., etc. I’ve read overviews of why Lensman was so important for all those decades, and how influential it was, yet somehow NO ONE I EVER READ seems to have mentioned that if your exposure to it is a reprint published after a certain year, then the first six chapters of that volume are just RETCON BACKFILL.
I have tried and tried to read my copy of the book on and off over the years (I picked up my copy used in about 1988 or 1989) and I always give up by chapter 4 or so wondering what all the fuss is about.
Sigh. Now I know. I’m looking forward to skipping the first 6 chapters and really diving in the next time I have the chance.
FourDs (1): I’m reading Stapledon’s Star Maker (1937) and was a bit surprised by several mentions of the tidal hypothesis of planet formation, which I hadn’t heard of since childhood! I seem to remember there was one other besides the nebular, but cannot retrieve it.
AndyLove (28): When I read The Skylark of Space, I thought it must be the parent of Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers.
@54: Thanks.