E. E. Doc Smith - Best of E. E. Doc Smith

The Best of E.E. "Doc" Smith

Classic Adventures in Space By One of SF's Great Originals

LIST OF CONTENTS

Preface by Philip Harbottle

Foreword by Walter Gillings

To the Far Reaches of Space

Robot Nemesis

Pirates of Space

The Vortex Blaster

Tedric

Lord Tedric

Subspace Survivors

The Imperial Stars

Afterword: The Epic of Space by E E "Doc" Smith

Bibliography

PREFACE

When "The Skylark of Space" was published in AMAZING STORIES in 1928 it gave

the science fiction fraternity the road to the stars. It also had a profound

effect on other writers, notably John W. Campbell, who took their cue from

Smith.

TO THE FAR REACHES OF SPACE, a complete - in itself excerpt from the famous

novel, records this initial leap beyond the solar system. Told with verve and

gusto, the narrative admirably shows Smith's panache in handling vast

distances and strange alien worlds.

As "The Skylark of Space" shattered the confines of the space story in 1928,

so ROBOT NEMESIS widened the frontiers of the robot story when it first

appeared (under another title) in 1934. Robots in the early days of science

fiction were usually clanking monstrosities who threatened their scientist

creators. In this story Smith's illimitable imagination postulates a future

wherein robots actually threaten to supplant mankind as the Lords of Creation.

Smith's writing was never better than in the opening chapters of

""Triplanetary." The complex structure of the pirate base, a self-contained

world in space, comes across with absolute credibility in the complete segment

PIRATES OF SPACE.

THE VORTEX BLASTER is definitive Smith, with its skillful intermingling of

super-science and human interest. The tragedy of Neal Cloud immediately grips

the reader who easily identifies with Cloud in his fight against the atomic

horror responsible for his wife's death.

In TEDRIC (1953) and LORD TEDRIC (1954), the reader is offered two lost gems

which were originally published in two of the rarest magazines in the field.

Here one finds a fascinating blend of sword and sorcery and the paradoxes of

time travel, in the inimitable Smith style.

SUBSPACE SURVIVORS (1960) is a compelling novelette written in the modern

tradition which marked Smith's triumphant return to the pages of ASTOUNDING

SCIENCE FICTION after a thirteen year absence.

THE IMPERIAL STARS (1964) marks the high watermark of the final phase of

Smith's work. Whilst presented in the slick, modern manner, it evokes the old

magic of the Lensman series, with its galactic agents and star-spanning

intrigues. Intended as the first in a new series, later parts are said to

exist in outline and may yet appear in some form or other.

That is something to look forward to. Meanwhile you will find encompassed here

the best of "Doc" Smith, eight stories spanning an incredible five decades of

science fiction history, by its best-loved pioneer.

Philip Harbottle, Wellsend, March 1975.

FOREWORD

EDWARD E SMITH, PhD-CIVILIZATION'S HISTORIAN

Dekanore VI - A non-Tellurian planet inhabited by immensely ugly, spider-like

beings, to whom Kimball Kinnison was a shuddersome sight.

Adams of Procia - Commander-in-chief of Procyon's armed forces; appointed

general of Procyon by Roderick Kinnison in the formation of the Galactic

Patrol.

Croleo's - A bar in the city of Ardith, on Radelix.

Slasher-worm - A Venerian creature which Herkimer threatened to use in

torturing Jill Samms.

Thought-cap - The Jelm version of the thought-transfer helmet, or mechanical

educator.

"Tail high, brother!" - The Vegian war-cry.

Devoted followers of those doughty heroes Richard Seaton, Kimball Kinnison and

Neal Cloud will be able to make

good sense of these items from The Universes of E E Smith. They are typical of

hundreds of entries in a unique

concordance to the eleven best-known novels of the late Edward Elmer Smith,

Ph.D., which took two of his

disciples four years to compile. Its 270 pages from a complete reader's guide

to the complex webwork of

imaginary worlds and fantastic creations which earned the beloved "Doc" the

title of "Historian of Civilization;" a

fitting memorial to one of the most inventive and influential writers to leave

his mark on the popular literature of

science fiction.

Few others have made such an impact as he did at his first appearance in 1928,

or continued so long to delight a

host of fans most of whom remained faithful even after his work had been

dismissed as artless and juvenile. That

his first novel, The Skylark of Space, opened the door for the most

extravagant excursions of super-science into

the remotest regions, and led the way for "space opera," has been held against

him in recent years where once it was

deemed a vital spur to the development of the genre. Yet, despite their

undoubted limitations on the literary level,

the sweeping "epics" of "Skylark" Smith are still relished for their sheer

exuberance.

The pioneering Amazing Stories magazine was in its third year when it

serialized what it described as "one of the

outstanding scientifiction stories of the decade," predicting that it would be

"referred to by fans for years to come."

The prediction proved perfectly valid. Nearly twenty years later, when the

first of several enterprising specialist

book publishers began to resurrect "classic" tales from the magazines, the

much-vaunted Skylark was an obvious

choice and sold out so quickly that the firm had to be reorganized to cope

with the demand. Since 1946 it has seen

publication in several forms in many parts of the world, and it is still being

reprinted, like the other "Doe" Smith

serials that followed at intervals through the years. Yet, before Amazing

Stories accepted it, The Skylark had

gathered what the author cheerfully claimed was "probably the most complete

collection of rejection slips in

America." In a pleasant correspondence which we conducted in the late 1940s,

he told me bow be had begun to

write the story after starting out as a chemical engineer in 1914 and did not

complete it until 1920. For two years

Mrs. Lee Hawkins Garby, the wife of an old classmate, helped him with the

romantic interest that readers found so

treacly but which hardly interfered with the high-geared action. But she

didn't have the staying power of the

determined Smith, who by the time he was 25 had held down a dozen different

jobs from millband and stevedore to

street-car conductor. Born 1890 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, E. E. Smith was

raised on a riverside homestead in

northern Idaho, where he worked as a lumberjack until his eldest brother and

sister helped him get to the university.

By 1915 he was earning enough as a food chemist with the U.S. Bureau of

Standards to marry a girl from Idaho and

settle down in Washington, D.C., where his wife went to work as a stenographer

to enable him to get his Ph.D. This

is why the book version of The Skylark of Space is dedicated "To Jeannie"

-though Mrs. Garby got her name in the

by-line-and her share of the 125 dollars he was paid for the magazine serial.

In spite of the college-boy dialogue and the melodramatic exchanges between

heroic Dick Seaton and his

scheming rival "Blackie" DuQuesne, Amazing Stories readers, whose ranks I had

recently joined, clamored for a

sequel. So, in Skylark Three, which followed in 1930, Smith took his

atom-powered voyagers out again to the

rescue of the people of the Green System who faced annihilation by the

marauding Fenachrone. This "tale of the

galactic cruise which ushered in universal civilization" presented a

stupendous panorama of alien life-forms, mile-

long spaceships, traveling faster than light, devastating ray weapons, and

frightful battles in the void ending in

inevitable triumph for the visiting Earthmen.

To keep him in tow, Amazing paid Smith more generously for this three-part

serial, to which he wrote an epilogue

suggesting that his readers had heard the last of the all-conquering Dick and

his musical sweetheart. By way of a

change. in 1931 be came up with another story, Spacehounds of IPC, which

confined his new heroes of the

Inter-Planetary Corporation to the solar system. This, he insisted, was true

scientific fiction, not pseudo-science,

and he planned to make it the first of a series-but it wasn't what his fans

wanted. "We want Smith to write stories of

scope and range. We want more Skylarks?" was the cry. And Amazing's

80-year-old editor Dr. T. O'Conor Sloane,

who still had seven years to go before he retired, pointed a lean finger out

towards the Milky Way.

But whatever the critics said about the results of his labors, Smith was never

a "hack" writer. He planned his stories

with care, and took his time writing them. Invariably he would plot a graph to

help him in developing his plot, the

reactions of his characters to the situations they encountered and the

background atmosphere he weaved into the

story. "Not that I ever managed to stick to one of them all the way," he

confessed. "Somehow my characters always

break loose and take the yarn out of my hands which is a good thing, I guess."

As science fiction advanced into the 1930s there were other editors, too, who

wanted to get hold of his stories.

Competition had set in-but so had the Depression, and if it had not suffered a

temporary setback in 1933, Astound-

ing Stories would have featured Triplanetary, the story which gave rise to the

"Lensman" series. In any event, it

went to enliven four issues of Amazing in 1934. It was this story that

introduced the concept of the "inertialess

drive" by which, it was assumed-since it could neither be proved nor

disproved-spaceships might traverse the

impossible gulfs of Smith's literary cosmos. When asked about the scientific

probability of such a device, Smith

responded: "It is not probable at all, at least in any extrapolation of

present-day science. But as far as I can

determine, it cannot be proved absolutely impossible and that is enough for

me. In fact, the more improbable a

thing, the better I like it-so long as it cannot be demonstrated

mathematically impossible. I got the idea of

inertialessness from a lecture given at the University of Michigan in 1912."

So, this time, the eight-limbed amphibians of the far planet Nevia, who were

greedy for iron rations, were properly

frustrated by Conway Costigan and his colleagues, and obliged to sign a Treaty

of Eternal Peace. And thirteen years

later, to make a book of it, Smith wrote six new chapters to precede the

Amazing story, barking back to the dawn of

creation, recalling the end of Atlantis and the fall of Rome, and drawing on

his own experiences during two world

wars. All history is seen as a titanic struggle between two races of

super-beings, the Arisians and the Eddorians,

who influence human-kind for good or ill as civilization advances to the era

of the Triplanetary League.

When the book appeared in 1948, even Smith's gentler critics had difficulty in

digesting this turgid mixture of cos-

mic imagery and rip-roaring adventure. Nevertheless it was accepted as a

useful prelude to the "Lensman"

saga-most of which had already run its course in the revived Astounding

Stories. The missing link was First

Lensman, which Smith wrote specially for book publication in 1950 to bridge

the gap between Triplanetary and

Galactic Patrol, first serialized in 1937-38. By that time Astounding readers

had claimed "Doc" Smith for their

own. Prodded by editor F. Orlin Tremaine, he had produced a third "Skylark"

story which the magazine presented

with a fanfare in 1934 and ran through seven issues. With the first

installment of Skylark of Valeron the

magazine's sales soared, and at the end the author had increased his fans by

thousands. He had also put what seemed

to be an irreversible end to the luckless DuQuesne by reducing him to a

capsule of pure intellect and flinging him

into the fourth dimension. But good villains die hard, and he was still

immortal . . .

That Astounding was in its most expansive conceptual period at this time lent

power to Smith's imagination, and

thus Dick Seaton's mental capacity, his new spaceship and his area of

operations were all enlarged to maximum

proportions. After Valeron it seemed there was nothing left to explore, nor

any more possible variations on the

familiar themes which had made Smith's tales so popular. And he was still a

part-time writer; he had business

problems to wrestle with. For seventeen years he had been employed as chief

chemist with a Michigan firm

concerned with the specialist art of compounding doughnut mixes. In 1936 he

moved to a new firm in which he had

a financial interest, and it left him little time for science fiction. Yet,

within a year, Smith was busily plotting the

"Lensman" series, which began in Astounding at about the same time that Olaf

Stapledon's Star Maker appeared,

which outdistanced Stapledon's previous work Last and First Men.

To equate the beloved "pulp" writer Smith with the equally genial philosopher

Stapledon might seem almost

profane; yet, though their methods and literary styles are poles apart, in the

final analysis their works are

essentially similar, especially in the scope of their projection and their

concern with the eternal struggle of good

and evil which, in Smith's stories, is reduced to its simplest elements. The

idea of an interstellar police force

protecting a community of worlds against piracy and insurrection was familiar

in American science fiction when

Smith devised his Galactic Patrol. But he used it to better effect against a

more elaborate background in which the

ancient Arisians, who had sown the seeds of life throughout the galaxy,

enlisted the Lensmen in the struggle to

subdue the power-crazy rulers of Eddore, a planet in another space-time

continuum.

The Lensmen and their ladies, selected from many worlds for their superior

qualities, are so-called because they

carry a device enabling them to communicate with any form of sentient life

their creator can dream up, and which

brings quick death to unauthorized users. Their leading heroes are First

Lensman Virgil Samms, who extended the

Triplanetary League to embrace the entire solar system; Grey Lensman Kim

Kinnison, whose exploits range over

two galaxies, and his mate Clarissa MacDougall, the redheaded nurse who made

good as a Second Stage Lensman.

Not until many tyrants have been overthrown on as many planets are Kim and

"Mac" able to get married and com-

plete the ages-long breeding program culminating in the five Children of the

Lens, who are destined to succeed

the Arisians as the Guardians of Civilization.

In all, the "Lensman" series helped to fill out eighteen issues of Astounding

over a ten-year period ending in 1948,

during which that exacting editor John W. Campbell held sway. In between times

the number of science fiction

pulps had multiplied, but few of the newcomers survived the war years; the

real boom came afterwards. One of the

casualties was Comet Stories, edited by Tremaine, for whom Smith agreed to

write new series featuring "Storm"

Cloud, a nuclear physicist and spaceman whose job is to snuff out atomic power

plants when they run wild like

oilwells. Only one story appeared before the magazine was extinguished in

1941, leaving Astonishing Stories to

feature two more before it too folded. Because of their loose connection with

the "Lensman" tales, in 1960 the

three stories were combined in a book titled The Vortex Blaster, published

here more recently as Masters of the

Vortex.

The war hit Smith hard, too. He found himself redundant and was forced to live

on his savings until, at 51, he went

to work in an ordnance plant. Only when he was back in the cereals business in

Chicago after the war did he essay

Children of the Lens-with an eye to his own three children and their

offspring. "This," he informed me, to settle

arguments between his fans over the proper sequence of these stories, "is the

real Lensman story, to which the

other three are merely introductory material." This led up to something he

especially wanted to say about his

endings (and which he repeated elsewhere) : "It's a darn hard job to write a

book which is part of a series and yet

have it end clean, without a lot of loose ends dangling. Many authors-Edgar

Rice Burroughs, for instance-didn't try.

But I hate loose ends. Besides, suppose the author should die or something

without ever finishing the damn thing?

In Galactic Patrol and Grey Lensman I could clean them up without too much

trouble, but in Second Stage

Lensman it was practically impossible. I sweat blood . . ." And how he got

over the impasse he told in his essay on

The Epic of Space.

In 1957 Smith retired to live in Florida-and continue his writing. For he

could not ignore the current trends in

science fiction, which challenged his powers; especially after his earlier

work, which he had spent ten years

revising for book publication, had been diminished by relentless critics. For

example, P. Schuyler Miller, who,

reviewing Grey Lensman in 1952, lambasted his "incredible heroes, unbelievable

weapons, insurmountable

obstacles, inconceivable science, omnipotent villains, and unimaginable

catacylsms." And Groff Conklin, in whom

it evoked "alternate waves of incredulous laughter and dull, acid boredom"

because, he suspected, "science fiction

is growing up and leaving these primitive artifacts behind." So, in The Galaxy

Primes, Smith introduced the sort of

concepts that were being encouraged in Astounding, deriving from what editor

Campbell termed `psi phenomena":

Smith's pseudo-living, telepathic Lens, he instanced, was "essentially a psi

machine." But Campbell didn't care so

much for his new story, which Amazing found more acceptable and serialized in

1959 before it emerged, finally,

as a paperback.

Undaunted, Smith contrived to make his last appearance in Astounding the

following year with Subspace

Survivors, a short story paving the way for a novel-which Campbell found

wanting. It reached Smith's devoted fans

in 1965 as a hardcover book entitled Subspace Explorers. And towards the end

he found a more receptive market

for his work in the magazine Worlds of If, which in 1961-62 featured Masters

of Space, a two-part tale which also

carried in its by-line the name E. Everett Evans. Of all Smith's army of

admirers, this one-time secretary of The

Galactic Roamers fan club was the most constant, and when he died leaving this

novel unfinished, Smith revised it

completely.

The affection in which "The Doc" was held by the science fiction fraternity

was demonstrated when, in 1963, at the

21st World Convention in Washington-where The Skylark was hatched-veteran fans

presented him with their Hall

of Fame award. By then he was having trouble with his eyes, but he had still

not done with writing. The following

year he reappeared in If with The Imperial Stars, in which he tried to

recapture some of the atmosphere of the

"Lensman" stories. This tale, too, gave promise of a series featuring a troupe

of circus performers involved in

sabotage in a galactic empire. Then editor Frederik Pohl, having egged him on,

surprised Smith's old-time

followers by presenting Skylark DuQuesne, in which the legendary villain who

had been dispatched thirty years

before was reincarnated, and compelled to join Dick Seaton in resisting

another grim menace from afar. The serial

had hardly ended when the news reached his friends, in August 1965, that

"Skylark" Smith had died of a heart attack.

It was the end of what If had called "the most famous science fiction saga of

all time."

WALTER GILLINGS Ilford, Essex, 1975.

TO THE FAR REACHES OF SPACE

Hair-raising explorations and strange ventures into faraway worlds as Man

breaks the light-speed barrier

and heads into the black depths of interstellar space.

For forty-eight hours the uncontrolled engine dragged DuQuesne's vessel

through the empty reaches of space with

an awful and constantly increasing velocity. Then, when only a few traces of

copper remained, the acceleration

began to decrease. Floor and seats began to return to their normal positions.

When the last particle of copper was

gone, the ship's speed became constant. Apparently motionless to those inside

her, she was in reality moving with a

velocity thousands of times greater than that of light.

DuQuesne was the first to gain control of himself. His first effort to get up

lifted him from the floor and he

floated lightly upward to the ceiling, striking it with a gentle bump and

remaining, motionless and unsupported, in

the air. The others, none of whom had attempted to move, stared at him in

amazement.

DuQuesne reached out, clutched a hand-grip, and drew himself down to the

floor. With great caution he removed

his suit, transferring two automatic pistols as be did so. By feeling gingerly

of his body he found that no bones

were broken. Only then did he look around to see how his companions were

faring.

They were all sitting up and holding onto something. The girls were resting

quietly; Perkins was removing his

leather costume.

"Good morning, Dr. DuQuesne. Something must have happened when I kicked your

friend."

"Good morning, Miss Vaneman." DuQuesne smiled, more than half in relief.

"Several things happened. He fell into

the controls, turning on all the juice, and we left considerably faster than I

intended to. I tried to get control, but

couldn't. Then we all went to sleep and just woke up." "Have you any idea

where we are?"

"No . . . but I can make a fair estimate." He glanced at the empty chamber

where the copper cylinder had been; took

out notebook, pencil, and slide rule; and figured for minutes.

He then drew himself to one of the windows and stared out, then went to

another window, and another. He seated

himself at the crazily tilted control board and studied it. He worked the

computer for a few moments.

"I don't know exactly what to make of this," he told Dorothy, quietly. "Since

the power was on exactly fortyeight

hours, we should not be more than two light-days away from our sun. However,

we certainly are. I could recognize

at least some of the fixed stars and constellations from anywhere within a

light-year or so of Sol, and I can't find

even one familiar thing. Therefore we must have been accelerating all the

time. We must be somewhere in the

neighborhood of two hundred thirty-seven light-years away from home. For you

two who don't know what a

light-year is, about six quadrillion-six thousand million millionmiles."

Dorothy's face turned white; Margaret Spencer fainted; Perkins merely goggled,

his face working convulsively.

"Then we'll never get back?" Dorothy asked.

"I wouldn't say that--"

"You got us into this!" Perkins screamed, and leaped at Dorothy, murderous

fury in his glare, his fingers curved

into talons. Instead of reaching her, however, he merely sprawled grotesquely

in the air. DuQuesne, braced one

foot against the wall and seizing a hand-grip with his left hand, knocked

Perkins clear across the room with one

blow of his right.

"None of that, louse," DuQuesne said, evenly. "One more wrong move out of you

and I'll throw you out. It isn't her

fault we're here, it's our own. And mostly yours-if you'd had three brain

cells working she couldn't have kicked you.

But that's past. The only thing of interest now is getting back."

"But we can't get back," Perkins whimpered. "Me power's gone, the controls are

wrecked, and you said you're lost."

"I did not." DuQuesne's voice was icy. "What I said was that I don't know

where we are-a different statement

entirely."

"Isn't that a distinction without a difference?" Dorothy asked acidly.

"By no means, Miss Vaneman. I can repair the control board. I have two extra

power bars. One of them, with

direction exactly reversed, will stop us, relative to the earth. I'll bum half

of the last one, then coast until, by recog-

nizing fixed stars and triangulating them, I can fix our position. I will then

know where our solar system is and will

go there. In the meantime, I suggest that we have something to eat."

"A beautiful and timely thought!" Dorothy exclaimed. "I'm famished. Where's

your refrigerator? But something else

comes first. I'm a mess, and she must be, too. Where's our room ... that is,

we have a room?"

"Yes. That one, and there's the galley, over there. We're cramped, but you'll

be able to make out. Let me say, Miss

Vaneman, that I really admire your nerve. I didn't expect that lunk to

disintegrate the way he did, but I thought you

girls might. Miss Spencer will, yet, unless you . . ."

"I'll try to. I'm scared, of course, but falling apart won't help ... and

we've simply got to get back.'

"We will. Two of us, at least."

Dorothy nudged the other girl, who had not paid any attention to anything

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