Lensman 1: Triplanetary
I first heard about E.E. "Doc" Smith's Triplanetary series in some blog or another, possibly the now defunct Long Story, Short Pier, and decided to check it out. Why? Because it's apparently regarded as one of the great space operas of all time, a magazine serial collected into book form in the 40s that served as the inspiration for everything from the Green Lantern Corps to Star Wars. Shockingly enough, I haven't been dissapointed in the least.
First off, I read the introduction and realized that Lucas was meta-inspired by these books. You see only volumes 3-6 were part of the original serialized publication. The first two volumes (Triplanetary and First Lensman) were written when Smith got his book deal, in order to provide a "History of Civilization." Originally the story began In Media Res with the third book, Galactic Patrol, and careened towards a surprise reveal, for both characters and readers, that is totally blown by these new books. Sound familiar? The introduction even goes out of its way to warn you how middling these first two books are, but that its worth it to get to the good stuff. I can only imagine this is how people will discuss Star Wars in 100 years.
And sure enough, Triplanetary is goofy fun, but not all that great, most of the way through. The basic concept is that the Arrisians (good) and the Eddorians (bad) have been manipulating the entire universe in a secretive galactic struggle for dominance, occassionally collapsing empires like Atlantic and Rome in Ra's Al Ghulian display of sheer evil and/or hope for the future, depending on which race you're listening to. This is all pretty morally immature stuff. Especially when you grit your teeth and rush through the sort of obvious social darwinism. Plus the labor minister for the Arrisians is named "Marxes." Subtle stuff here.
Then there's a really great chapter that doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything else that's just about E.E. Doc Smith during World War II.
Then we get to the space battles. The loving and lengthy descriptions of force fields and laser arrays. Plus the villain, an Eddorian disguised as a pirate named (feel free to laugh, I did) 'Roger' has a giant death moon called "The Planetoid." And while trying to escape our intrepid heroes, who have only robots to go up against, note that they wish the robots had uniforms they could steal to disguise themselves. After this, Star Wars practically writes itself.
Apparently as the series progresses the Arrisians bust out their master plan, to create an order of galactic guardians known as the Lensman. Sounds like the Jedi/GL Corps to me.
But I'll review each book as I read them, because they're fun, and I keep pulling out parellels. And now, because this shit is too good to waste, I leave you with selected chapter titles from Triplanetary:
Pirates of Space
In Roger's Planetoid
Fleet Against Planetoid
Worm, Submarine, and Freedom
The Specimens Escape
First off, I read the introduction and realized that Lucas was meta-inspired by these books. You see only volumes 3-6 were part of the original serialized publication. The first two volumes (Triplanetary and First Lensman) were written when Smith got his book deal, in order to provide a "History of Civilization." Originally the story began In Media Res with the third book, Galactic Patrol, and careened towards a surprise reveal, for both characters and readers, that is totally blown by these new books. Sound familiar? The introduction even goes out of its way to warn you how middling these first two books are, but that its worth it to get to the good stuff. I can only imagine this is how people will discuss Star Wars in 100 years.
And sure enough, Triplanetary is goofy fun, but not all that great, most of the way through. The basic concept is that the Arrisians (good) and the Eddorians (bad) have been manipulating the entire universe in a secretive galactic struggle for dominance, occassionally collapsing empires like Atlantic and Rome in Ra's Al Ghulian display of sheer evil and/or hope for the future, depending on which race you're listening to. This is all pretty morally immature stuff. Especially when you grit your teeth and rush through the sort of obvious social darwinism. Plus the labor minister for the Arrisians is named "Marxes." Subtle stuff here.
Then there's a really great chapter that doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything else that's just about E.E. Doc Smith during World War II.
Then we get to the space battles. The loving and lengthy descriptions of force fields and laser arrays. Plus the villain, an Eddorian disguised as a pirate named (feel free to laugh, I did) 'Roger' has a giant death moon called "The Planetoid." And while trying to escape our intrepid heroes, who have only robots to go up against, note that they wish the robots had uniforms they could steal to disguise themselves. After this, Star Wars practically writes itself.
Apparently as the series progresses the Arrisians bust out their master plan, to create an order of galactic guardians known as the Lensman. Sounds like the Jedi/GL Corps to me.
But I'll review each book as I read them, because they're fun, and I keep pulling out parellels. And now, because this shit is too good to waste, I leave you with selected chapter titles from Triplanetary:
Pirates of Space
In Roger's Planetoid
Fleet Against Planetoid
Worm, Submarine, and Freedom
The Specimens Escape
1 Comments:
We really need to write some sort of sci-fi extravaganza set in a universe that mirrors what 1930s sci-fi writers, astronomers, and rocket-men thought the universe looked like. (And no, I don't think Star Wars does a good job of this sort of thing.)
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