Taking a break from other reading, I thought I would
take a trip down memory lane. Edward Elmer Smith, known, for his PhD in
Chemistry, as “Doc” to his legion of fans in the Golden Age, was one of the
popular science fiction writers in the early generations of the genre. This,
his first novel, was published in 1928, serialised in Amazing Stories under the hand of Hugo Gernsbach – ninety years
ago! It is worth bearing in mind the novel was written between 1915 and 1921
when Smith was in university, and the first half of the story, set on Earth and
comprising a scientific, industrial and espionage thriller, was co-written with
Lee Hawkins Garby, wife of a colleague. (Smith is reputed to have always had
his romantic material ghost written, he was good at space ships and vast
machines, not lovey-dovey stuff.) That’s
over a hundred years ago! Al Capone was at the height of his powers when this
novel was serialised, and Albert Einstein was the most influential cosmologist,
with decades of work ahead of him.
I remember reading many years ago a comment from one of the
big voices in the field, that it was “unfortunate” so many people were
introduced to science fiction through the likes of E. E. Smith. I took
immediate exception to the remark, having enjoyed his work as a kid, but many
years later I can perhaps see where that critic was coming from.
The work was first collected under one cover in 1946, it was
already venerable even then. So, how does a novel written so far back survive,
through an infinitude of editions, today?
I first read this novel when I was about eleven – the same
copy, the Panther edition of 1974. The striking Chris Foss cover of course has
nothing to do with the content of the book, something for which Foss was
notorious, though his style was an undoubted selling point for a great many
paperbacks of the period. The Foss mystique was welded to the Panther/Grenada
reissue of the E. E. Smith classics in the 70s and for me, as a young science
fiction enthusiast, the covers leant a fascination and compulsion to what were
even then very old narratives.
The story concerns a scientist making a serendipitous
discovery akin to cold fusion, the total conversion of matter into energy,
released in a controlled manner. This gives him and his partner fundamental
control of propulsion (a reactionless space drive), weapons, tractor beams and instrumentation
overcoming the limitations of physics as they were then understood. Of course,
a voyage into deep space is planned, the construction of a vessel to embody all
these technologies – and there’s a bad guy of Holmesian complexity, think an evil
Sherlock, equal in scientific competence to the heroes but utterly devoid of
scruple. Yes, Moriarty by any other name.
The heroes, Seaton and Crane, are comic book stereotypes –
brilliant in the Bruce Wayne/Tony Stark way, champion athletes with rippling
physiques they never seem to have to work at, iron-jawed and of both
unshakeable courage and golden-headed adherence to the side of the angels –
ruthless too, in their willingness of wage war with superior weapons on behalf
of their conception of right. No “Prime Directives” here, just pile on and
annihilate! Kill the aliens!
It’s fascinating to consider this first outing for a big
name. The style is pulpy and underdeveloped in many ways, and his penchant for
having his characters speak in the American slang of the period is both
charming and irritating – confusing to me when I was a kid. His real science is
liberally sprinkled in, while his flights of technical fancy are wonderful to
behold. His dismissal of the “Einstein theory” as “just a theory” is rather
quaint, allowing his space vessels to travel at thousands of times the speed of
light, while acknowledging that inertia still applies! Nevertheless, this novel
is recognised as the first work of “space opera,” the first even marginally
convincing attempt to explain deep space flight by scientific means, and to
bring together the elements of the violent and exotic juxtaposed with hard
steel and furious energies.
The influences are rather clear, though – as a child I was
not yet widely enough read to know what I was looking at or make some rather
obvious connections. Smith was heavily influenced by Burroughs – his alien
civilization of the planet Osnome, lit by the light of a fifteen-star cluster
so that night is unknown, peopled by warrior societies locked in a 6000-year
war, equipped with flying vessels of every sort and welded to a social order
based on monarchy and notions of Darwinian fitness, is detailed luxuriously and
drips inference of Burroughs’ Barsoom. This is hardly surprising, A Princess of Mars must have been on Smith's bookshelf when he first put an ink-dipped pen nib to paper. The planet is
unremittingly hot, therefore clothes are rarely worn – the classic way to spice
up the narrative with the bare skin forbidden by polite society of the age. Yet
the social mores of the Twenties are painfully in focus, the proprieties are
observed at all times, no sex before marriage – and of course there is a great
wedding scene as both heroes and their girlfriends exchange cloying vows of
eternal betrothal in a glittering alien spectacle. Smith spent an entire
chapter on it, the public must have lapped it up. One sees the wedding of John
Carter and Dejah Thoris as the precursor, and the wedding of Ming the Merciless
and Dale Arden in Flash Gordon, made
just a few years after Smith’s opus, as the inevitable Hollywood cash-in.
(Viewed objectively, Flash Gordon
channels Skylark of Space at so many
levels.)
The novel has been edited many times, with major changes
between 1928 and 1946, and Smith, still alive in the mid-1970s, reworked the
text for a hardcover edition in 1975, abridging it and removing most of Garby’s
contribution. This may be the same text as the 1974 Panther edition, which is
noted as having been revised by the author, and there is no credit for a
co-author. Revisions are clear when considering the early dates of original
composition: the text, while never mentioning a date at which events take place
(and Washington seems entirely contemporary, though Smith is careful to
describe nothing stylistically,
allowing the text to remain contemporary as cars lost their running boards and
so forth) mentions nuclear energy, the supersonic jet, the helicopter, computer
and television. This is a case of reality surging by a work of fiction, which
was retrospectively updated in its details to keep pace.
Critical reaction has been mixed down the decades, with some
recognising the novel’s influence upon the field, and others the almost
painfully amateurish plot development. What fares worst a century on is perhaps
the self-serving social model it supports – white Americans save the
funny-coloured natives and are showered with fabulous wealth and elevated to
the highest honours in the process. Perhaps it was not meant that way, and it
may be unfair to saddle a period piece with the outlook of modern times, but we
live in a hyper-sensitive age, and as surely as any other writers of the
period, Smith operated inside his own social environment. There is one Asian in
the story, a servant who speak Engrish poorly, and black people are
non-existent, while women are definitely the weaker sex, forever trembling,
clinging to male arms or trotting off to prepare food – oh yes, this is America
a hundred years ago. In the sequels Smith became more adventurous, introducing
action-woman characters, retiring the shrinking-violet model, but the original
is painfully conservative.
Here is an excellent discussion of the liberties taken both
artistically and scientifically in this and subsequent volumes.
Can I recommend this book today? It’s difficult to, other
than as a curiosity, yet so seminal has its influence been that one would have
to say it is required reading along with Verne and Welles for the serious
aficionado of the genre. I found it less enthralling than Burroughs, less
compelling than the SF outings of Clarke Ashton Smith, but it is what it is –
the one that started it all. The Skylark
really was the first starship of Earth.
Cheers, Mike Adamson
