Download And Enjoy Triplanetary Narrated By E.E. Doc Smith Produced In Manuscript
am a bit deceived with this one, but it is my fault, I assumed that classic was synonymous with quality but this is not the case, Triplanetary deserves its place in the history of the genre for the innovative approach at the time and because serialized space operas pulps were a very popular form of science fiction in its beginnings.
In a near future, I hope, a bit more explained on the blog: girotix, blogspot. com. es V'ger willing Super Spy Scandal!yo Socialite Sparks Interstellar War! "Miss Marsden will have a lot of explaining to do when she gets back home.
" Triplanetary Tattler.
Supreme Council Shocker! We Are Not Alone! "These socalled 'Arisians,' fancy themselves our equals, Of course, we will soon demonstrate our superiority, " Eddorian Bugle.
Watchman Howler! NDimensional Chess Game Abandoned! "Well, we were kinda left considering an infinite number of moves, . . " Arisian Post
Rereading this classic from my youth, It's been a real trip down memory lane,
Smith is great with his hooks, The first third of this book is more or less a series of snapshots to provide backstory and world building, But each chapter is its own story and often begins with an analogue of 'The siren wailed!' and then the action starts.
The danger with such a strategy is, of course, the risk of shallow characterization and I've seen some other writers draw verydimensional characters surrounded by explosions and cannon fire.
not looking in the mirror here, . . Fortunately Smith has an antidote to poorly drawn characters, and that is commitment unto death, and high purpose, every one of his Main Characters on the Good side have these traits.
The heroes are uniformly very brave, and driven by high ideals, For my somewhat cynical/stoic disposition this could easily be seen as naïve, however there are people in our real world that match the characterizations e.
g. Exemplars provided by Smith. He draws these traits well enough and against such villainy that they come across as authentic and hence draw you in,
I'd forgotten just how visceral Smith's writing is, He doesn't shy away from robust descriptions of violence and horrific scenes, There are Christians burning on crosses as torture candles, There are naked dismembered human torsos hanging from trees, and battlefields composed of churned up mud and shredded human flesh and bone.
Authenticity is a key word for Smith's story telling, and for me he hits the mark with his villains, The Eddorians are the ultimate highfunctioning psychopaths, Utterly selfish, ruthless, intelligent, determined, callous, and efficient, They are not evil because they are mad, sick, or have suffered a past trauma that was never resolved, They are simply the epitome of evil, Something a lot of modern writers seem to shy away from in favor of portraying evil as something else, . . like madness for example
I'm so pleased to see a story where the villains have not had their villainy excused with a white wash of authorial cowardice.
If we are as a culture ever going to come to grips with the nature of evil we have to draw evil as it is not as we would like it to be.
Speaking of evil, eugenics and transhumans are a key feature of the series, as humanity is being deliberately cultivated in a war against an explicitly evil foe.
Compare with sitelink org/pmwiki/pmwiki. ph for notes. This is quite a deep topic that I will revisit over the course of the series,
On a popculture note, The Galactic Patrol and the Lens are precursors to the whole Green Lantern concept,
The only quibble I have is the way that new generations of science and
technology are mastered in hours or days struck as a tad 'inconceivable,' but the enthusiastic joy of the writing is undeniable, and does sweep you along.
Recommended., 'Gosh, Go Get 'Em,',
And the time has come, Given this series was written during thess we have in the last volume a set of characters Children of the Lens who have become living gods that transcend humanity in the same way that each of us transcend Australopithecus.
For Smith, these children were an essential weapon of the Arisians vs the Eddorians, and the manipulation of humanity's evolution to produce them is simply a necessary element of the war between 'Good,' vs 'Evil.
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On a personal note, I view the idea of eugenics and 'superior stock,' with a great degree of trepidation.
Such views can easily lead to the most vile of outcomes, as we have seen in theth century, and frankly, we may see again in thest.
While I valorise the story Lensman series, I retain a grain of salt for some of the underpinning ideas, Those are my thoughts on this topic,
Enuf said. From the atomic age in Atlantis to the farflung future, here is a story of interstellar war with Earth as the prize for the victor.
The elder race of our galaxy, the Arisians, using advanced mental science, has foreseen the invasion of our universe by the evil Eddorians.
The Arisians begin a breeding program on every world that can produce intelligent life, the goal to produce super warriors who can repel the Eddorians.
Triplanetary is the early history of that breeding program on Earth, illustrated with the lives of several warriors and soldiers, It ends with the discovery of the interstellar space drive, formation of the Galactic Patrol, and the first Lensan Arisian device that provides its wearer with mindreading and telepathic abilitiesgiven to the first Lensman on Earth.
. sitelinkMetaphorosis s
In a collision of galaxies, two powerful races begin eonslong opposition, played out through manipulation of lesser races, including humans.
Much later, the Triplanetary government of Earth, Mars, and Venus, deploys its immense fleet against pirates, but is devastated by a number of mysterious and unexpected opponents.
E. E. Smith's Lensman series, which begins here, is a classic of pulp science fiction, It's one I grew up with, several decades after its first appearance, It's a great, fun series, but only if taken in the context of its time the leadup to World War II, and a time with very different values than we enjoy today.
The women are smart, plucky, and essentially decorative, The men are strong, brilliant, and brave, Most moral decisions are clearcut, and when they aren't, the way forward is nonetheless obvious, Government is good and always acting for the best,
The two powerful races that start the story in epically dense prose, the Eddoreans and the Arisians, encapsulate the ethos perfectly.
The Eddoreans are selfish, arrogant, greedy the epitome of everything cruel and evil, The Arisians are wise, generous, kind they can do no wrong, even as they see their own shortcomings and plan for a stronger successor.
That's pretty much the style of the series, and certainly of this first book retrofitted to the series when novelized you'll never be in much doubt as to whom to root for.
There's an attractive simplicity to that, In a time when we are blessed with SFF characters who travel in shades of grey, it can be relaxing to return to a series where good is good, and that's all there is to it.
The sexism in the series is a pervasive product of its time, It's not as easy to settle into that aspect of the book, but give Smith the benefit of his time, and focus more on the plot action, and you'll get past it.
The characters here aren't deep they're staunch and loyal, and they always do the right thing, It's the tractor beams and blaster fire that are important,
I'd forgotten just how rapidly the technology develops here, I could have sworn that shears and pressors and the inertialess drive took much longer to emerge, but they all come in right in this first book, seemingly developed over a matter of weeks by geniuses who need only one look at an enemy's polycyclic shield to immediately understand both its foundational principles, and the technology needed to go it one better.
Again, though, the Lensman series is not about credibility, It's about good beating evil, That was something people needed to hear in the middle of the last century, It's something we can stand to dream about again now, If you haven't read this series, you should, It's Science Fiction, and if you read it as a creature of its time, it's a lot of fun, I'm not terribly ashamed to admit I like Doc Smith, since I'm in good company see Robert Heinlein's "Larger than Life", Heinlein's apology for Smith covers most of the usual criticisms: the hackneyed dialogue, the Mauve Decade values, the liberal use of space opera stereotypes such as bugeyed monsters although note, please, that these hadn't been overused yet during Smith's time.
But I secretly hope that, in a different life, I too might wear the Lens, and in any case, to be a credit to the Patrol, Revisited afterdecades. Still enjoyable although some bits are dated and the dialogue quite stilted, Plan to reread the whole series once again before I meet the Arisians!! I'm giving this,rounded up tostars, . . will write my review in a bit once it has all sunk in, Right now I am of two minds on this book, I have to give the Lensman books at least four for their nostalgia value, and that they began me on a life of love for science fiction.
I'll have read them first in my very early teens, probably around the time of the original Star Wars trilogy, on which they are no doubt a huge influence.
I think these are probably the finest of 'Doc' Smith's ripping space adventures powered by derring do and the fight for justice, with square jawed heroes and their beautiful women, a World's Fairtype optimism of technology and a complete lack of regard for the laws of physics.
The good guys practically wear white hats, perfect physical and mental specimens that could adorn a recruitment poster for the US Army or the Wehrmacht.
The women are strong and intelligent, too strong enough to tell the men off for being overly macho with a glint in their eyes that says how much they love it really and smart enough to know that they should let the menfolk go off to do their duty while they stay behind to make sure the home is looked after.
Smith told the stories with a vibrancy that left the reader breathless at the adventure and heroism, with enough scientific gobbledygook to instill a sense of wonder silvery teardrop shaped spacecraft powered by and 'intertialess' drive that could fling them out of the solar system in a matter of seconds, ray guns that dealt death to the bad guys but only after refusing the chance to change their ways, of course and the mighty Lenses weapon, communication device and symbol of the Galactic Patrol's righteous power, handed to humanity by the ancient peaceloving alien civilisation the Arisians to fight the evil Eddorians.
I've been meaning to reread them all for some time, but perhaps they should be left in the past, infused with the fond glow of childhood discovery, remnant of a mythical time without cynicism and postmodernism, when we could ignore the complexities of the real world and pretend that all problems could be solved if people would just accept that granite jawed white men were always right.
So I'll just remember watching a couple of episodes of Flash Gordon on Saturday morning TV with Larry 'Buster' Crabbe, of course, maybe see Errol Flynn best the Sheriff of Nottingham, then ride my bike to the top of the hill and sit reading about the noble Lensmen.
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