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Book Name: Galactic Patrol
Author: E.E. “Doc” Smith
First Published: 1937
Edward Elmer Smith grew up in Spokane, Washington. His early work was
as a laborer until he injured his wrist at the age of 19. He would
later attend the University of Idaho and entered its prep school,
graduating with two degrees in Chemical Engineering by 1914. The
following year, he married Jeanne MacDougall, the sister of his college
roommate. They had three children together. It has been noted that the
two leads in his Lensman series, Clarissa MacDougall and Kimball
Kinnison looks very similar physically to Smith and his wife, although
he used her sister’s first name for the character.
Smith earned his master’s degree in chemistry from the George
Washington University and completed his PhD in chemical engineering with
an emphasis in food. His dissertation, The Effect of Bleaching with Oxides of Nitrogen upon the Baking Quality and Commercial Value of Wheat Flour, would help land him a job as chief chemist for F. W. Stock & Sons of Hillsdale, Michigan, working on doughnut mixes.
It was during this time when his ideas for space stories began to
come to him. He was urged to write them down by friends and the offer
of dialog help for the romantic scenes was given by the wife of one of
his former classmates. In time, this became the Skylark series. Skylark
was not a huge hit and Smith probably spent more on the postage to mail
in his stories than what he earned with them. However, Smith was
bitten by the writing bug and while he continued his career as a food
chemist, his ideas for space opera continued to fuel his creative side.
In the mid-1930s, Smith had been contemplating a new “space-police”
story. He reviewed cops-and-robbers stories for inspiration and wrote
an outline that would become the first four novels of the Lensman series, beginning with Galactic Patrol.
While he liked to use a loose outline to follow when he wrote, he
confessed that his “characters get away from me and do exactly as they
damn please.” Galactic Patrol was published in 1937 as a serial. Sales at Astounding, the magazine that published his story, soared and Galactic Patrol became a hit. Later, it was novelized in 1950 and remained in print for decades.
Smith would continue to work as a chemist until his professional
retirement in 1957. Then he was purely a science fiction writer,
traveling from Florida to Oregon in a travel trailer, writing his
stories and visiting science fiction conventions along the way until his
death in 1965.
The story of Galactic Patrol spans eons of time, starting
long before human begins have been on Earth and moving on into the far
future. It is about a war between two super-alien races. The Arisians,
who are a peaceful species native to our galaxy, and the Eddorians, a
warlike species from another dimension that wishes to invade. Each
species tries to influence the younger species of our galaxy, including
humans. The Eddorians are a force of evil, trying to promote chaos.
The Arisians promote peace and aid in the creation of an interplanetary
council and the Galactic Patrol, a combination of an interstellar
police force and military, with the duty to defend and preserve the
galactic civilization. In this force, the Lensmen were the elite of the
Galactic Patrol. The service was male dominated, with woman serving in
more subservient roles. Each lensman is given a jewel that imparts the
wearer a myriad of telepathic abilities. It is bonded to its owner,
killing any other person, and deteriorates after the death of its
recipient.
Galactic Patrol begins with the introduction of Kimball
Kinnison, a graduate Lensman. His first assignment is to capture a
pirate ship and get the specs for its new drive back to headquarters.
Kim is given a spaceship known as Brittania and a crew: Clarissa
MacDougall (nurse), Van Buskirk (Patrolman), and Worsel (alien) and they
set off on a grand adventure to infiltrate the Boskone pirate
syndicate. Before all is done, Kim will work as an inspector, an
undercover agent, a pirate hunter and act as the scout for a vast space
fleet.
As the action propels you forward in the grand space opera style, you
begin to realize that there is more to the jewel-like “lens” than meets
the eye. As Kim learns how the jewel works and explores its
properties, hints of the master game the Eddorians and the Arisians are
playing peek through his explorations.
Why read the Lensmen series? As a science fiction reader and writer,
I feel that it is important to go back and read the early works of our
genre. It helps us to understand the origins of what has shaped our
writing today. Plus, often times, the books are great reads even if
their cultural ideas are old-fashioned due to the time in which they
were written.
E.E. “Doc” Smith is known as the father of the space opera. Long
before Star Wars, Avatar and other stories, there were the Lensmen.
Threads from the concepts in these space stories run through much of
science fiction during the past decades. You will read nods to Doc
Smith in the books by Heinlein and it is said that the Lensmen were the
prototype Lucas used to fashion his Jedi Knights.
There is some confusion about where to start reading in the series.
The Lensmen series originally consisted of four core novels:
Galactic Patrol
Gray Lensman
Second Stage Lensman
Children of the Lens
These four novels build the story in a compelling fashion with a
proper climax at the end. Due to the success of the books, Smith’s
publisher asked for him to use previously published stories that were
unrelated to the lensmen and change them so that they would fit into the
Lensmen universe. These are:
Triplanetary (prequel 1)
First Lensman (prequel 2)
Masters of the Vortex (sequel)
The two prequels and sequel are not quite up to the quality of the
original four and should be read after the core four novels. Many claim
that First Lensman has enough moments to make it worthwhile to read, the
bets are off with Triplanetary and Masters of the Vortex.
Two authors were authorized to write further novels in the Lensman universe.
William B. Ellern wrote:
Moon Prospector
New Lensman
Triplanetary Agent (only in serial form)
David A. Kyle wrote:
The Lensman from Rigel
The Dragon Lensman
Z-Lensman
See
what I mean by confusion? Not only are the paperback books hard to
find, but the kindle versions are published in chronological order based
on the timeline of the novels, not in the order that they were written.
This is what kept me from reading E.E. “Doc” Smith, even though I had
seen references to the stories for many years by other authors, most
notably Robert A. Heinlein.
Start with the four core novels. If Galactic Patrol grabs
you, you’ll want to read all the others. Doc Smith himself considered
it his best novel and his one true science fiction story. Hold onto
your hat. You are in for a wild, but fun ride.