space opera on the grand scale, without any trace of self-mockery or self-doubt, (Triplanetary - E.E. Doc Smith)

Member Name: jdkane

Product:	Triplanetary - E.E. Doc Smith
Date:	19/03/01 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Imagination; Weelah. Dementedly hyperactive; A

Disadvantages: Science; Ultra high PSB factor; D

This is the first in internal order, but not in order of publication, in the Lensman series - superlatives a specialty. It does connect to Asimov; older reviewers than I have drawn the comparison. It's also been reissued by Ripping Stories Ltd. This is not fair reflection on either; the Lensman stories are of much higher quality - and I am aware of how ridiculous that sounds - than most of the execrable trash put out by Ripping. (I have an older, much battered and OJ - stained set of Grafton editions.)

This is something I doubt anyone would or could write today; space opera on the grand scale, without any trace of self-mockery or self-doubt, utterly serene in the integrity of it's delusion. I can't imagine what kind of state of mind you have to be in to write like this, but E.E. 'Doc' Smith did it more than once, which probably rules out - or points to the persistent use of - psychoactive drugs. Actually, I very much doubt that. Just some damned strange character traits.

It was turned into Manga by the japanese; although some facets of the series would fit- there are some spectacular space battles (unless someone can come up with an earlier reference, E.E. 'Doc' Smith has to stand as the inventor of the dirigible planet) and much strange mental power - I have a very hard time believing that they got the point. It's so terrifically american - specifically, America of the immediate postwar years, on top of the world, secure, before Vietnam. Also desperately sexist, incidentally. However.

It's a multi-parter; I think it was all published separately, in the pulps, in the same manner as Foundation - although later; the third in internal sequence, Galactic Patrol, is the first in order of writing, and predates Foundation by three years. It's about, on the largest scale, a struggle between good and evil- and now I have to misquote P. J. O'Rourke. "In order to get anything of value from [intellig
ence] one must shine the cold, hard light of stupidity on it. [stupidity], to be worthwhile, must be approached with all the intellectual capacity at one's command." This is appropriate, because, apart from it's not being that simple, I can't for the life of me decide whether the series is the work of a very intelligent man throwing his inhibitions out of the window and writing what his inner child wants to read or a crazed, pretentious pseud with no eye for behaviour or ear for the ideas of his fellow human.

There are elements of both; the overall plot of it- you can point to many occasions on which professional politicians have believed stupider and less complex things. When you try and stitch the inner lives of the characters together from their actions, they come out substantially more intelligent and better people to know than anyone in Vacuum Diagrams. One of these days I'll shut up about that book...or for that matter most of the characters in Foundation. Why are the bad guys evil? Because they're from a culture that could never slow down and find peace with itself; they had to fight to survive - and at the end, their choices were to try to dominate the galaxies or destroy each other in fratricidal boredom. Why are the good guys good? Ah...a much harder one to explain, that. Part altruism, part Panspermia, part wish to see if things really would turn out that way. You can imagine the human race doing the former, but probably not the latter. The setting implies a level of intellectual maturity the technical aspects of the writing utterly belie.

All of this, however, is general commentary. Triplanetary is the earliest, and actually possibly weakest, of the series. It is also the only one in which there are no Lensmen, not yet. It opens with the grand conflict, the Arisian-Eddorian clash at the very beginning- the Arisians are the noble, civilised lot - the concealment of themselves from the Eddorians by the Arisians,
to build a newer, more vital, more powerful civilisation to remove the Eddorians from existence, eventually. You know and I know that's going to be the humans, but nobody told the characters. It shifts onto Earth, the rise and fall of Atlantis - a couple of obvious and cheap twentieth-century references, and also violating Mary McCarthy's principle that you can't write about a cabinet meeting in fiction; and if Atlantis was like this, good riddance- one in the eye to the crystal freaks to suggest they nuked themselves out of existence, though. Don't worry, you could see it coming anyway. There is a planned breeding program, you see - another one, the damned things are everywhere - one constant male line, one intermittent, desiged to produce a perfect pair, who would do a great deal of the work against the Eddorians' minions and whose children would be the central director for the final battle. How this was supposed to happen with the many-sexed Palainians I don't know and am not sure I want to imagine. It follows the terran male line for the most part; the sequences in the world wars are disregardable, the WW3 bit - I love the klunktech of that Combat Rocket. I love it so much I want to steal it. (cf Zaphod Beeblebrox.) Also nuclear rocket kamikazes. The remainder, about Gharlane of Eddore's personal - and lunatically incompetent - effort to suppress terran civilisation and the Nevians' devastating entry as a third force, Gharlane's deflection, the Humans' short, sharp war with the Nevians - is as ridiculously over-the-top as you could possibly wish for. In this world, superweapons are designed on one day, manufactured the next, issued the third, and used on the fourth. Literally the case with the first human FTL cruiser. It may seem as if I'm skimping on the action here. This is hardly a blow-by-blow description. That's because I would be too embarrassed. You have to strip the chrome off to make it bearable. The amou
nt of superlatives he uses is fantastic- almost as bad, if not worse, than H. P. Lovecraft, who had brilliant nightmares but really should have been ghostwritten. His Chthulu may have been less terrifying than his misplaced subjunctives. The technology is actually rather good; physically impossible - or depending on your views of the nature of space, improbable in the extreme - but internally consistent and immense fun; Inertialess Drive has to be considered a good idea by anyone's standard. Characters are very, but - and a good point - not effortlessly heroic; the good guys win by sweating blood over it, and taking risks which do get many of the supporting cast killed. All on purpose, of course; the Arisians engineered the entire incident, and they are firm believers in the 'if you do the kid's homework for him he'll never learn anything' school. The Nevians are actually unusually sophisticated by the standards of alien civilisations of the day, and you could like Nerado if you put your mind to it. In the last analysis, it is a novel of far better ideas than execution.

Imagination; Weelah. Dementedly hyperactive; A
Science; Ultra high PSB factor; D
Scene- setting; Great extent, sound in concept, corners cut in places; B
Characterisation; Shoddy, overblown; C

Overall; Wildly exaggerated; good idea seed let down by hyperinflated writing; C+

Summary: