This is a pair of books I originally read many years ago, and having recently enjoyed Astor’s A Journey in Other Worlds I thought I would revisit these as examples of the next science fiction developmental stage on. They are separate books, not part of Smith’s two long Skylark and Lensman series, and although not strictly linked, they do share a common vision of Earth’s future. Note that Triplanetary is the 1934 serialised novel, not the 1948 novel of the same title which opens the Lensman series. Long ago I bought them in paperback for a pound or two: somewhat to my surprise they are now available in Kindle format through Project Gutenberg, along with several other of his books.

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In many ways the tales have dated terribly – the gender divide is rather extreme in these earlier books of Smith’s. Women can be intelligent, and have aspirations to be part of the overall solution, but at their best they only want to be loyal supporters rather than leaders. In his later writing this shifted a little, and capable women do start to make their presence felt more – though still in subordinate rather than true leadership positions. Smith also clearly felt strongly that mental ability and physical perfection went hand in hand, and so his heroes and heroines are staggeringly beautiful as well as supremely smart. Along with this, the dialogue between men and women is stilted, and is heavily laced with rather sickly compliments. In short, male-female relationships feel very artificial.

The ruling Earth population is essentially made up of white Americans. Perhaps it is revealing that he chooses the masculine Tellus for Earth rather than the feminine Terra (again, this changed in later writing). Politics is quite naive – the style of rule, a heavily militarised but benevolent government, is seen as self-evidently right, and is only opposed by criminals or the hopelessly selfish. There is no credible opposition party. Of course, Smith is not alone in this and many modern writers also cannot conceive of well-founded political opposition outside simple hostility.

Where Smith is wildly inclusive is with aliens – unlike say Asimov, whose career overlapped Smith’s, he has no qualms about having radically nonhuman aliens in positions of authority, and he takes great delight in conjecturing many kinds of life forms in addition to humanoid ones. Some are no longer so persuasive in the light of scientific progress, but the variety is refreshing.

Smith is hugely profligate of human and alien life, with whole cities often destroyed along with their occupants as a casual byproduct of battles between adversary spaceships. This is not praised or glorified, but seen as an inevitable consequence of technological war, easily forgotten when the peace treaty is drawn up. I suspect this is a motif built on his observations of the First World War, expanded many times over to accommodate new weaponry. By coincidence I saw the HG Wells film Things to Come (based on his story of similar name) a few days ago and this shares many common features.

Where the books still shine is in the fast pace of their plots. They always remind me of old western films migrated up into space. Idealised heroes and villains utter pithy stereotyped lines in improbable settings – but they do so with great energy and excitement, and it is easy to get caught up in the swing of the tales and emerge at the far end slightly breathless.

Well worth reading by those interested in tracing the development of science fiction through the years, or else anyone who wants a space-based yarn without needing believable dialogue, and who is not troubled by recent scientific findings. Since I have to give a star rating for some sites, 4* for the fun value.