Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

Its name? Skylark Five, of course.

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So far as I know, Doc Smith could not play a dulcimer (but it would not

surprise me to learn that he had been expert at it). Here are some of the skills I

know he possessed:

Chemist & chemical engineer-and anyone who thinks these two professions are

one and the same is neither a chemist nor an engineer. (My wife is a chemist and is

also an aeronautical engineer-but she is not a chemical engineer. All clear? No? See

me after class.)

Metallurgist-an arcane art at the Trojan Point of Black Magic and science.

Photographer-all metallurgists are expert photographers; the converse is not

necessarily true.

Lumberjack

Cereal chemist

Cook

Explosives chemist-research, test, & development

-product control

Blacksmith

Machinist (tool & diemaker grade)

Carpenter

Hardrock miner-see chapter 14 of FIRST LENSMAN, titled “Mining and

Disaster.” That chapter was written by a man who had been there. And it is a

refutation of the silly notion that science fiction does not require knowledge of

science. Did I hear someone say

that there is no science in that chapter? Just a trick vocabulary-trade argot-plus

description of some commonplace mechanical work- So? The science (several sciences!)

lies just below

the surface of the paper.. . and permeates every word. In some fields I could be

fooled, but not in this one. I’ve been in mining, off and on, for more than forty

years.

Or see SPACEHOUNDS OF IPC, chapters 3 & 4, pp. 40-80. . . and especially

p.52 of the Fantasy Press hardcover edition. Page 52 is almost purely

autobiographical in that it tells why the male lead, “Steve” Stevens, knows how to

fabricate from the wreckage at hand everything necessary to rescue Nadia and

himself. I once discussed with Doc these two chapters, in detail; he convinced me

that his hero character could do these things by convincing me that he, Edward E.

Smith, could do all of them. . . and, being myself an experienced mechanical

engineer, it was not possible for him to give me a “snow job.” (I think he lacked

the circuitry to give a “snow job” in any case; incorruptible honesty was Dr.

Smith’s prime attribute-with courage to match it.)

What else could he do? He could call square dances. Surely, almost anyone

can square-dance . . . but to become a caller takes longer and is much more

difficult. When and how he found time for this I do not know- but, since he did

everything about three times as fast as ordinary people, there is probably no

mystery.

Both Doc and his beautiful Jeannie were endlessly hospitable. I stayed with

them once when they had nine houseguests. They seemed to enjoy it.

But, above all, Doc Smith was the perfect, gallant knight, sans peur et sans

reproche.

And all of the above are reflected in his stories.

It is customary today among self-styled “literary critics” to sneer at Doc’s

space epics-plot, characterization, dialog, motivations, values, moral attitudes,

etc. “Hopelessly old-fashioned” is one of the milder disparagements.

As Al Smith used to say: “Let’s take a look at the record.”

Edward Elmer Smith was born in 1890, some forty years before the American

language started to fall to pieces-long, long before the idiot notion of “restricted

vocabulary” infected our schools, a half century before our language was corrupted

by the fallacy that popular usage defines grammatical correctness.

In consequence Dr. Smith made full use of his huge vocabulary, preferring

always the exact word over a more common but inexact word. He did not hesitate to

use complex sentences. His syntactical constructions show that he understood and

used with precision the conditional and the subjunctive modes as well as the

indicative. He did not split infinitives. The difference between “like” and “as” was

not a mystery to him. He limited barbarisms to quoted dialog used in

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characterization.

(“Oh, but that dialog!”) In each story Doc’s male lead character is a very

intelligent, highly educated, cheerful, emotional, enthusiastic, and genuinely

modest man who talks exactly like Doc Smith who was a very intelligent, highly

educated, cheerful, emotional, enthusiastic, and genuinely modest man.

In casual conversation Doc used a number of clichés . . . and his male lead