The Best of E.E. “Doc” Smith
Classic Adventures in Space By One of SF’s Great Originals
LIST OF CONTENTS
Preface by Philip Harbottle 2
Foreword by Walter Gillings 3
To the Far Reaches of Space 7
Robot Nemesis 32
Pirates of Space 43
The Vortex Blaster 60
Tedric 73
Lord Tedric 85
Subspace Survivors 103
The Imperial Stars 126
Afterword: The Epic of Space by E E “Doc” Smith 159
Bibliography 163
PREFACE
When “The Skylark of Space” was published in AMAZING STORIES in 1928 it gave the science fiction fraternity
the road to the stars. It also had a profound effect on other writers, notably John W. Campbell, who took their cue
from Smith.
TO THE FAR REACHES OF SPACE, a complete – in itself excerpt from the famous novel, records this initial leap
beyond the solar system. Told with verve and gusto, the narrative admirably shows Smith’s panache in handling vast
distances and strange alien worlds.
As “The Skylark of Space” shattered the confines of the space story in 1928, so ROBOT NEMESIS widened the
frontiers of the robot story when it first appeared (under another title) in 1934. Robots in the early days of science
fiction were usually clanking monstrosities who threatened their scientist creators. In this story Smith’s illimitable
imagination postulates a future wherein robots actually threaten to supplant mankind as the Lords of Creation.
Smith’s writing was never better than in the opening chapters of “”Triplanetary.” The complex structure of the pirate
base, a self-contained world in space, comes across with absolute credibility in the complete segment PIRATES
OF SPACE.
THE VORTEX BLASTER is definitive Smith, with its skillful intermingling of super-science and human interest.
The tragedy of Neal Cloud immediately grips the reader who easily identifies with Cloud in his fight against the
atomic horror responsible for his wife’s death.
In TEDRIC (1953) and LORD TEDRIC (1954), the reader is offered two lost gems which were originally pub-
lished in two of the rarest magazines in the field. Here one finds a fascinating blend of sword and sorcery and the
paradoxes of time travel, in the inimitable Smith style.
SUBSPACE SURVIVORS (1960) is a compelling novelette written in the modern tradition which marked Smith’s
triumphant return to the pages of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION after a thirteen year absence.
THE IMPERIAL STARS (1964) marks the high watermark of the final phase of Smith’s work. Whilst presented in
the slick, modern manner, it evokes the old magic of the Lensman series, with its galactic agents and star-spanning
intrigues. Intended as the first in a new series, later parts are said to exist in outline and may yet appear in some
form or other.
That is something to look forward to. Meanwhile you will find encompassed here the best of “Doc” Smith, eight
stories spanning an incredible five decades of science fiction history, by its best-loved pioneer.
Philip Harbottle, Wellsend, March 1975.
FOREWORD EDWARD E SMITH, PhD-CIVILIZATION’S HISTORIAN
Dekanore VI – A non-Tellurian planet inhabited by immensely ugly, spider-like beings, to whom Kimball Kinnison
was a shuddersome sight.
Adams of Procia – Commander-in-chief of Procyon’s armed forces; appointed general of Procyon by Roderick
Kinnison in the formation of the Galactic Patrol.
Croleo’s – A bar in the city of Ardith, on Radelix.
Slasher-worm – A Venerian creature which Herkimer threatened to use in torturing Jill Samms.
Thought-cap – The Jelm version of the thought-transfer helmet, or mechanical educator.
“Tail high, brother!” – The Vegian war-cry.
Devoted followers of those doughty heroes Richard Seaton, Kimball Kinnison and Neal Cloud will be able to make
good sense of these items from The Universes of E E Smith. They are typical of hundreds of entries in a unique
concordance to the eleven best-known novels of the late Edward Elmer Smith, Ph.D., which took two of his
disciples four years to compile. Its 270 pages from a complete reader’s guide to the complex webwork of
imaginary worlds and fantastic creations which earned the beloved “Doc” the title of “Historian of Civilization;” a
fitting memorial to one of the most inventive and influential writers to leave his mark on the popular literature of
science fiction.
Few others have made such an impact as he did at his first appearance in 1928, or continued so long to delight a
host of fans most of whom remained faithful even after his work had been dismissed as artless and juvenile. That
his first novel, The Skylark of Space, opened the door for the most extravagant excursions of super-science into
the remotest regions, and led the way for “space opera,” has been held against him in recent years where once it was
deemed a vital spur to the development of the genre. Yet, despite their undoubted limitations on the literary level,
the sweeping “epics” of “Skylark” Smith are still relished for their sheer exuberance.
The pioneering Amazing Stories magazine was in its third year when it serialized what it described as “one of the
outstanding scientifiction stories of the decade,” predicting that it would be “referred to by fans for years to come.”
The prediction proved perfectly valid. Nearly twenty years later, when the first of several enterprising specialist
book publishers began to resurrect “classic” tales from the magazines, the much-vaunted Skylark was an obvious
choice and sold out so quickly that the firm had to be reorganized to cope with the demand. Since 1946 it has seen
publication in several forms in many parts of the world, and it is still being reprinted, like the other “Doe” Smith
serials that followed at intervals through the years. Yet, before Amazing Stories accepted it, The Skylark had
gathered what the author cheerfully claimed was “probably the most complete collection of rejection slips in
America.” In a pleasant correspondence which we conducted in the late 1940s, he told me bow be had begun to
write the story after starting out as a chemical engineer in 1914 and did not complete it until 1920. For two years
Mrs. Lee Hawkins Garby, the wife of an old classmate, helped him with the romantic interest that readers found so
treacly but which hardly interfered with the high-geared action. But she didn’t have the staying power of the
determined Smith, who by the time he was 25 had held down a dozen different jobs from millband and stevedore to
street-car conductor. Born 1890 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, E. E. Smith was raised on a riverside homestead in
northern Idaho, where he worked as a lumberjack until his eldest brother and sister helped him get to the university.
By 1915 he was earning enough as a food chemist with the U.S. Bureau of Standards to marry a girl from Idaho and
settle down in Washington, D.C., where his wife went to work as a stenographer to enable him to get his Ph.D. This
is why the book version of The Skylark of Space is dedicated “To Jeannie” -though Mrs. Garby got her name in the
by-line-and her share of the 125 dollars he was paid for the magazine serial.
In spite of the college-boy dialogue and the melodramatic exchanges between heroic Dick Seaton and his
scheming rival “Blackie” DuQuesne, Amazing Stories readers, whose ranks I had recently joined, clamored for a
sequel. So, in Skylark Three, which followed in 1930, Smith took his atom-powered voyagers out again to the
rescue of the people of the Green System who faced annihilation by the marauding Fenachrone. This “tale of the
galactic cruise which ushered in universal civilization” presented a stupendous panorama of alien life-forms, mile-
long spaceships, traveling faster than light, devastating ray weapons, and frightful battles in the void ending in
inevitable triumph for the visiting Earthmen.
To keep him in tow, Amazing paid Smith more generously for this three-part serial, to which he wrote an epilogue
suggesting that his readers had heard the last of the all-conquering Dick and his musical sweetheart. By way of a
change. in 1931 be came up with another story, Spacehounds of IPC, which confined his new heroes of the
Inter-Planetary Corporation to the solar system. This, he insisted, was true scientific fiction, not pseudo-science,
and he planned to make it the first of a series-but it wasn’t what his fans wanted. “We want Smith to write stories of
scope and range. We want more Skylarks?” was the cry. And Amazing’s 80-year-old editor Dr. T. O’Conor Sloane,
who still had seven years to go before he retired, pointed a lean finger out towards the Milky Way.
But whatever the critics said about the results of his labors, Smith was never a “hack” writer. He planned his stories
with care, and took his time writing them. Invariably he would plot a graph to help him in developing his plot, the
reactions of his characters to the situations they encountered and the background atmosphere he weaved into the
story. “Not that I ever managed to stick to one of them all the way,” he confessed. “Somehow my characters always
break loose and take the yarn out of my hands which is a good thing, I guess.”