As science fiction advanced into the 1930s there were other editors, too, who wanted to get hold of his stories.
Competition had set in-but so had the Depression, and if it had not suffered a temporary setback in 1933, Astound-
ing Stories would have featured Triplanetary, the story which gave rise to the “Lensman” series. In any event, it
went to enliven four issues of Amazing in 1934. It was this story that introduced the concept of the “inertialess
drive” by which, it was assumed-since it could neither be proved nor disproved-spaceships might traverse the
impossible gulfs of Smith’s literary cosmos. When asked about the scientific probability of such a device, Smith
responded: “It is not probable at all, at least in any extrapolation of present-day science. But as far as I can
determine, it cannot be proved absolutely impossible and that is enough for me. In fact, the more improbable a
thing, the better I like it-so long as it cannot be demonstrated mathematically impossible. I got the idea of
inertialessness from a lecture given at the University of Michigan in 1912.”
So, this time, the eight-limbed amphibians of the far planet Nevia, who were greedy for iron rations, were properly
frustrated by Conway Costigan and his colleagues, and obliged to sign a Treaty of Eternal Peace. And thirteen years
later, to make a book of it, Smith wrote six new chapters to precede the Amazing story, barking back to the dawn of
creation, recalling the end of Atlantis and the fall of Rome, and drawing on his own experiences during two world
wars. All history is seen as a titanic struggle between two races of super-beings, the Arisians and the Eddorians,
who influence human-kind for good or ill as civilization advances to the era of the Triplanetary League.
When the book appeared in 1948, even Smith’s gentler critics had difficulty in digesting this turgid mixture of cos-
mic imagery and rip-roaring adventure. Nevertheless it was accepted as a useful prelude to the “Lensman”
saga-most of which had already run its course in the revived Astounding Stories. The missing link was First
Lensman, which Smith wrote specially for book publication in 1950 to bridge the gap between Triplanetary and
Galactic Patrol, first serialized in 1937-38. By that time Astounding readers had claimed “Doc” Smith for their
own. Prodded by editor F. Orlin Tremaine, he had produced a third “Skylark” story which the magazine presented
with a fanfare in 1934 and ran through seven issues. With the first installment of Skylark of Valeron the
magazine’s sales soared, and at the end the author had increased his fans by thousands. He had also put what seemed
to be an irreversible end to the luckless DuQuesne by reducing him to a capsule of pure intellect and flinging him
into the fourth dimension. But good villains die hard, and he was still immortal . . .
That Astounding was in its most expansive conceptual period at this time lent power to Smith’s imagination, and
thus Dick Seaton’s mental capacity, his new spaceship and his area of operations were all enlarged to maximum
proportions. After Valeron it seemed there was nothing left to explore, nor any more possible variations on the
familiar themes which had made Smith’s tales so popular. And he was still a part-time writer; he had business
problems to wrestle with. For seventeen years he had been employed as chief chemist with a Michigan firm
concerned with the specialist art of compounding doughnut mixes. In 1936 he moved to a new firm in which he had
a financial interest, and it left him little time for science fiction. Yet, within a year, Smith was busily plotting the
“Lensman” series, which began in Astounding at about the same time that Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker appeared,
which outdistanced Stapledon’s previous work Last and First Men.
To equate the beloved “pulp” writer Smith with the equally genial philosopher Stapledon might seem almost
profane; yet, though their methods and literary styles are poles apart, in the final analysis their works are
essentially similar, especially in the scope of their projection and their concern with the eternal struggle of good
and evil which, in Smith’s stories, is reduced to its simplest elements. The idea of an interstellar police force
protecting a community of worlds against piracy and insurrection was familiar in American science fiction when
Smith devised his Galactic Patrol. But he used it to better effect against a more elaborate background in which the
ancient Arisians, who had sown the seeds of life throughout the galaxy, enlisted the Lensmen in the struggle to
subdue the power-crazy rulers of Eddore, a planet in another space-time continuum.
The Lensmen and their ladies, selected from many worlds for their superior qualities, are so-called because they
carry a device enabling them to communicate with any form of sentient life their creator can dream up, and which
brings quick death to unauthorized users. Their leading heroes are First Lensman Virgil Samms, who extended the
Triplanetary League to embrace the entire solar system; Grey Lensman Kim Kinnison, whose exploits range over
two galaxies, and his mate Clarissa MacDougall, the redheaded nurse who made good as a Second Stage Lensman.
Not until many tyrants have been overthrown on as many planets are Kim and “Mac” able to get married and com-
plete the ages-long breeding program culminating in the five Children of the Lens, who are destined to succeed
the Arisians as the Guardians of Civilization.
In all, the “Lensman” series helped to fill out eighteen issues of Astounding over a ten-year period ending in 1948,
during which that exacting editor John W. Campbell held sway. In between times the number of science fiction
pulps had multiplied, but few of the newcomers survived the war years; the real boom came afterwards. One of the
casualties was Comet Stories, edited by Tremaine, for whom Smith agreed to write new series featuring “Storm”
Cloud, a nuclear physicist and spaceman whose job is to snuff out atomic power plants when they run wild like
oilwells. Only one story appeared before the magazine was extinguished in 1941, leaving Astonishing Stories to
feature two more before it too folded. Because of their loose connection with the “Lensman” tales, in 1960 the
three stories were combined in a book titled The Vortex Blaster, published here more recently as Masters of the
Vortex.
The war hit Smith hard, too. He found himself redundant and was forced to live on his savings until, at 51, he went
to work in an ordnance plant. Only when he was back in the cereals business in Chicago after the war did he essay
Children of the Lens-with an eye to his own three children and their offspring. “This,” he informed me, to settle
arguments between his fans over the proper sequence of these stories, “is the real Lensman story, to which the
other three are merely introductory material.” This led up to something he especially wanted to say about his
endings (and which he repeated elsewhere) : “It’s a darn hard job to write a book which is part of a series and yet
have it end clean, without a lot of loose ends dangling. Many authors-Edgar Rice Burroughs, for instance-didn’t try.
But I hate loose ends. Besides, suppose the author should die or something without ever finishing the damn thing?
In Galactic Patrol and Grey Lensman I could clean them up without too much trouble, but in Second Stage
Lensman it was practically impossible. I sweat blood . . .” And how he got over the impasse he told in his essay on
The Epic of Space.
In 1957 Smith retired to live in Florida-and continue his writing. For he could not ignore the current trends in
science fiction, which challenged his powers; especially after his earlier work, which he had spent ten years
revising for book publication, had been diminished by relentless critics. For example, P. Schuyler Miller, who,
reviewing Grey Lensman in 1952, lambasted his “incredible heroes, unbelievable weapons, insurmountable
obstacles, inconceivable science, omnipotent villains, and unimaginable catacylsms.” And Groff Conklin, in whom
it evoked “alternate waves of incredulous laughter and dull, acid boredom” because, he suspected, “science fiction
is growing up and leaving these primitive artifacts behind.” So, in The Galaxy Primes, Smith introduced the sort of
concepts that were being encouraged in Astounding, deriving from what editor Campbell termed `psi phenomena”:
Smith’s pseudo-living, telepathic Lens, he instanced, was “essentially a psi machine.” But Campbell didn’t care so
much for his new story, which Amazing found more acceptable and serialized in 1959 before it emerged, finally,
as a paperback.
Undaunted, Smith contrived to make his last appearance in Astounding the following year with Subspace
Survivors, a short story paving the way for a novel-which Campbell found wanting. It reached Smith’s devoted fans
in 1965 as a hardcover book entitled Subspace Explorers. And towards the end he found a more receptive market
for his work in the magazine Worlds of If, which in 1961-62 featured Masters of Space, a two-part tale which also