E. E. Smith
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
E. E. Smith, also Edward Elmer Smith, Ph.D., E.E. "Doc" Smith, Doc Smith, "Skylark" Smith, and (to family) Ted (May 2, 1890 - August 31, 1965) was a science fiction author who wrote the Lensman series and the Skylark series, among others.
Biography
Edward Elmer Smith was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin on May 2, 1890 to Fred Jay Smith and Caroline Mills Smith, both staunch Presbyterians of British ancestry.[1] His mother was a teacher; his father was a sailor, born in England; they moved to Spokane, Washington that winter.[2] In 1902 the family moved to Seneaquoteen[3], near the Pend d'Oreille River, in northern Idaho.[4] He had four siblings, three of whom were named Daniel, Rachel, and Mary Elizabeth. He worked primarily as a manual laborer until he injured his wrist, at the age of 19, while escaping from a fire.
He attended the University of Idaho, where he is installed in the Alumni Hall of Fame; he entered its prep school in 1907, and graduated with two degrees in Chemical Engineering in 1914. He was president of the Chemistry Club, the Chess Club, and the Mandolin and Guitar Club, and captain of the Drill and Rifle Team; he also sang the bass lead in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.[5]
On October 5, 1915 he married Jeanne Craig MacDougall, the sister of his college roommate, Allan Scott MacDougal.[6] (Her sister was named Clarissa MacLean MacDougall; the heroine of the Lensman novels would later be named Clarissa MacDougall.) Jeanne MacDougall was born in Glasgow, Scotland; her parents were Donald Scott MacDougall, a violinist, and Jessica Craig MacLean. Her father had moved to Boise, Idaho when the children were young, and later sent for his family; he died while they were en route. Her mother worked at, and later owned, a boarding house on Ridenbaugh Street.
The Smiths had three children, Roderick N., born c. 1918 (a design engineer at Lockheed Aircraft); Verna Jean (later Verna Smith Trestrail), born c. 1920, his literary executor until her death in 1994 (her son Kim Trestrail is now the executor[7]); and Clarissa M., born c. 1921.[8]
After graduating from college, he worked as a junior civil service chemist for the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., working on standards for butter and oysters.[9] He apparently served as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Cavalry in World War I, but in what capacity is not known.[10] One evening in 1915, while the Smiths were visiting their neighbors in the Seaton Place Apartments, Dr. Carl and Lee Hawkins Garby, Mrs. Garby suggested that Dr. Smith write a story set in outer space. Smith said that he would do so if Mrs. Garby would handle the love interest. The two had completed about a third of The Skylark of Space by the end of 1916. The Smiths were the basis for the Seatons in the novel, and the Cranes were drawn from the Garbys.[11]
Smith received a master's degree in Chemistry from George Washington University in 1917, studying under Charles E. Munroe, [12] and a doctorate in Chemical Engineering[13] in 1918.[14]
After World War I he worked on doughnut mixes as chief chemist for F.W. Stock & Sons of Hillsdale, Michigan. In January 1936 he took a job, for salary plus profit-sharing, as a food technologist (a "cereal" chemist) at the Dawn Doughnut Company of Jackson, Michigan. This initially entailed almost a year's worth of eighteen-hour days and seven-day workweeks. Once the new firm was profitable, Dr. Smith wrote an eighty-page outline for what became the core of the Lensman novels.
He worked for the US Army between 1941 and 1945. Persistent but unconfirmed accounts maintain that Dr. Smith developed the first process for "sticking" powdered sugar on doughnuts. An extended segment in Triplanetary, one of his novels, suggests intimate familiarity with explosives and munitions manufacturing.
He also lived in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida. Some of his biography is captured in an essay by Robert A. Heinlein, which was reprinted in the collection Expanded Universe in 1980. There is a more detailed, although allegedly error-ridden, biography in Sam Moskowitz's Seekers of Tomorrow.
Robert A. Heinlein and Dr. Smith were friends. Heinlein reported that E.E. Smith perhaps took his "unrealistic" heroes from life. He reported that E.E. Smith was a large, blond, athletic, very intelligent, very gallant man, married to a remarkably beautiful, intelligent red-haired woman named MacDougal (thus perhaps the prototypes of 'Kimball Kinnison' and 'Clarissa MacDougal'). In one of Heinlein's books, he reports that he began to suspect Smith might be a sort of "superman" when he asked Dr. Smith for help in purchasing a car. Smith tested the car by driving it on a back road at illegally high speeds with their heads pressed tightly against the roof columns to listen for chassis squeaks by bone conduction?-a process apparently improvised on the spot.
Critical opinion
His novels are generally considered to be the original space operas and offer almost non-stop action. However they are, to a fair extent, still "true" science fiction, in that they use the extrapolation of known science and, often, the extrapolation of existing and historic social and political patterns of the early to mid-twentieth century. Smith himself expressed a preference for inventing fictional technologies that were not strictly impossible (so far as the science of the day was aware) but highly unlikely: "the more unlikely the better" was his phrase.
The Lensman novels were particularly interesting for their imaginative use of extra-terrestrial, non-human characters as major heros, another science fiction "first."
In recent years many critics have characterized his writings as cliché-ridden, or as using tired old themes. Dr. Smith, however, invented many of these themes. It is his imitators who made them tired old cliches. They were often totally new when he wrote them. With a little tolerance and imagination, a sense of wonder is easy to recapture, because Smith had it when he was writing his work. His excitement and enthusiasm shine through his writing and make his books well worth reading despite their age and their obvious literary flaws.
Cultural references
Vortex Blasters (a.k.a. Masters of the Vortex) is set in the same universe as the Lensman novels. It is an extension to the main storyline which takes place between Second Stage Lensman and Children of the Lens, and introduces a different type of psionics from that used by the Lensmen. Spacehounds of IPC is not a part of the series, despite occasional erroneous statements to the contrary.
Robert A. Heinlein reported that Doc had planned a seventh Lensman novel, set after the events described in Children of the Lens, which was unpublishable at that time (the early 1960s). Careful searches by people who knew Doc well (including Frederik Pohl, Doc's editor, and Verna Smith Trestrail, Doc's daughter) have failed to locate any material related to such a story. Doc apparently never wrote any of it down. Doc told Heinlein that the new novel proceeded inexorably from unresolved matters in Children, a statement easily supported by a careful reading of Children.
On 14 July 1965, barely a month before his death, E. E. Smith gave written permission to William B. Ellern to continue the Lensman series, which led to the publishing of New Lensman in 1976. Smith's long-time friend, Dave Kyle, wrote three authorized added novels in the Lensman series that provided background about the major non-human Lensmen.
Randall Garrett wrote a parody entitled Backstage Lensman which Dr. Smith reportedly enjoyed. Harry Harrison also parodied Smith's work in the novel, Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers.
Steve 'Slug' Russell wrote the original computer game Spacewar inspired by the space battles from the Lensman series.
The GURPS role-playing game includes a worldbook based on the Lensman series.
There is a Japanese Lensman anime, but it is more an imitation of Star Wars than a translation of the Lensman novels. Aficionados of Dr. Smith's writing prefer not to speak of it.
In his biography, George Lucas reveals that the Lensman novels were a major influence on his youth, completing the tie from the books to modern popular culture through Star Wars.
Scientific references
As well as influencing the course of popular culture, Smith was also a huge influence on modern warfare. His books were widely read by scientists and engineers from the 1930s until the 1970s. Ideas that arguably entered the military-scientific complex from Smith's work included SDI (Triplanetary), stealth (Gray Lensman) and OODA-loops/C3 based warfare and the AWACS (Gray Lensman). One underlying theme of the novels was the difficulty in maintaining military secrecy?-as advanced capabilities are revealed, the opposing side can often duplicate them.
An influence that is inarguable was described in a letter to Doc from John W. Campbell (the editor of Astounding magazine, where much of the Lensman series was originally published). In it, Campbell relayed Admiral Chester Nimitz's acknowledgment that he had used Smith's ideas for displaying the battlespace situation (called the "tank" in the stories) in the design of the United States Navy's ships' Combat Information Centers. "Your entire set-up was taken specifically, directly, and consciously from the Directrix in your story. Here you reached the situation the Navy found itself in ?- more communication channels than integration techniques to handle them. In your writing you proposed precisely such an integrating technique and proved how advantageous it could be."[15]
The beginning of the story the Skylark of Space describes in relative detail the protagonists research into separation of platinum group residues, subsequent experiments involving electrolysis and the discovery of a process evocative of cold fusion (over 50 years before Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann). He describes a nuclear process yielding large amounts of energy and producing only negligible radioactive waste?-which then goes on to form the basis of the adventures in the Skylark books. Smith's general description of the process of discovery is highly evocative of Röntgen's descriptions of his discovery of the X-ray.
Another theme of the Skylark novels involves precursors of modern information technology. The humanoid aliens encountered in the first novel have developed a primitive technology called the "mechanical educator," which allows direct conversion of brain waves into intelligible thought for transmission to others or for electrical storage. By the third novel in the series, Skylark of Valeron, this technology has grown into an "Electronic Brain" which is capable of computation on all "bands" of energy?-electromagnetism, gravity, and "tachyonic" energy and radiation bands included. This is itself derived from a discussion of reductionist atomic theory in the second novel, Skylark Three, which is evocative of modern quark and sub-quark theories of elementary particle physics.
In his later non-series novels, Galaxy Primes, Subspace Explorers, and Subspace Encounter, E. E. Smith explores themes of telepathy and other mental abilities collectively called "psionics," and of the conflict between libertarian and dictatorial influences in the colonization of other planets.
Literary influences
In his essay "The Epic of Space," Dr. Smith listed (by last name only) authors he enjoyed reading: John W. Campbell, L. Sprague de Camp, Robert A. Heinlein, Murray Leinster, H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt (specifically The Ship of Ishtar, The Moon Pool, The Snake Mother, and Dwellers in the Mirage, as well as the character John Kenton), C.L. Moore (specifically Jirel of Joiry), Roman Frederick Starzl, John Taine, A.E. van Vogt, Stanley G. Weinbaum (specifically Trweel), and Jack Williamson. In a passage on his preparation for writing the Lensman novels, he notes that Canstantinescu's "War of the Universes" was not a masterpiece, but says that Starzl and Williamson were masters; this suggests that Starzl's Interplanetary Flying Patrol may have been an influence on Dr. Smith's Triplanetary Patrol, later the Galactic Patrol. He also complains about loose ends at the end of one of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels. Dr. Smith acknowledges the help of the Galactic Roamers fan club, plus E. Everett Evans, Ed Counts, an unnamed aeronautical engineer, Dr. James Enright, and Dr. Richard W. Dodson. Dr. Smith's daughter Verna lists the following authors as visitors to the Smith household in her youth: Lloyd Eshbach, Robert Heinlein, Dave Kyle, Bob Tucker, Jack Williamson, Fred Pohl, A. Merritt, and the Galactic Roamers. Dr. Smith cites Bigelow's Theoretical Chemistry-Fundamentals as a justification for the possibility of the intertialess drive. There is also an extended reference to Rudyard Kipling's "Ballad of Boh Da Thon" in Gray Lensman.
Sam Moskowitz's biographical essay on Dr. Smith in Seekers of Tomorrow states that he regularly read Argosy magazine, and everything by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Moskowitz also notes that Dr. Smith's "reading enthusiasms included poetry, philosophy, ancient and medieval history, and all of English literature." The influence of these is not readily apparent, except in the Roman section of Triplanetary, and in the impeccable but convoluted grammar of Dr. Smith's narration. Some influence of nineteenth century philosophy of language may be detectable in the account in Galactic Patrol of the Lens of Arisia as a universal translator, which is reminiscent of Frege's strong realism about Sinn, i.e., thought or sense.
Both Moskowitz and Smith's daughter Verna Smith Trestrail report that Dr. Smith had a troubled relationship with John Campbell, the editor of Astounding. It is noteworthy that Dr. Smith's most successful works were published under Campbell, but the degree of influence is uncertain. The original outline for the Lensman series had been accepted by F. Orlin Tremaine,[16] and Dr. Smith angered Campbell by showing loyalty to Tremaine at his new magazine, Comet, when he sold him "The Vortex Blaster" in 1941.[17] Campbell's announcement of Children of the Lens, in 1947, was less than enthusiastic,[18] and Campbell bought little from Smith thereafter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Smith
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