Product Description

Illustrated by Morey

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127828 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780843959499
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
This is the first of E. E. "Doc" Smith's six Lensman books, and although it isn't as fast-paced as later Lensman novels, it sets the stage for what is perhaps the greatest space-opera saga ever told. Through a series of vignettes spanning millions of years, readers will learn how the titanic struggle between the good Arisians and the evil Eddorians first came to pass, and about how humanity was chosen (and bred) to assume the awesome power of the lens. A short foreword by science fiction scholar John Clute puts the entire series into perspective.

Review
HUGO Finalist for Best Science Fiction All-Time Series -- Science Fiction Digest

About the Author
Edward E. "Doc" Smith is known as the father of the genre, The Space Opera.

Customer Reviews

Rating the Cosmos Books; Reprint edition, not the work
The "Cosmos Books; Reprint edition" is not the same as any previous release I've owned. It opens with the Rodger the Space Private story and does not include any of the Arisia/Eddore series setup material. No Atlantis, no Rome, no WWI, II, or III.
Oddly the back cover suggests that all that material is included. Half the page count is some obscure Smith yarn called "Masters of Space".
Since I particularly like the early saga pieces, I am really ticked off.

Overture to a space opera
This starts the Lensman series. Rather, it sets the stage, since the Lens hasn't actually appeared yet - but wait.

It has all the swashbuckling silliness you've come to know and love. It's filled with lines like:
"[she was] thrilled this time to the depths of her being by the sheer manhood of him ..."
Yes, that was meant seriously. Not to worry, though, this 1940s adventure story thrills her in a G-rated kind of way. Heck, I think that manly man in charge has spent his whole life swashing so many buckles that I'm not sure he's ever been on a date.

But, no matter, we have super-spaceships outdoing each other by the day, it seems, in a madly inflationary cycle. We have grey-skinned bad guys with mysterious connections to the Evil 77th-level Adepts of North Polar Jupiter. We have the mysterious, ugly, and funny-smelling beings from a distant sun who, in their transgalactic hunt for iron, decide that the easiest place to get it is from the structural steel of Pittsburgh, and from the red blood of its citizens. Fair's fair, so Our Hero destroys one of their cities to the last man (or whatever), woman, and child, plus part of another population center with poison gas. In the end, it was brusque apologies all around - no hard feelings, y'know, a man (or snake-necked, four-eyed fellow with tentacles) has gotta do what a man (or SNFEFwT) has gotta do.

This was written closer to the era of Flash Gordon than to the current day, by about a 3:1 margin, so it can only read as quaintly archaic. Laws of physics come and go at convenience, and relations between men and women hover between the neolithic and chivalric. Reading these books is a wonderful alternative to reading anything to think about.

//wiredweird

Old School SF
This is one of the most energe6tic books I have read. Yes, it is pure "pulp fiction" in the non-Quentin Terantino sense of the word, but it was a powerful page turner. Every page was super-charged, and every chapter left you wanting more!

E. E. "Doc" Smith is one of the giants of SF, and one of it's greatest popularizers. He doesn't have the finesse that Asimov of Heinlein. He doesn't have the aura of humor of Niven. Doc's strength is his raw energy. This book is like watching Yoda's fight with Count Dooku at double-time. He overwhelms at times..

Another one of Doc's strength is his mixture of science and gadgets. You are immediate placed in a world of sub-ether communicators, atomic weapons, tractor beams, spacer ships, space armor, and all the other props associated with old school SF. I now know where Roddenberry and Lucas got many of their terms and gadgets.

This tale is layered, and you can actually smell the intrigue and forces control other forces and nothing is what it seems. "Wheels within wheels" and "plots within plots within plots." At times it can be over complex.

Sometimes the action runs too fast, and I find myself panting for the characters. I realize this is pulp fiction, but I wish there was a bit more character development. At times it is almost a melodrama, or a morality play.

After reading the first chapter of the first book, I bought the rest of the series. I am excited to finish the series. I wish I had listened to my grandpa and read these books earlier.