Customer Reviews

The Galaxy Primes

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

You didn't have anything else planned for the afternoon, right?

"Belle" Bellamy (green-haired super-babe) and Clee Garlock (super everything else) are the two people on Earth with the highest innate degree of that amazing psionic-thingie. With it, their minds can hurl them between star systems, detonate nuclear blasts, and do lots of other neat tricks. In their interstellar gadding, they discover other intelligent and psi-capable humans. In fact, those others are so human-like that they are reproductively compatible. And, since the Earthian guys are obviously such superior beings, offers to test that compatibility come often.

It's not all good times and spread-the-genes, though. Dozens of star systems harbor human life, and psionic Primes, all at nearly identical levels of development social (except that some have decidedly inferior tobacco). Unfortunately, they're not all as easy-going and altruistic as Earth's Primes. As a result, Earth's Primes need to rough them up in their easy-going and altruistic way, to unify them under the newly-designed Galaxian banner. The Galaxian inner council consists of one Prime pair from each of those dozens of planets, in Noah-like male/female couples. How do we know they're the finest of each star system? Well, for one thing, the ladies of those planets are super-babes, too. Not only are they as mighty of mind as their men, they are also mighty in their womanliness and eager to prove it by racing the others to a demonstration of fecundity.

This is a wonderful artifact of its time, as close to Buster Crabbe's "Flash Gordon" as it is to the current day or maybe closer. It has all that cowboy exuberance and technological optimism, with gender relations a bit past the neolithic. (He and she both seem to long for a little more of the caveman/cavegirl between them, but even Doc Smith smelled women's lib in the air.) Despite the cultural imperialism and shallow sterotyping, or maybe because of it, Smith brings us space opera at its very finest.

-- wiredweird

To the best of my knowledge over at least 50 years of reading SF&F, this is the only attempt to describe civilization(s) based upon the idea that the vast majority of the population are psionic. While this is classic space opera - the main characters are lost in space, fight invading aliens threatening the humanity of the worlds they are visiting, finally learn control of the mechanical psi-functioning spacecraft, and begin unifying the galaxy as a part of the United Galaxian Societies- it is also a subtle commentary on our civilization, especially the cold war. One notable idea is the statement "To the mature mind, there is no such thing as status. Each knows what he can do best and does it as a matter of course. Rank is not necessary."

You didn't have anything else planned for the afternoon, right?

"Belle" Bellamy (green-haired super-babe) and Clee Garlock (super everything else) are the two people on Earth with the highest innate degree of that amazing psionic-thingie. With it, their minds can hurl them between star systems, detonate nuclear blasts, and do lots of other neat tricks. In their interstellar gadding, they discover other intelligent and psi-capable humans. In fact, those others are so human-like that they are reproductively compatible. And, since the Earthian guys are obviously such superior beings, offers to test that compatibility come often.

It's not all good times and spread-the-genes, though. Dozens of star systems harbor human life, and psionic Primes, all at nearly identical levels of development social (except that some have decidedly inferior tobacco). Unfortunately, they're not all as easy-going and altruistic as Earth's Primes. As a result, Earth's Primes need to rough them up in their easy-going and altruistic way, to unify them under the newly-designed Galaxian banner. The Galaxian inner council consists of one Prime pair from each of those dozens of planets, in Noah-like male/female couples. How do we know they're the finest of each star system? Well, for one thing, the ladies of those planets are super-babes, too. Not only are they as mighty of mind as their men, they are also mighty in their womanliness and eager to prove it by racing the others to a demonstration of fecundity.

This is a wonderful artifact of its time, as close to Buster Crabbe's "Flash Gordon" as it is to the current day or maybe closer. It has all that cowboy exuberance and technological optimism, with gender relations a bit past the neolithic. (He and she both seem to long for a little more of the caveman/cavegirl between them, but even Doc Smith smelled women's lib in the air.) Despite the cultural imperialism and shallow sterotyping, or maybe because of it, Smith brings us space opera at its very finest.

//wiredweird

This is one of the best stories that E. E. "Doc" Smith had written. I always enjoy reading this story and look at it with new eyes each time I read it. It is engaging, thoughtful, well-written and fun to read. I will read it again and again.

I always felt when i read this as a teanager that there should be more to the story. I still loved it and a lot of E. E. Smith's works.

Edward E. Smith's Galaxy Primes is farcically bad, like a parody of later Heinlein. I recall enjoying elements of E.E. Smith's Lensman series, as well as his Skylark series, but this is a disaster that readers should avoid.

The two smartest and best-looking men, and the two smartest and best-looking women, all four of them super powerful psychics, go on a journey in the first star ship. Sounds like the set up for a great adventure tale, but it is not. For one thing, Smith spends a lot of time describing the boring relationships between crew members via stretches of dialogue that consist of boring arguments and bizarre compliments ("I think you are the greatest psychic in all the universe!") Even worse, every planet the ship goes to is an Earth-like planet inhabited by humans with a society almost identical to that of 20th century Earth, so Smith can engage in some very weak satire and boring utopianism. (For example, the protagonists disarm some totalitarian countries they encounter, using telekinesis to steal their missiles and warships so the democratic countries on the planet will be safe.) There are some hostile aliens and some fights, but the fights are absolutely lacking in tension because the protagonists' psychic powers make them invincible; with a glance they can generate explosions equivalent to nuclear bombs, but without the messy radiation.

Not recommended for anyone save Smith completists. I read the 1965 Ace paperback, number 27292, with the mediocre red painting on the cover. The cover is better than the book, however hard that may be to believe.

E. E. Doc Smith's Galaxy Primes are people with advanced mental abilities. In other words, they have psionic abilities, and the Primes are Psionic Primes.

The main group in this book do not quite get along as well as the fraternal types in the Galactic Patrol. Still fun though, space battles, mind blasting, all that good stuff.

The Primes went down, over what had been one of that world's largest cities. The air, the stratosphere, and all nearby space was full of battling vessels of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the tremendous globular spaceships of the invading Dilipics down to the tiny, one-man jet-fighters of the Arpalones.

The Dilipics were using projectile weapons only - ranging in size from heavy machine guns up to 75-millimetre quick-firing rifles. They were also launching thousands of guided missiles of fantastic speed and of tremendous explosive power.

Each defending Arpalone vessel, depending upon its type and class, carried from four up to a hundred burnished-metal reflectors some four feet in diameter, each with a small black device at its optical centre and each pouring out a tight beam of highly effective energy. Whenever one struck a Dilipic ship or plane everything in its path flared almost instantly into vapour and the beam glared incandescently.

The invading task-force was arranged hi a whirling, swirling, almost cylindrical cone, like a tornado. Each Dilipic unit seemed madly, suicidally determined that nothing would get through that furious wall to interfere with whatever it was that was coming down from space to the ground through the relatively quiet 'eye' of the pseudo-hurricane.

On the other hand, the Arpalones were madly, suicidally determined to break through that vortex wall. Group after group of jet-fighters came diving in. Occasionally, their combined blasts made enough of an opening for the centre fighter to get through. Once inside, the pilot stood his little stubby-winged craft squarely on her tail, opened his projectors to absolute maximum power and spread, and climbed straight up ...

i first read this over 40 years ago, it is a very easy and enjoyable read.
but pales when compared to the lensmen and skylark stories which are the true classics by this master writer