Customer Reviews

Lord Tedric -3: Black Knight of the Iron Sphere

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A good read!

Doc Smith is the grandfather of the classic space opera. His vision and creativity are paralled by the likes of Heinlen, Silverberg and Dick. Most of his work was done in the 20's and 30's which makes it astonishing.

One thing I have never been able to understand is how George Lucas got away with stealing so many Star Wars ideas from The Black Knight of the Iron Sphere. Even my wife, a die hard SW fan, admits that this book is obviously the source work for SW.

Nevertheless it is painted, like all Doc Smith books, in simple colours returning you to simplicity of good vs evil allowing you to cheer for your retiring hero Lord Tedric.

Once you start on Doc Smith you will be hooked. Strongly suggest you look at the Skylark series for more heros and villans painted across the canvases of multiple galaxies. From there the grandfather of science fiction will drag you to the Lensman Series, still for my money the most complete science fiction saga ever written.

Star Wars was released four years before this book was published. George Lucas did borrow much from old space operas, but this book was not among them.

Also note that Gordon Eklund based the Tedric series on a character that Doc Smith had created in 1953, but that Smith played no role in writing Eklund's books, the first of which appeared some 13 years after Smith died.