This e-book of TRIPLANETARY, the best-formatted Lensman e-title presently available, is not the best place to begin reading "Doc" Smith.
To begin with, E. E. "Doc" Smith, Ph.D. was supremely important in the early (ie.: pre-Heinlein) days of science fiction. He had the style, the imagination, to make any science fiction magazine in which his novels were serialized the #1 magazine in the field.. Those were the crude early days of sf, and Smith's prose was of his time, not ours. The qualities needed to sell to the sf pulp magazines then are not the qualities needed to sell bestselling hardcover sf today.
That said, some of Smith's work is better than others. His earliest series, the Skylark novels, suffers a bit from runaway imagination. Smith tried to rein himself in with a solar-system-set novel, "Spacehounds of the IPC".. He went interstellar again with "Triplanetary", having come up with "the inertialless drive", a justification for travelling faster-than-light speeds that he was happier with than the ad-hoc hand-waving he'd used in the Skylark novels.
That done, he turned to something unprecedented. At a time when sf appeared primarily in magazines that disappeared as soon as they went off-sale, Smith carefully plotted a four-novel epic, the LENSMAN series. To fit the pulp conventions of the day, he pitched the epic (both to himself and to his editor) as an interstellar "cops and robbers" story. He worked out its universe, its characters, the heights and depths of its action, where the serial installment breaks would fall, and how to end each novel in such a way that frustrated readers did not feel they were being handed an unresolved cliff-hanger. These four novels (the first three, according to Smith, being "introductory material" to get readers up to speed to appreciate the "real story" as it unfolded in the fourth volume) are Smith's conceptual masterwork. (The climactic scene to the entire series, as it was finally published in 1948, was written before the final draft of the first novel was submitted for magazine publication in 1937.)
Although "Triplanetary" played no part in the Lensman's four-part structure, the "inertialless drive" was too sweet for Smith not to use it for the Lensman's inter-galactic travels. On the basis of the drive's common usage, Smith was urged to incorporate "Triplanetary" into the Lensman universe. As fan-founded publishers arose in the late 1940s to create hardcover editions of gone-but-not-forgotten magazine sf, Smith rewrote "Triplanetary", adding "introductory material" regarding the early history of the good/evil conflict of the Lensman universe before segueing into "Triplanetary" proper, now seasoned with added Lensman references. Simultaneously, Smith incorporated "Triplanetary" references into the magazine serialization of the fourth as-originally-planned Lensman novel.
This edition of TRIPLANETARY is the Lensman-rewritten version. (Many "Triplanetary" editions found on line are of the original 1934 non-Lensman magazine serial.) It is really best read after reading the original four-part series of GALACTIC PATROL, GRAY LENSMAN, SECOND-STAGE LENSMEN, and CHILDREN OF THE LENS. After all four magazine serials and the rewritten TRIPLANETARY appeared, Smith wrote a brand new novel, FIRST LENSMAN, to bridge to gap between TRIPLANETARY and his four original Lensman novels. These two books are best read as the addenda they are.
Amazon offers all the other Lensman novels. Most use the original 1940s/50s Fantasy Press hardcover art, but not their interior art. Their formatting is -um- inelegant. (You will find other, less kind, words used in several of their Amazon reviews.) I tried samples of all five, in hopes they would duplicate the Fantasy Press editions, and never bought them. Wish they were all formatted as well as this TRIPLANETARY.
[While I'm wishing, I would like someday that e-readers would be able to experience the original Wesso, Schneeman, and Rogers magazine illustrations for Smith's four as-conceived Lensman novels. Myself, I have the magazines, the hardcovers, the 1960s paperbacks, and the Reed-McColm-read audiobooks. When better-formatted e-books appear, I'll buy 'em.]
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James Bowman
A Superb Space Opera, Great Alien races, great characters and a great story
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 26, 2015Verified Purchase
F. Patel
Lensman series.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 29, 2015Verified Purchase
Malcolm L.
Be Warned - Kindle edition is incomplete. Very Disappointed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 30, 2015Verified Purchase
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This is a facsimily of the book.
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93 original pages missing
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