Seekers of Tomorrow (3 page)

Smith was angered at Sloane, not only for the reprimand but for unauthorized changes in the published story, so when Harry Bates, editor of Clayton's astounding stories, dan-gled the carrot of 2 cents a word on acceptance for first look at his next story, he agreed. A sequel to
The Spacehounds of IPC
was now impossible, since the new story must be offered to a competing magazine. Instead, Smith wrote
Triplanetary,
a novel of the unified worlds of Earth, Mars, and Venus attacked by an amphibian menace from a distant star. Though much of the action appeared to advance the plot but little, Smith's writing had improved over even
The Spacehounds of IPC
and he had once again ventured out into far places, so the story was great fun. Scientifically, it introduced the notion of the "inertialess" drive to attain speeds faster than light, which while not provable, cannot be disproved and therefore is considered the best device ever proposed to conquer the light-speed limit.

The problem here turned out to be with the market. By the time Smith submitted
Triplanetary
to astounding stories, that magazine had become a bimonthly and was paying on publication instead of acceptance. An announcement that the story was forthcoming appeared in its January, 1933, issue, and the cover illustration of the March, 1933, number (the last under the Clayton chain's ownership) was taken from a situation in
Triplanetary.
But the company was being dis-banded so the manuscript was returned to Smith.

Still not talking to amazing stories, he decided to give wonder stories a look at
Triplanetary.
To his humiliation, he not only received a rejection, but the editor, Charles D. Hornig, later
bragged
about it in an article titled
Stories We Reject
—in the science fiction fan magazine fantasy maga-zine (December, 1934-January, 1935). Now there was no alternative but to submit
Triplanetary
to amazing, by whom it was accepted and published in four parts beginning with the January, 1934, number; but Smith's rates were ignominiously dropped to a half-cent a word.

Further to embitter his cup of hemlock, shortly after the sale to amazing, Smith received a letter from F. Orlin Tremaine, new editor of astounding stories, which had been bought and revived by Street & Smith Publications in the interim, offering a cent a word for
Triplanetary.
When Tremaine learned that it was already scheduled for amazing stories, he suggested a third story in the Skylark series. All winter of 1933-4, Smith worked away on
The Skylark of Valeron.
With each succeeding chapter, the concepts grew increasingly grandiose. In over his head, the story out of his control, Smith collected his first draft, typed on an assorted mass of pink, blue, and white sheets of paper, and sent it to Tremaine with a distraught note explaining that he couldn't handle the theme and would welcome any suggestions. Tremaine wrote to say that he had only one suggestion: that Smith cash the enclosed check for $850. What happened then makes one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of science-fiction magazine publishing. Tremaine, a crack editorial hand, veteran of top posts at smart set, true story, and the Clayton pulp chain, had been building a dramatic and exciting new team of authors. The Smith name was just what he needed. The full-page editorial in the June, 1934, astounding stories was titled "The Skylark."

"For six long years, readers of science fiction have talked about the 'Skylark' stories," it began. "They have been called the greatest science fiction ever written. There were two, you remember, both pointing toward a culminating story which never appeared. . . .
The Skylark of Valeron
starts in the August issue of astounding stories!"

Not only did the editorial cover a full page, but there was another three-quarter-page announcement of the virtues of
The Skylark of Valeron
in the same issue. The following month, he announced that a new type style would increase wordage by 25,000 so readers would get the "Skylark" in addition to everything else. He exhorted each reader to introduce one new friend to astounding. "We have kept faith with you," he told the readers, "now you keep faith with us."

They did. The circulation of astounding stories leaped 10,000 with the first installment of
The Skylark of
Valeron
(which ran in no less than seven parts) and the magazine showed a profit for the first time in its history. Before the novel was finished, both competitors, amazing and wonder, were financially on the ropes. Within a year, the two of them were skipping issues. Eventually they had to sell out. As much as he accomplished for himself, Tremaine accom-plished even more for Smith. Great as had been Smith's reputation after
Skylark Three,
it was incomparably greater now. But Smith was unable to take immediate advantage of the situation. Personal problems interfered with his writing. Though he was one of the few doughnut mix specialists in America (running a $5,000,000

annual doughnut mix busi-ness) he found after years of effort there was a low ceiling on his salary. He shifted to Dawn Doughnut, Jackson, Michi-gan, in January, 1936, on a salary plus share-of-the-profit arrangement. To get his new firm out of the red, he worked 18 hours a day, seven days a week, for almost a year, even designing new machinery to implement his plans. Once the company was over the hump, he sat down and wrote an 80-page outline for a 400,000-word novel divided into four segments:
Galactic
Patrol, The Grey Lensman, Second Stage Lensman,
and
Children of the Lens.
He actually wrote the last chapter of
Children of the Lens
after completing the rough draft of
Galactic Patrol.
This outline was submitted to Tre-maine, who told him to go ahead; he would buy the entire package.
Galactic Patrol
(astounding stories, September, 1937, to February, 1938) shares with Olaf Stapledon's
The Star Mak-er
(published earlier in 1937) the distinction of popularizing the "community of worlds" or galactic empire backdrop in science fiction. Edmond Hamilton had presented the idea eight years earlier, but Smith and Stapledon appear to have brought its potentialities into focus. The Galactic Patrol is an interstellar police force organized to combat the piracy and lawlessness threatening the struc-ture of galactic civilization. Behind the scenes, dimly seen, are prime movers. The Arisians, whose spores, projected through the galaxy, caused life to form in their image on many worlds, manipulate events for good. The Eddorians, creatures from another space continuum, in their lust for power are the cause of most ills. Good and evil are sharply defined and the battle is joined. While the allegory seems obvious, the device of the prime mover shows up in a slightly more sophisticated form in a number of A. E. van Vogt's novels, including
Slan, The Weapon Shops,
and
World
of A.
The idea of a prime mover is implied in references to a Second Foundation in Isaac Asimov's stories. These are but two of many authors who demonstrate that Smith has been influential on several levels, shaping not only the background but the plot structure of modern science fiction. Kimball Kinnison is the hero of the novels that would become known as the "Lensman" series. The lensmen are a group of men and women from many worlds, trained to mental and physical attainment so high as to mark them as the beginning of a superior race. Ultimately, through selec-tive mating, they will achieve a point of development where they can replace the Arisians as guardians of the galaxy. The lens itself is a communication device worn on the wrist of a lensman, so attuned to the personality of the wearer that it is virtually artificially alive. If worn by anyone but its owner it proves deadly.
The Grey Lensman
is probably best of the series, with
Galactic Patrol
running it a close second. When Fantasy Press decided to publish all of Smith's works in hard covers, he rewrote
Triplanetary,
adding six chapters in the process, to make it part of the series. Several of the new chapters, each of which is a complete story in itself, are quite as good as anything Smith ever did, but the interpolation of Arisian and Eddorian influences into the body of the original
Triplan-etary
removes much of the zest from the work. Writing
Triplanetary
into the series made necessary a bridge novel,
The First Lensman,
to link it with
Galactic Patrol. The First Lensman
was published in hardcover by Fantasy Press in 1950, never appearing in magazine form. It deals vividly with the events that required the organization of a Galactic Patrol and the training experiences of the first lensman.

It was partially because serialization of
The Grey Lensman
in astounding science-fiction began in October, 1939, that Edward E. Smith, was invited to be guest of honor at the Second World Science Fiction Convention, held in Chi-cago, September 1 and 2, 1940. Few of his audience listening to him deliver a speech on "What Does This Convention Mean?" in the style of the most active and rabid science-fiction fan, realized that Smith was in trouble. Because of the war, any company selling products containing sugar and flour needed no formulation specialist, least of all one who re-ceived a percentage of the profits. Smith found himself out of a job. He tried to do some writing, but couldn't seem to con-centrate. Meanwhile, he lived on his savings.

Then suddenly there was a special appeal. F. Orlin Tre-maine, who had left Street & Smith in 1938, was back editing a new science-fiction magazine titled comet. There were nearly a dozen competitors, most of them better financed. He was finding the going rough. Could Smith help him?

Smith readily agreed to do a series of novelettes construct-ed around the character Neal Cloud, a professional blaster of atomic vortices from power plants out of control, an extrapolation of the business of dynamiting blazing oil wells.
The Vortex Blaster,
first of the series, proved too little too late. It appeared in the July, 1941, issue of comet, the magazine's last. Circumstances would not collaborate in a repeat per-formance of the previous Tremaine-Smith success.

Politically, Smith's move had been ill-advised, astounding science-fiction was the leading market and John W. Camp-bell, Jr., its editor, was not happy about Smith's move, particularly since Tremaine was reportedly aiming to replace astounding in its position of leadership among science-fiction magazines. Campbell began to pay more attention to building up strong newcomers; the old-timers would have to take their chances.

Two other stories in "The Vortex Blaster" series,
Storm Cloud on Deka
and
The Vortex Blaster
Makes War
appeared in astounding stories in 1942. In 1960, the first three stories together with additional new material were combined into a book called
The Vortex Blasters.
Two separate edi-tions, one by Fantasy Press and one by Gnome Press, were published, but after a promising title story, the whole proved undistinguished.

Unable to find work immediately after Pearl Harbor, Smith applied to the army. At 51, he was overage, but they put him to work at the Kingsbury, Indiana, Ordnance Plant, working on explosives and shells. He was fired in 1944 for his refusal to pass shells he regarded as below standard. This phase of his life is described in complete detail in Chapter 5, "1941," of the book version of
Triplanetary.
He finished out the last year of the war as a metallurgist for Allis-Chalmers.

In 1945, he reentered the doughnut mix business with J. W. Allen, Chicago, remaining there until his retirement in 1957. Settled in his new job at the end of World War II, Smith began work on the final novel in his series,
The Children of the Lens.
It was a scarcely camouflaged secret that traits of Smith's own three children, Roderick, Verna Jean, and Clarissa, would appear in the physical and mental characteristics of the novel's protagonists. But, in truth, "Doc" Smith was a father image to thousands of the science-fiction readers and he regarded them with a benign paternalism that implied he regarded them all as his "children." Therefore, when the son of a well-to-do Boston family, Thomas P. Hadley, decided to take a flyer at book publishing and asked for
The Skylark of Space,
it is doubtful if Smith even bothered to ask for terms. Hadley knew nothing about book publishing or marketing, but he managed to get a seven-line notice of the book with the correct price and full address on the bottom of page 110 of the August, 1946, astounding science-fiction. A limited edition of 1,000 copies at $3 each sold out completely by mail order from that single mention!

Inundated with orders, Hadley didn't even begin to know how to go about handling them. In desperation he appealed to Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, a former science-fiction author who had some familiarity with publishing procedures. Esh-bach bailed him out and the book went into an elaborate illustrated second printing which cost almost as much per copy to print as it sold for. Years later the book would see still a third printing under the auspices of F.F.F. Publishers, Brooklyn, but in the meantime Eshbach threw up his hands at Hadley's economics and withdrew.

Borrowing Hadley's list of
The Skylark of Space
pur-chasers, he formed his own publishing company, Fantasy Press, leading off with Smith's
The Spacehounds of IPC
and eventually printing all ten remaining novels Smith had then written, among other titles. So popular were the Smith books that at one point Fantasy Press took the six volumes in the Lensman series, titled them
The History of Civilization,
bound them uniformly in half-morocco, boxed them, and sold the set for $30.

The spate of book publishing firms specializing exclusively in fantasy that sprang up after World War II may be at-tributed in no small measure to the success of the Smith titles. Scores of pulp-magazine classics were immortalized in hard covers under the imprint of such firms as Shasta Pub-lishers, The Fantasy Publishing Co., Inc., Gnome Press, The Avalon Co., and New Era Publishers, in addition to Arkham House, which had been established by August Derleth before the war. Most of them perished when the big trade publishers began to schedule science fiction seriously in the early 1950's. The excitement accompanying revision of novels for book publication, plus the implied prestige of hard covers, distract-ed Smith's attention from the fact that
Children of the Lens,
which began in the November, 1947, astounding science fiction, was being presented with something less than the customary fanfare. It was the first Smith novel that rated less than two covers in that magazine. The advance notice was a masterpiece of casualness: "The November cover will be a Rogers cover—he's working on it now. It's for ... something called . . . uhumm ... oh, yes! 'Children of the Lens' by an author we haven't heard from since he stopped making edible powders for doughnuts and started making the more active kind about December, 1941.