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Saga Journal Essay Liner Notes
Mar. 2nd, 2007 12:53 pmAs I've said before, I have the suspicion that just about everyone who knows this journal exists also knows just when Saga Journal is updated... but I still can't resist mentioning that my first essay for it is headlining this month's issue. It's the first time I've presented something not a message board or journal post to the world's appraisal since my MSTing days, and I suppose it's a little overwhelming to know that something I've written is going to be the main draw for Saga Journal this month... but it's also exciting.
I do wonder how much more I could have worked into the essay about the Lensman novels without overwhelming it, though. I had contemplated providing some biographical detail about E.E. "Doc" Smith, about how his nickname came from how he had a Ph.D. in chemistry and he wrote one of the first tales of interstellar travel, which appeared in a pulp magazine in the late 1920s... but then there are the suggestions that, by the time the Lensman novels started appearing, they were somehow "crowd-pleasers" a little (or a lot) behind whatever cutting edge American magazine science fiction had at the time. It would have been interesting to mention some of the non-human Lensmen, such as Worsel the Velantian, basically a flying dragon with numerous eyes on stalks, who starts off a depressed pessimist but becomes maniacally cheerful once Kimball Kinnison has destroyed his planet's enemies, or Nadreck the Palanian, who comes from a cryogenic planet at the outer edge of his solar system and is incredibly self-effacing but quite effective all the same. There could well have been some room for exploration of how the Lensman books are casually celebrated as "space opera" now, but at the time they were being written the unevolved term wasn't attached to them; instead it was more or less used to dismiss the cheesiest stories in the cheapest magazines... but, of course, I didn't quite get into quoting big chunks of their writing. They're not quite Harry Potter... I wouldn't quite call the narration "stiff" or "pretentious," and yet those words lurk in my mind. It's easier for me to describe most of the dialogue as "glib" and "slangy"; for example:
"Station Fifty-Eight, the Q-gun--hot!" Kinnison himself reported; then gave to the pilot the words which throughout the spaceways of the galaxy had come to mean complete readiness to face any emergency.
"Hot and tight, Hen--let's take 'em!"
To close on a less bizarre note (and to remind myself that the essay is meant to compare the novels with Star Wars), there was one moment that caught my attention. Kimball Kinnison is trying to look up information on an unknown planet in a galactic library. He tells the staff of young women, and they leap to work combing through their charmingly uncomputerised stacks and find the information he needs, glad to help a Lensman... Jocasta Nu, they're not.
I do wonder how much more I could have worked into the essay about the Lensman novels without overwhelming it, though. I had contemplated providing some biographical detail about E.E. "Doc" Smith, about how his nickname came from how he had a Ph.D. in chemistry and he wrote one of the first tales of interstellar travel, which appeared in a pulp magazine in the late 1920s... but then there are the suggestions that, by the time the Lensman novels started appearing, they were somehow "crowd-pleasers" a little (or a lot) behind whatever cutting edge American magazine science fiction had at the time. It would have been interesting to mention some of the non-human Lensmen, such as Worsel the Velantian, basically a flying dragon with numerous eyes on stalks, who starts off a depressed pessimist but becomes maniacally cheerful once Kimball Kinnison has destroyed his planet's enemies, or Nadreck the Palanian, who comes from a cryogenic planet at the outer edge of his solar system and is incredibly self-effacing but quite effective all the same. There could well have been some room for exploration of how the Lensman books are casually celebrated as "space opera" now, but at the time they were being written the unevolved term wasn't attached to them; instead it was more or less used to dismiss the cheesiest stories in the cheapest magazines... but, of course, I didn't quite get into quoting big chunks of their writing. They're not quite Harry Potter... I wouldn't quite call the narration "stiff" or "pretentious," and yet those words lurk in my mind. It's easier for me to describe most of the dialogue as "glib" and "slangy"; for example:
"Station Fifty-Eight, the Q-gun--hot!" Kinnison himself reported; then gave to the pilot the words which throughout the spaceways of the galaxy had come to mean complete readiness to face any emergency.
"Hot and tight, Hen--let's take 'em!"
To close on a less bizarre note (and to remind myself that the essay is meant to compare the novels with Star Wars), there was one moment that caught my attention. Kimball Kinnison is trying to look up information on an unknown planet in a galactic library. He tells the staff of young women, and they leap to work combing through their charmingly uncomputerised stacks and find the information he needs, glad to help a Lensman... Jocasta Nu, they're not.