Pulp Review: The Skylark of Space

Star Wars casts a long shadow across science fiction and fantasy. For most people in living memory, it is THE example of the power of Space Opera on audiences. But George Lucas stands on the shoulders of another giant: Alex Raymond, the creator of Flash Gordon, and Raymond stands on the biggest shoulders in all of Space Opera, a humble food engineer specializing in donut mixes from Sheboygan, Michigan, named Edward Elmer “Doc” Smith (1890-1965).

Living in Washington DC after graduating college in 1914 with two chemical engineering degrees, he began writing what would become the very first Space Opera story in 1915, initially co-writing it with Lee Hawkins Garby, the wife of one of his college friends, who agreed to help write some of the romance plot. Working on-and-off on it while he pursued his doctorate, he would finish The Skylark of Space in 1920. After submitting it to various publications for eight years, editor Hugo Gernsback eventually bought the story and began serializing it in the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories. It was a success, which would spawn three sequels and a hardcover edition (that was significantly edited from the serial) being published in1946.

The Skylark of Space begins innocently enough as an example of the older Victorian “Edisonade” story, where a brilliant and brave young inventor uses his discovery to save the day. Richard “Dick” Seaton is the heroic inventor in question, and on the very first page he discovers that a newly discovered metal (named X), when electrolyzed with copper, releases tremendous energy, which can either be explosive or propulsive. Seaton, along with his best friend Martin Crane (who is a less brilliant scientist, but has more money and business sense) and Seaton's fiance Dorothy Vaneman, experiment with what they can do with the metal, first building a flight harness, and then a spaceship.

Catching wind of them is Marc “Blackie” DuQuesne, a ruthless, but equally brilliant scientific mind in the employ of the sinister World Steel Corporation, a gigantic globalist company infamous for criminal activity that can never be proven in a court of law. DuQuesne steals a sample of X, which begins a quiet arms race that turns into a space race. DuQuesne ends up kidnapping Dorothy, and in the ensuing struggle, she kicks a lever and DuQuesne's prototype ship is launched into deep space.

Seaton and Crane immediately take off after in their own ship, the Skylark, and then it gets nuts.

Suffice it to say that there's another of DuQuesne's kidnapping victims, Margaret Spencer, that Crane gets to fall in love with, and a showdown on a Barsoom-like alien world where the Skylark is ramming through enemy airships like a giant pinball as the wild wonders of Space Opera take swashbuckling shape.

Solution X is pure bullshit, of course, but Smith's scientific background helps the verisimilitude immensely. The protagonists are all scientists or in relationships with scientists. They approach problems like scientists do, and conduct numerous trial-and-error experiments before finding solutions. It just so happens that sometimes the solution is gunning down a bunch of hostile aliens with a weird Darwinian religion that are trying to destroy your ship. Goes with the territory.

DuQuesne is a remarkable villain, and easily one of the best in the history of science fiction. Charismatic, darkly handsome, and brutally honest about his methods and aims, he is clearly a villain, but also a man of reason. He's the farthest thing from stupid, and completely willing to team up with his enemies in order to survive. Doctor Doom written at his best reflects more than a bit of Blackie DuQuesne.

Come to think of it, the “quartet of scientists exploring bizarre worlds” comes back in two major Jack Kirby co-creations, DC's The Challengers of the Unknown, and Marvel's The Fantastic Four. I have no idea what kind of influence Doc Smith might have had on Kirby, but the comics legend was around 11 years old when Skylark was first published, which puts him in the right era to be exposed to it. But that's just speculation.

Smith's real brilliance lies in escalation. The story consistently and satisfyingly ratchets up in tension and scale of conflict in a way where the characters are running for their lives from giant not-dinosaurs on a savage planet because they needed to dig up some X so they wouldn't run out of fuel, and it makes perfect sense why they're there.

“Escalation” is the word that applies to Doc Smith. The Skylark sequels grow in increasingly big directions. His other major series, Lensman, would go even bigger, to the point of weaponizing objects so large that Emperor Palpatine would blush.

But all of that would start here, in The Skylark of Space. Its important as an important work in the evolution of science fiction, but even more importantly, its damn good fun. 

Recommended.