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Any type of rational analysis of these
novels would be forced to conclude that they just don’t work,
plain and simple. Smith’s setting is improbable, his plot is
riddled with clichés, and his characters are laughably drawn in
the extreme. When you learn for example that Richard Seaton is
the best physicist of his generation… and the best magician…
and the best gunman… Your willing suspension of disbelief
threatens to cry out and drop dead on the spot. These people
aren’t human!
Ah! There we go.
These characters aren’t human: They’re
demigods strutting across the cosmos. And you can either choose
to rebel at the sheer improbability of it all, or you can accept
Seaton for what he is and thrill at what he can accomplish.
Whether by chance or by design, Smith
embraces a mythic tone and tells an epic legend of the spaceways.
And, on that level, these are fun little books even by the
standards of today.
But they become particularly impressive if
you can cast your mind back to the time when they were written
and imagine reading them in the pulps of the 1920s. If you can
do that, then you get to watch as E.E. “Doc” Smith almost
single-handedly creates science fiction as we know it today. It
is not an exaggeration in the least for me to say that I cannot
recall the last science fiction novel I read which was not, in
some way, influenced by the ideas and concepts which Smith
introduces in the original Skylark novels. (At the very least
you have to give Smith justice and remember that he didn’t
write clichés; he created ideas of such enduring power that
they became clichés.)
Let’s talk a little about the individual
volumes:
SKYLARK OF SPACE is almost certainly the
least satisfying entry in the series. It’s a first novel, and
it shows a lot of the inconsistency which is typical for a first
novel. Perhaps the biggest problem, however, is that it seems to
take Smith a while to settle down into the mythic pace that
makes the series work. It’s one thing for Seaton the Demi-God
to accomplish three impossible things before breakfast; it’s
quite another for Seaton the Merely Human to do so.
What SKYLARK OF SPACE does have going for
it, however, is that it’s the first. Not just the first
Skylark novel, but the first space opera; and the first
interstellar voyage; and the first… Well, you get the idea. So
the degree to which you enjoy this novel will depend a lot on
how much of a thrill you can get out of reading a literary
revolution.
In any case, it’s with the second volume
– SKYLARK THREE – that this series really hits its stride:
The mythic quality of the series has found consistency;
Smith’s epic vision of intergalactic space opera has been
fully realized; and the plot is firing on full jets now. So even
if you try SKYLARK OF SPACE and find nothing more than a clunky
and out-dated piece of cliché, I’d still recommend
giving SKYLARK THREE a
chance to change your mind.
Once Smith has found his rhythm in SKYLARK
THREE, he brings it to a brilliant crescendo in SKYLARK OF
VALERON.
One of the great things about this series
is that Smith is never satisfied resting upon his laurels. With
every passing chapter he’s raising the stakes, throwing out
new ideas, and broadening his scope. The result is a
rollercoaster ride which stretches the imagination and leaves
you breathlessly turning the pages with anticipation.
SKYLARK DUQUESNE, written about three
decades after the blinding flash and deafening report of SKYLARK
OF VALERON, is a disappointment, however. The plot never quite
gels and the action is frequently kept on track only by
“virtue” of the author hooking it up to a locomotive and
informing the reader that, in point of fact, the whole
discordant mess will all tie together in the end. (Which it
does… sort of. Although only by virtue of a magical deus ex
machina. And I mean that literally.)
SKYLARK DUQUESNE’s sole saving grace is
that, once more, Smith conjures forth images of epic grandeur
and startling creativity at a breath-taking pace. But,
unfortunately, the foundation is lacking, and the result seems
hollow.
I think it also needs to be said that
SKYLARK DUQUESNE brought into sharp and painful relief a problem
that had been tickling at the back of my brain throughout the
entire Skylark series: Viewed from any impartial angle, the
heroes are genocidal fascists with a disquieting belief in the
Cult of the Youthful Genius as the Natural Rulers of
Civilization. The villains they oppose are distinguished only by
being even MORE genocidal and fascist in their ideology.
In bizarre contrast to this, the novels
also feature an equality of gender and skin color almost modern
in its sensibility and profoundly progressive for the 1920s and
‘30s. (The only thing which dates the treatment is that Smith,
quite rightly in my opinion, wasn’t willing to pretend that
such equality was a fact of life in 1920’s America.)
Fortunately, the fast-paced action of the
novels generally tends to minimize the genocidal and fascistic
tendencies of the main characters. And a charitable
interpretation would be that, in the situations they find
themselves in, the characters simply have no choice: Their only
salvation lies in decisions of an absolute and irrevocable kind.
But every so often I would find myself thinking about the
implications of what I was reading, and then I would be left
with the disquieting sensation that I was reading a novel about
brave Nazi super-scientists thwarting the tyrannies of Stalinist
Russia by blasting the entire Asian continent off the face of
the planet.
But I digress.
This was the first time I’ve read the
Skylark novels. It won’t be the last. When E.E. “Doc”
Smith is firing on all jets, reading his novels is just plain
fun. And with SKYLARK THREE and SKYLARK OF VALERON, those jets
are on full-blast. In fact, I had such a blast reading these
novels that I’m going to pick up Smith’s Lensmen series next
for a quick re-read.
GRADES:
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SKYLARK: C+
-
SKYLARK THREE: A-
-
SKYLARK OF VALERON: A-
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SKYLARK DUQUESNE: C
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