Quote: Chant said: eeeek, you all are so into high litterature, and I'm sitting here reading Sci-Fi and Fantasy, I fee so illiterate, or inadequate
Then read E. E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" saga. It's the LOTR of sci-fi. "Doc" Smith practically invented the space opera subgenre. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, from Buck Rogers, to Flash Gordon, to Star Trek, Star Wars, and (especially) Babylon 5, lifted ideas, concepts, and characters directly from E. E. Smith's stories.
Seriously, if you can get past the 30's-40's retro-tech (vacuum tubes instead of transistors and circuits... and the computer was a cute blonde who used a slide-rule) and the pulpishness of the dialogue, you will find a series of novels more action-packed than any James Bond story, more fast-paced than a Louis L'Amour page-turner, more militaristic science than all of David Weber's Honor Harrington series, and more grand and cosmic in scale than anything ever conceived by Tolkien... E. E. Smith invented not just a whole galaxy, but two whole galaxies, and even went beyond space and time altogether. And not just that, but the way he descibres fleets of massive, gargantuan superdreadnoughts, maulers, cruisers, battling it out like Armageddon in the void of space... his space battles are more vivid, intense, and exciting than ANYTHING George Lucas -- or anybody, for that matter -- EVER put on celluloid.
The are six books in the Lensman saga:
1. Triplanetary 2. First Lensman 3. Galactic Patrol 4. Gray Lensman 5. Second-Stage Lensman 6. Children of the Lens
The first two, Triplanetary and First Lensman, are essentially "prequels" that tell the back-story and lead up into the third book, Galactic Patrol, where the real story really begins. Think Star Wars. George Lucas was probably more than subconsciously influenced by these books: "I'll write the main story first, then go back and make movies about the history and back-ground later."
Just an example of some of the stuff Smith invented and/or pioneered:
1. deflector shields (called "defensive screens" in the books) 2. the inertialess drive (one of the VERY FIRST -- and definitely one of the most influential -- FTL space drives in science fiction) 3. the Galactic Union (the very first galaxy-wide government) 4. pirates in space 5. anti-matter bombs 6. secret organization of telepathic warriors 7. the "patrol" organizations of space 8. mental battles (telepathic combat) 9. "artificial planetoids" (think hundreds of Death Stars... not just one) 10. artificial gravity for spaceships 11. realistically-alien aliens 12. hyperspace/wormholes/boom tubes (called "hyper-spatial tubes" in the novels).
All of these things he either envisioned first, or made popular... and all of this in the mid-30's and early 40's.
I CANNOT, C-A-N-N-O-T recommend these books enough. If you claim you're a sci-fi fan and you've never read these books, than fucking shame on you. How can u say you're a fan of fantasy and never read Tolkien? It's the same thing. E. E. Smith is the fucking GOD of action sci-fi.
