I started collecting science fiction as a teenager. As a collector, as opposed to just a reader, you come in contact with stories that considerably predate what you find for sale in stores. This led me to books from the 1930s and much earlier. John Taine was one of only two SF writers I encountered from the 1920s and 30s whom I still found enjoyable (and exciting) to read (the other was E.E. “doc” Smith).
I wrote
Triplanetary: Science Fiction, Adventure, Space Opera
Okay, we know there are no dinosaurs living on the tepuis (steep-sided mountains in Venezuela and Guyana). But in 1912 such a discovery was not outside the realm of possibility because this part of South America remained largely unexplored. Doyle, better known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was fascinated by the latest discoveries in science at a time when anything seemed possible. Couple that with an interest in far-off places and you have an expedition to South America to verify a series of outrageous claims by arguably his second-greatest character, Professor George Edward Challenger.
Well-researched by Doyle, the book further kindled in my young self a burning interest in both science and travel. The characters are unforgettable and the book will take you back to an era of courtesy and comfort in a vanished England (albeit one with typical period condescension to non-Anglos). I thought of Doyle while taking a swim at the base of Angel Falls, but sadly was not dive-bombed by a pterodactyl while gazing up at the looming tepui cliff-face overhead.
Originally published serially in 1912, “The Lost World” is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic tale of discovery and adventure. The story begins with the narrator, the curious and intrepid reporter Edward Malone, meeting Professor Challenger, a strange and brilliant paleontologist who insists that he has found dinosaurs still alive deep in the Amazon. Malone agrees to accompany Challenger, as well as Challenger’s unconvinced colleague Professor Summerlee, and the adventurer Lord John Roxton, into the wilds of South America and the Amazon in search of Challenger’s fantastical beasts. There, cut off from the rest of civilization and high atop an isolated…
To take a break from his day job as Professor Emeritus of Higher Mathematics at Caltech, Eric Temple Bell (John Taine was his pen name) wrote a series of science fiction novels that dealt, not with mathematics, but largely with biology. Any of these are still quite readable today, and notable for their discussion of biology and related fields when most writers of science fiction were focused on physics and space travel.
The Greatest Adventure deals with mutated dinosaurs in Antarctica, which sounds like something out of a 1950s horror film but which Bell uses as the basis for an investigation into science and not schlock. I suspect he utilized the pen name John Taine so as not to embarrass his supercilious colleagues in the math department (or possibly himself).
Pete West, a political columnist, travels to Prague to find a missing diplomat, later found murdered. He attempts to discover more about a cryptic note received from the diplomat and is immediately entangled in the secret Bilderberg Club’s strategy to form a world federation.
Horrors in Antarctica again, but this time designed to frighten. Along with a detailed description (maybe too detailed) of what the well-equipped Antarctic expedition needed to survive a journey to the Southernmost Continent back in 1930, Lovecraft introduces us to gibbering horrors from beyond the stars. What differentiated much of Lovecraft’s fiction from that of his contemporaries was that his space aliens were neither friend nor foe. Reflecting the author’s view of a terrifyingly vast and cold cosmos, they were largely indifferent to us. Mostly, they could care less if we chose to interact with them or their minions or their artifacts. When we did, it never ended well.
No matter how intelligent or well-intentioned or just plain curious the protagonists of Lovecraft’s stories might be, in his tales humans were just something to be swept aside like so many microbes. John W. Campbell later made use of a similar alien in an Antarctic setting for his story Who Goes There?, later adapted more than once into a film called The Thing. I hope the director Guillermo del Toro eventually gets to film his intended version of At the Mountains of Madness.
At the Mountains of Madness is a science fiction-horror novella by American author H. P. Lovecraft.
An expedition to Antarctica goes horribly wrong as a group of explorers stumbles upon some mysterious ancient ruins, with devastating consequences. At the Mountains of Madness ranks among Lovecraft's most terrifying novellas, and is a firm favourite among fans of classic horror.
Thanks to the efforts of more than one fan, the awful original translation of this seminal SF adventure novel has long since been corrected. While there is much Sfnal speculation in the novel by the man considered to be the father of modern science-fiction (electrically-powered submarines, self-contained diving suits making use of air under pressure, and much more), its real attraction rests on its inventive description of underwater environments and one of the great characters in the genre: Captain Nemo.
Often lost in modern discussions of the book are Verne’s interests, as conveyed via Nemo, in ecology and the poor and oppressed of the world. In this he presages many of the non-tech concerns of contemporary science-fiction. That a science-fiction novel published in 1869-70 still can hold our attention speaks not only to Verne’s skill as a futurist, but as a writer.
First serialized in a French magazine from 1869-1870, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is an incredible adventure story that popularized science fiction throughout the world.
Professor Aronnax, a marine biologist, joins harpoonist Ned Land in search of a mysterious sea creature in the open ocean, only to discover that the beast is actually a submarine piloted by the enigmatic Captain Nemo. They are taken captive, thus beginning a strange undersea voyage from Antarctic ice shelves to the subterranean city of Atlantis, hunting sharks along the way.
With its sprawling, exotic plot and vivid descriptions, Jules Verne's epic underwater adventure…
Captain Heron finds himself embroiled in a conflict that threatens to bring down the world order he is sworn to defend when a secretive Consortium seeks to undermine the World Treaty Organisation and the democracies it represents as he oversees the building and commissioning of a new starship.
E.E. “Doc” Smith took science-fiction out of the solar system and into the galaxy. Prior to Triplanetary, work by authors such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne had been restricted to our immediate spatial neighborhood. With Triplanetary, the first of the Lensman series, and subsequent books, writers of SF could let their imaginations run wild.
Triplanetary is a space opera by E. E. Smith. This is the original version first serialized in Amazing Stories magazine in 1934. Smith later reworked the story into the first of two Lensman prequels which was then published in 1948. Triplanetary covers an eons-long eugenics project of the super-intelligences of the Arisians an alien race breeding two genetic lines to become the ultimate weapon in their cosmic war with the Eddore.
The argument rages: did Dune influence Star Wars and if so, how much? Or was the primary influence on Star Wars the Flash Gordon movie serial? Or 2001: A Space Odyssey?
The question is moot, since the granddaddy of them all was the Lensman series of novels.
The first of these, Triplanetary, appeared in the Jan-April 1934 issues of Amazing Stories. It’s all there: multiple intelligent alien species, an evil empire bent on galactic domination, people with heightened mental abilities, gigantic battles in space; all set against a vast galactic background. The science is primitive and so are some of the characters, but the action and scope carries you along. When much of science fiction was struggling to tell stories inside the solar system, Smith was ranging across the entire galaxy. Adjusted and fixed up, all six of the main Lensman novels are still readily available—and for a reason.
Liza O’Connell was a horror buff in every sense of the word. But there was one deadly nightmare she would never be able to talk about … her own. A friend murdered. A business in trouble. A marriage struggling to survive. And that’s just the beginning.
After escaping from a government holding facility where she, along with other scientists, was being forced to build a deadly weapon. She headed for the most remote place she could think of, the wild Xantifal Mountains.
