E. E. "Doc" Smith + Lensman Saga

[Nonoxynol9]

Would anyone like to see these books made into movies? With the current state of SFX, now would be the time to do it... Only, who could do it right? These books are so massive in scope and scale that translating them to screen would be a monumental, if not "starkly impossible" task. Not to mention some of the out-dated technology, like vacuum tubes, diesel-powered spacecraft, the lack of transistors/computers, etc.

I think the Lensman saga is the greatest science-fiction story ever told, and it NEEDS to reach a wider audience. And we now have the capability to show thousands of spaceships warring madly in the depths of space.

 

[Nonoxynol9]

Well, screw you guys for not caring about the Beginning of sci-fi as we know it. Ignore posts, why don't you. Whatever.

 

[chrispenycate]

Hey, Im thinking about it. It's more than fourty years since I read those books, though there are a fair number of concepts remain (good sign, that)
Characterisation weak, dialogue weaker and plot linear (that's done, next size up, please) It'd have to be done in the comic book style, or even a modern "forbidden planet" - preferably in black and white. As a "Star Wars" type epic, I just don't see it.

How do you film something like that, which is already somewhat tongue in cheek, without making it totally for kids? Use the names, and ignore everything else? Or hit for the nostalgia market?

So, I'm not certain I'd want to see the films of the series; almost certain to be a diapointment, and done on the cheap because they're not expecting to be able to fill cinemas.

 

[Thanatos]

Apparently it has already been done in anime style by Kazuyuki Hirokawa and Yoshiaki Kawajiri. Check IMDB formore dtails.

 

[Rane Longfox]

I don't think I'd like it as a film, to be honest. I've got very definate mental pictures of what everything and everyone looks like... they should stay that way.

On a more positive note, I've just found "Subspace Explorers" in a book-trade shop, so I gave them my copy of Bryson's "Down Under" for it. Bargain

 

[Carolyn Hill]

All I remember about the books are rings.

Well, no, that's not quite all. Let me climb into the wayback machine here and set the dials for thirty-five years ago . . . I remember reading one of the books on a hot summer night out on the back porch, then trying to tell my cousin how great the book was. My cousin just looked puzzled, so I read aloud the passage I'd been describing--and suddenly realized that much of what I'd been describing wasn't actually on the page. I'd filled in the blanks and the emotions and added visual details to the scene, all in my head.

I'm not knocking the series. I loved it way back then.

 

[Snowdog]

These were some of the earlist sf books I read, and still stick in my mind more than most. Smith also wrote some good stand-alone novels. But a film? Whereas the great space battles could be rendered, any kind psi is difficult to represent on film, and with US filmmakers' need to explain everything in words of half a syllable, I think they'd ruin it.

 

[Mark Robson]

Ah, Kimball Kinnison! I haven't read about him in years. And Worzel, Nadreck ... I can't remember the fourth of the second stage lensmen ... I remember he looked something like a barrel on six legs, or something like that. Anyway, I must have read the series two or three times in my youth, as well as the Skylark series and the Family D'Alembert series. I loved E E 'Doc' Smith's stuff, but looking back now I would agree with Chrispenycate that the dialogue was not sparkling and the plots were very linear. Good rip-roaring tales, though, with plenty of action. Would almost fit into the YA shelves these days.

 

[iansales]

I reread EE Doc Smitjh's Masters of Space last year. I had fond memories of the book from my youth but, oh boy, did it *not* live up to them...

The plot in a nutshell: Earth's best brains are sent on a mission to find a planet of fuel. The scientists are all handsome virile men; their assistants are all gorgeous (but also brainy) women. They stumble into a war between an alien race and a race of humanoid androids. The latter are, apparently, servants created by the long-extinct race who seeded Earth. The androids accept the Earth scientists as their new masters. The scientists and assistants pair off, and then undergo a conversion to become near-immortal andriods themselves. The women particularly welcome this conversion because it means their boobs will never sag. I kid you not...

 

[GOLLUM]

Talk about blast from the past. I remember reading Doc Smith 25 years ago but unlike Brown Rat my time machine doesn't appear to be functioning too well. Can hardly remember anything from that series other than I thought it was OK at the time...

So is Doc Smith still around or not????

 

[iansales]

He died in 1965.

 

[j d worthington]

One of the first "classics" of sf -- Isaac Asimov read the first of these when he was just a lad. Dear old Edward E. Smith; wonderful man; his writing suffers in comparison to later writers, but oh, what a world of mind-boggling ideas he opened up -- one of the first to deal with the stuff that later became standard sf tropes....

 

[Fried Egg]

I'm just embarking on a parellel reading with AE35Unit of the first of the "Lensman" series; "Triplanetary".

I've not read any of his work before but I'm hoping not to be disappointed given that it's in the SF masterworks series and all.

Only two chapters in so far and it's...interesting...shall have to see how it develops...

 

[AE35Unit]

Still only read the first chapter so far. There's a guy on another forum who reckons its all about Earth history with little Space opera. Strange!

 

[Rodders]

I'd imagine something like this would probably be better off as a TV series. You can really explore a back story and do justice to this with a 13 hour series than with a 2 hour film.

 

[AE35Unit]

Well you can't half tell it was written in the 30s!
'Oh gosh Costigan,I don't know I can hold out much longer,I'm going to die. Goodbye my sweet' Swoons.

 

[Fried Egg]

Hmmm, when you said 1930's that confused me because the chapter I'm reading now is set in the second world war in 1941 and they're talking about Pearl Harbour. Surely he couldn't have been that prescient? Wiki confirms that it was serialised in 1934 but was reworked into a novel with substantial changes in 1948. I guess that explains it then!

 

[AE35Unit]

Pearl Harbour? Man am I reading a different book or what? I'm only on the second chapter but we're in Space,just escaped from some grey Roger dude.

 

[Pyan]

Does your copy start with "Triplanetary" and Costigan's story, AE, or do you have two "books" before then, called "Dawn" (Arisia, Eddore) and "The World War" (Atlantis, Rome, World Wars, and the nuclear holocaust)?

 

[AE35Unit]

Does your copy start with "Triplanetary" and Costigan's story, AE, or do you have two "books" before then, called "Dawn" (Arisia, Eddore) and "The World War" (Atlantis, Rome, World Wars, and the nuclear holocaust)?

Err mine starts with Chapter One,Pirates of Space.
Apparently motionless to her passengers and crew, the Inter
Planetary Liner Hyperion bored serenely onward thru Space at normal acceleration.

Its a 2007 Wildside Books imprint