The main character is Stevens, a genius “mathematical physicist” and an Olympic diver, and the story begins with a trip from Earth to Mars. After solving the navigation problems that have been plaguing the ships on this route of late, Stevens shows a pretty young woman, Newton, around the space liner, which he helped design. Newton is Stevens’ dream girl – not only is she a fellow world class athlete (champion of women’s golf in both the US and UK) but she’d rather explore the ship’s engine room than go to a dance! Then disaster strikes, when an alien vessel slices their ship to pieces and tows the pieces to Jupiter, and Stevens and Newton have to escape in a lifeboat to the forested moon Ganymede.
This is a pretty fun book.
The characters are cardboard and the level of human drama is low, but it
is full of fun SF ideas: Smith really does try to figure out what interplanetary
travel will be like, on a technical level with all kinds of navigational devices
and techniques, and on a personal level – what zero G is like, for
example. Marooned on Ganymede, Stevens and Newton spend
months mining natural resources and building things like a hydroelectric
turbine and suits of plate steel armor, while other Earthmen become embroiled in the war between
the good and evil inhabitants of the Jovian region, designing, building,
and manning ferocious space warships. The
scenes with space ships traveling, battling, and exploding, and all the aliens
and monsters, conjure up spectacular visions, like from a Lucas or Honda movie.
I read a 1983 printing by Berkley. The original magazine version is available at
Gutenberg, complete with Wesso illustrations, and a quick look gives an idea of
the kinds of updates made to later versions.
For example, in the second chapter Stevens gives a little history and
science lecture. In my 1983 edition
atomic bombs played a role in the development of the world government; atomic
bombs are not mentioned in the 1931 serial.
Similarly, Martians, unable to exploit hydroelectric power on their arid world, must make do in the 1931 version with “fuel,” but in my
edition they have “atomics.” That's progress! There are also
numerous lines in my edition in a slightly different typeface, as if the
publisher was fixing typos that were on earlier plates or something like that.
Recommended to space adventure fans, those interested in the
history of SF, and anybody who enjoys reading sentences like “With two fields
of force, set up from data 27 to 43, it will be possible actually to project a
pure force of such a nature that it will react to deheterodyne the blanketing
frequency at any predetermined distance.”
Do I get credit towards a physics degree for reading these things?
Sounds great. I reread his lensman series this year after a 40 year gap. Loved it all over again. I may just seek this out.
ReplyDeleteCool! I hope you enjoy it! Thanks for stopping by and commenting--it warms my heart to know people are reading posts from the earliest days of my blog!
Deleteyup. I have your Blog bookmarked on my phone. I decided that I was fed up of the horror show that is Twitter and politics and wanted a balm for my soul. I used to read 10 novels a week as a teenager from my local library. But 40 years later I am lucky if I read 10 books a year. I have been trying to get back into it again, but I am nowhere as fast a reader now as I was then.
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