The Skylark of Space by E. E. Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

Landmark space opera, corny but creative

The Skylark of Space is a science fiction novel by E. E. Smith (1890–1965). Sometimes credited as Edward E. Smith, or referred to by his nickname “Doc,” Smith was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, but soon moved to the Pacific Northwest and eventually worked as a food chemist for a doughnut factory in Michigan before starting his literary career. Though he published over a dozen sci-fi novels, he never did give up his day job. The Skylark of Space was first published in serial form in three 1928 issues of Amazing Stories magazine. The novel inspired one of the most memorable covers ever to grace the front of Amazing Stories, illustrated by Frank R. Paul. Smith usually gets all the credit for The Skylark of Space, but he cowrote the first portion of the novel with Lee Hawkins Garby, who happens to be a woman. Smith penned the rest of the Skylark series himself. The Skylark of Space was first published in book form in 1946.

In his laboratory, the chemist Dick Seaton investigates the properties of a newly discovered and extremely rare element known only as “X.” Unexpectedly, a lab instrument, made of copper, is propelled through the window, flying at high speed on a straight trajectory into the unseen distance. Seaton discovers that X has unlocked the “intra-atomic” energy within the copper, thereby releasing a clean, extremely powerful, and optimally efficient form of energy. Seaton and his friend, the millionaire industrialist Martin Crane, envision this new energy source providing the propulsion necessary for space travel. With the intention of exploring the stars, they begin building a spacecraft dubbed the Skylark. Seaton’s scientific colleague Marc DuQuesne, however, wants to steal the X for himself and will stop at nothing to get his hands on it, even over Seaton and Crane’s dead bodies.

When it appeared in Amazing Stories, this novel had a profound influence on young readers like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and John W. Campbell Jr., who would go on to become some of the most important names in science fiction. What likely appealed to those future authors were the “hard science fiction” elements of the story, rather than its less successful fantasy and romance aspects. In this novel, Smith, a true scientist himself, deliberately strives to explore various scientific phenomena, and he provides reasonable scientific explanations for the bizarre happenings in the book. Obviously, the Skylark’s copper-fission propulsion method is not a reality, for example, but it’s based on real scientific concepts and is treated with a respectably sound science-fiction logic. The chemical properties of metals and the technological and military applications of various wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum are also explored.

It’s in the human and alien characters where the novel becomes farfetched. The love stories are corny beyond all get-out, and the extraterrestrial beings are like something out of an Edgar Rice Burroughs fantasy. The novel starts out as a down-to-earth Thomas Edison pastiche, but it just gets sillier and sillier as it goes on. It’s comical that Seaton and Crane express absolutely no surprise or wonder at their experience of interstellar travel. They treat their space voyage and contact with an alien race as the most natural and expected occurrences. The irrational behavior of the villains is even sillier. Some elements of the story are merely kitschy with antiquity, like the idea of fur suits keeping one warm in the nearly absolute-zero vacuum of space.

The Skylark of Space reads like a literary bridge between the works of Jules Verne and Robert A. Heinlein. The story of space princes, warring alien races, and starship battles is clichéd space opera, but those same clichés have nevertheless proved successful in many subsequent sci-fi epics from Star Wars to Dune. Sporting cool tech and exciting battle scenes, The Skylark of Space was no doubt considered quite cool by sci-fi fans of 1928. In spite of its hokier aspects, it’s still quite fun to read today.