🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 23 Jul 2016 09:29:45 -0400
"J. Clarke" <j.clark...@gmail.com> wrote:

> In article <1534685849.490968298.111696.peter_flass-
> yaho...@news.eternal-september.org>, peter...@yahoo.com says...
> > 
> > Same scenario.  I read one or two many years later.  Unfortunately I now
> > think most early SF is dated, with wooden characters, clunky plots, and
> > science that didn't hold up.  I recently read one of the Lensman books
> > and was startled to see references to atomic energy, but I now
> > understand that Smith went back and revised some of his stuff.
> 
> Why would references to atomic energy in '30s science fiction surprise 
> you?  The first use of the term "atomic bomb" in a story was by HG Wells 
> in 1914.  Heinlein wrote two stories involving nuclear energy before the 
> Manhattan Project was started--one pretty much predicted the Cold War 
> and the other involved a power plant accident.

	You beat me to it on atomic energy - although I had forgotten the
H.G. Wells reference which is of course older than any I had in mind.

	I reread the Lensman series (apart from the one tacked on the end
after the story finished) a few years back. I was surprised to find it
better than I was expecting from my memory of it. Certainly the dated
attitudes show strongly, but that's inescapable even the most progressive
have attitudes rooted in their time. The section where he parodies his own
writing style is amusing - clearly he was deliberately walking a line with
that style, one that would not be in the same place if he writing today.

	One thing from Triplanetary - was that level of political cynicism
common then ?

> As for "science that didn't hold up", one large subgenre of science 
> fiction involves fictional science.  Why should fictional science "hold 
> up"?  Smith was a PhD engineer--when he was using fictional science he 
> knew he was using it and did it by intent.

	Indeed, and while it is common for science fiction authors to try
and make their fictional science consistent with the real thing as much as
possible it is amazingly hard to do and I don't think he did badly given
when he was writing.

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