Skylark Three

The Skylark of Space was a hit, and a sequel was asked for before it finished running in serialized form in Amazing Stories. So he began work on a follow-up novel, Skylark Three. And why Skylark Three? Well in The Skylark of Space the original ship was built on earth by Seaton and Crane. Then in the that novel, the ship was rebuilt with better technology by the Osnomians of the Green System, and that became Skylark Two. In this novel, we find that “Blackie” DuQuesne had arrived back on Earth, where he took a parachute and escaped during the landing. And he also brought back rare gems from the Green System, and with that wealth bought a controlling interest in the World Steel Corporation, a ruthless corporation that he can bend to his nefarious needs. He finds a henchman and takes off to search for races with advanced technology he can acquire to try and keep up with Seaton.

Seaton, who was proclaimed the Overlord of the Green System in the previous novel, gets a message that they need help. A neighboring planet called Urvan is invading them. And so Seaton, Crane, their wives, and a Japanese valet Shiro take off in the Skylark Two headed for the Green System. Along the way Seaton is experimenting with a new idea, a Zone of Force, which seems like the prefect defense because nothing can get through it. But a big drawback is that they cannot see out of it either, so if they want to do a bit of reconnaissance they have to drop the Zone of Force, and that leaves them vulnerable. As they approach the Green system, they are attacked by a ship of the Fenachrone, a race that is embarking on conquest, first of the Galaxy, and then of the whole universe. And they have better weapons than anything Seaton has. So he retreats behind the Zone of Force, where he has to consider when it might be safe to to turn off the Zone. He works out a strategy and uses the zone by turning it on and off to chop up the Fenachrone ship, then interrogates one of them that survived.

Then it is off to the Green System, where he enforces peace. But the Fenachrone menace is still out there, so Seaton starts looking for other races who may be more advanced and eventually finds the Norlaminians who seem to have mastered control of both matter and energy. With their help a more advanced Skylark Three is built, and with this ship Seaton now feels ready to tackle the Fenachrone. He goes to their planet and gives them a warning, which they ignore. so he destroys their planet, then destroys a fleeing colony ship of theirs. It looks like 100% successful genocide, but they will reappear.

Skylark of Valeron

At the end of Skylark Three, Seaton and Co. were at the edge of the galaxy, and there was another one up ahead that looked interesting. So they set out to take a look since they had built up great speed on their way to Fenachrone. Seaton had deduced previously that thought was a “sixth order” vibration, and had built a Thought Projector on that basis, and was experimenting with it. But attracted the attention of a group of disembodied intellectuals, and these intellectuals want Seaton to join them, but he refuses. So they attack the Skylark. The resources of the Skylark are finite, which is a problem. They are now using uranium instead of copper, but the Intellectuals can make use of the cosmic energy all around them. When Skylark’s uranium runs out, they will all be killed by the intellectuals. So in this desperate time, they try something desperate: they all get in the Skylark Two, which was kept inside of Skylark Three to act as a tender boat, and rotate it into the Fourth Dimension. This is a fascinating part of the book, since Smith imagines how a three-dimensional person would perceive and interact with a four-dimensional world. Of course, there are inimical forces here that need to be resisted, but that is par for the course in Space Opera. Eventually they survive this and re-enter the three dimensional universe, but now they are nowhere near where they were when they fist encountered the intellectuals and rotated out.

They find a planet called Valeron with human-like beings who are locked in a struggle with Chlorans, amoeba-like inhabitants of planets with chlorine atmospheres. In the Universe Smith has created, there are two kinds of planets and two types of races. Human-type people live on Earth-like planets, and chlorine-breathing Chlorans live on planets with chlorine atmospheres. And this will hold true on planets in all different galaxies. This is obviously not how we see exoplanets now in the 21st century, but it was an acceptable speculation for the time when it was written. With older science fiction stories you have to give them that. In any case, the Skylark helps the Valeronians to defeat the Chlorans, and in return for the help Valeron builds a new and even bigger Skylark, now up to 1000km in diameter. At its heart is a mechanical brain, or super-computer, running on all bands of the sixth order, and incorporating the Thought Projector. With that they are able to map the visible universe and locate where they are in a relation to the Milky Way galaxy and get back home. There, Duquesne has used Seaton’s absence to take over the Earth, but Seaton enlists the Norlaminians to capture the disembodied intellectuals and adds DuQuesne to their number as well. So finally all is well.

Skylark DuQuesne

This is an interesting bookend to Smith’s career. The Skylark of Space had been his very first novel which he finished in 1921. Skylark DuQuesne was his very last novel, published in 1965 shortly before his death, which was also in 1965. As a later and more mature work, it is better written, but we are still talking about early space opera here. The opening scene is Seaton trying to run an entire Galaxy on his own, which is of course impossible. Then the Norlaminians break in to tell him that the disembodied intellectuals, plus DuQuesne, who had been imprisoned at the end of Skylark of Valeron and whom they thought would be imprisoned for a very long time, would in fact be released very soon, if not already. This is an interesting scene because it reads like Kimball Kinnison and Mentor from the Lensman series, which had been written in the intervening years, and which we will discuss next. This is not that surprising, since many authors tend to write the same characters even in unrelated works, so I merely note that in passing. In any case, they need to get moving. The Norlaminians explain that the disembodied intellectuals are actually no threat since they were merely toying with Seaton. But Seaton knows that “Blackie” DuQuesne will be threat to him and his family, which now includes a Richard Seaton Junior.

Then the novel switches to a remote galaxy where an empire of the Llurdi exists. The Llurdi are mammalian, but definitely not human. And within this realm are the Jelmi, who are definitely human, and who are subjugated by the Llurdi. This is an echo of a situation in the Subspace Explorers series. The Llurdi are purely logical, in their own eyes, sort of like the Vulcans of Star Trek, but as such they cannot make intuitive leaps in science. For that they rely on the Jelmi, but the Jelmi are not cooperating because they don’t like being subjugated. And when another group of Fenachrone, who had escaped Seaton’s genocide and fled to a remote galaxy, meet the Llurdi, they attack. Meanwhile, DuQuesne is on the loose and meets up with another race who like to practice Eugenics. They are impressed by DuQuesne and arrange to get a “sample” of his genes, in the way that is never exactly specified but you can fill in the blanks. And the Jelmi have managed to escape from the Realm of the Llurdi.

Then the Chlorans make another appearance. They aren’t exactly the ones from Valeron’s galaxy, but in this universe all Chlorans are alike. Seaton goes undercover as a mining engineer on a planet enslaved by the Chlorans to get more information. Now as an aside, Smith had an extended bit in First Lensman about mining, and it is obvious he was familiar with it and used it in his stories. I find it adds to the stories. In any case, the Chlorans are a threat, which Seaton analogizes as cancer that needs to be cut out. DuQuesne has meanwhile met up with the Fenachrone who had attacked the Llurdi and enlisted them as his crew on his own gigantic starship. And at this point another of Smith’s interests pops up, his interest in the paranormal, ESP, etc. This is manifest in one way in his classic Lensman series where it operates through the agency of the Lens of Arisia. But it also appears in the Subspace Explorers series, and in the stand-alone novels Galaxy Primes and Masters of Space, for example. In this novel, it shows up in the method used to commit genocide against the Chlorans. It turns out that Seaton, DuQuesne, and some others are strongly psychic, and are “poles of power”. And this power can be put to use to exterminate the Chlorans. And after this, DuQuesne takes off to find a galaxy he can take over for himself.

Summary

This is what space opera was in the early days. In the space of a handful of years, Seaton and DuQuesne go from chemists working in a lab in Washington D.C. to traveling among distant galaxies wielding unimaginable power. So if you are looking for a plausible future this isn’t it. But it can be a lot of fun, and I am a huge fan of Smith. And good news for you if you want to try some out is that many of his works are available for free on Project Gutenberg, or in audio form on Librivox. But while the Skylark series is what kicked off Smith’s writing career and made him a successful author, what he is best known for is his Lensman series, which we will get to next