The Trigan Empire

The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire was a 1960s British comic-strip written by Mike Butterworth and drawn by Don Lawrence. I’ve just finished reading the first volume of the recent reprint which includes the first thirteen stories in the series.

Don Lawrence (1928-2003) was an English comic book artist and author.

The Trigan Empire was originally published in the weekly papers Ranger and Look and Learn from 1965 to 1982. Lawrence did the artwork from 1965 to 1976. Lawrence later went on to the Storm series about a time-travelling astronaut. He also did the naughty lighthearted Carrie strip for the men’s magazine Mayfair. Carrie is a nice girl but she just can’t keep her clothes on.

The Trigan Empire is a science fiction epic set on a distant Earth-like planet, Elekton. There are quite a few different cultures, some much more technologically advanced than others. Trigo and his brothers rule a very technologically backward warrior society. Trigo can see the writing on the wall. They will inevitably be conquered by their more advanced neighbours.

Trigo is determined to transform his primitive kingdom into a modern major power. The first step is to build a city. A great city. It will be the nucleus of a great empire.

Trigo pursues his objectives through numerous wars. He makes allies. He suffers betrayals. He has narrows escapes from disaster. But his belief in the future never wavers.

All of this provides an excuse for non-stop action.

This was clearly aimed at a younger readership. There’s no hint of sex or nudity. You can be confident that the bad guys will be vanquished. But it still manages to deal with some grown-up themes (ambition, divided loyalties, betrayal). It’s more than just a kids’ comic strip. I suppose that today it would be seen as being aimed at a Young Adult market.

Trigo is an interesting hero. He’s brave of course and he’s a fine charismatic energetic leader, but his judgment in personal matters is often very poor.

One of Trigo’s brothers is smart but treacherous while the other is loyal and brave but not outstandingly bright.

Although it concerns a galactic empire it takes a long long time before the action movies to outer space. In fact it takes a long time before the Trigan Empire even gets as far as the Moon.

I think the slow build-up works. Mighty empires start small. Trigo’s petty kingdom is initially totally insignificant. It’s not going to become a global power, or on an interstellar power, overnight. In this case it happens because Trigo (despite occasional errors of judgment) has vision, determination and charisma.

He also has a very realistic understanding of power. He would have been quite happy for his little principality to be left alone but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. You either dominate or you get dominated. You either conquer your neighbours or they will conquer you.

This first volume ends with the Trigan Empire on the verge of making the major move beyond its home planet.

Don Lawrence’s artwork is lively and pretty cool.

This is entertaining stuff and I’m certainly tempted to get hold of the later volumes in the series. Recommended for space opera aficionados.

Poul Anderson’s Sargasso of Lost Starships

Poul Anderson’s novella Sargasso of Lost Starships appeared in Planet Stories in January 1952.

Anderson wrote a lot of fine sword-and-sorcery and sword-and-planet tales early in his career. The Sargasso of Lost Starships seems at first to be space opera, and in fact it is space opera, but as the story develops it becomes more and more of a sword-and-planet story.

This is a clash of cultures story but it involves three rather than just two very different cultures. It’s also a story of civilisation pitted against barbarism but with ambiguities as to which culture represents the good guys and which represents the bad guys. Maybe all cultures have both good and bad in them. And maybe heroes and villains are not clearcut either. This is an exciting pulp space adventure but with some added subtleties and some complexity. At no stage in his career could Anderson be dismissed as a mere hack.

The hero, Basil Donovan, is a hereditary ruler on the planet Ansa. The people of Ansa are human, descendants of colonists from Earth. For centuries, after Earth’s interstellar empire collapsed, they have been independent. Fiercely independent. Ansa is now a backwater, a kind of feudal agrarian society but with high technology as well. They are still spacefarers in a small way. Basil is a proud stubborn aristocrat but a just and humane leader.

Everything was fine until the Terrans created a new interstellar empire, the Solar Empire. Ansa wanted no part of the Solar Empire but was not given a choice. It is now merely a province of that empire. The Terrans are human and enlightened masters but they are still the masters and the Ansans bitterly resent this. Basil resents it very bitterly indeed. He had participated in the great space battles in which the Ansans fought, unsuccessfully, to maintain their independence.

Basil now lives on booze and dreams of past glories. Until he receives an Imperial summons. The Empire has need of his services. It involves the Black Nebula. Basil is unusual, indeed unique. He has been to the Black Nebula and come back alive and sane. Well, mostly sane.

Basil is to be guide and advisor to Captain Helena Jansky, commander of the Terran starship Ganymede. The Black Nebula has become a problem that needs to be confronted. Captain Jansky needs Basil’s knowledge of the Black Nebula. He is prepared to share that knowledge, but the suspicion remains that he is concealing a great deal of what he knows. Basil and Helena do not trust one another.

When the Ganymede reaches the Black Nebula it becomes obvious that there is a very great deal indeed that Basil has not revealed. He had not mentioned the voices. The voices that are reducing the Ganymede’s crew to madness. The voices seem to come from nowhere. Basil had also failed to mention Valduma. Valduma is a woman but she is definitely not human. Perhaps Basil loves her, perhaps he hates her.

To add to the complications Basil is no longer sure that he hates Helena. Perhaps he loves her. There’s a bizarre romantic triangle here. Basil must choose between these two women and his choice will have momentous consequences.

This is an exciting tale of high adventure and action and it’s a twisted love story. It’s also a story of rising civilisations and dying civilisations. It’s also a story about freedom and servitude both of which turn out to be complex and ambiguous. And it’s a story about a man torn by conflicting loyalties and conflicting loves.

There’s no magic and there are no wizards but there are technologies so advanced and so strange and so incomprehensible that they might as well be magic. They serve the same purpose that magic would serve in a sword-and-sorcery story.

Sargasso of Lost Starships is superior-grade pulp fiction that manages to deal with complex issues whilst still offering plenty of old-fashioned entertainment. Very highly recommended.

Armchair Fiction have paired this one with Don Wilcox’s excellent The Ice Queen in one of their two-novel paperbacks. The combination of two very good titles makes this a very worthwhile purchase.

I’ve also reviewed DMR Press’s Swordsmen from the Stars which contains three excellent Poul Anderson sword-and-planet novellas. Anderson’s Virgin Planet also has some slight affinities to the sword-and-planet genre and it’s very much worth reading as well.

Clinton Constantinescu’s War of the Universe

Clinton Constantinescu’s novel War of the Universe appeared in Amazing Stories Quarterly for Fall of 1931. Constantinescu is a pretty obscure science fiction writer. I believe he was actually a Canadian scientist. This seems to be his only published work of fiction.

It features super-intelligent giant bugs and also birdmen, so that’s two points in its favour.

At some stage in the distant future all the planets in our solar system have formed a kind of loose federation which appears to be stable and amicable. All the planets are inhabited by native life forms and they’re all human-like and intelligent and they have all developed advanced technological civilisations. In 1931 the idea of the other planets in the solar systems being not only habitable but actually inhabited would not have particularly silly or far-fetched. Almost nothing was known about the true nature of the other planets.

And then the solar system comes under attack. Hostile celestial bodies are headed our way. There’s a hurried conference on Mars. The solar system’s top scientists make plans to repel the attack. The narrator of the novel is a scientist from Earth.

It makes sense that this novel was written by a scientist. This is clearly a society in which scientists make all the decisions. There’s not a single character from our solar system who isn’t a scientist. It’s the sort of idea which appealed to a lot of scientists at that time (and appeals to quite a few scientists today). If only we could get rid of all those pesky non-scientists, or teach them to do exactly what scientists tell them to do, utopia would be just around the corner.

Most of the book is occupied by space battles. If you like your space battles on a truly epic scale you’ll have nothing to complain of here. Meteorites, asteroids, comets and even suns are used as weapons.

It’s not a straightforward war. There are multiple advanced civilisations and all of them aim to exterminate all the others. They’re not even very interested in temporary alliances. It has to be said that the civilisation of our own solar system is just as ruthless, being quite prepared to watch other civilisations destroy each other and then jump in to finish off the survivors.

The characters are extraordinarily flat and lifeless. The author seems to be solely interested in civilisations in the abstract, rather than as collections of individuals.

The science is all very silly but it’s imaginative and there’s plenty of enjoyable technobabble. The author even throws in some equations to convince us that this is Real Science! and not just made-up stuff.

The book does have some structural weaknesses. It’s not much more than endless succession of space battles. There is no attempt to explain the motivations of any of the warring civilisations - the assumption seems to be simply that it’s entirely natural for advanced civilisations to try to destroy each until one achieves total galactic domination.

There’s no dramatic tension, no sense that events are moving in a particular direction for some reason. It’s just non-stop space mayhem.

The ending is a rather contrived attempt to wrap things up neatly, and also perhaps to try to find a belated justification for all that butchery.

The book does however have two interesting alien races. There are the intelligent birds, who had once possessed an advanced civilisation of their own. The birds are friendly and they’re on the side of the good guys (insofar as there any good guys in this tale). The second alien species - giant hyper-intelligent spiders. They’re highly advanced and they’re aggressive and malevolent although the narrator has to admit grudgingly that they’re brave and determined.

There’s no way I’d recommend the purchase of this novel on its own but those fine people at Armchair Fiction have re-issued it in a two-novel paperback edition paired with Otis Adelbert Kline’s Lord of the Lamia. It’s worth buying the paperback for Lord of the Lamia (which is excellent) so if you think of War of the Universe as a kind of bonus novel then by all means give it a read. You might get some amusement out of it, especially if you crave space battles on a truly grand scale.

Harry Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat

Harry Harrison’s science fiction novel The Stainless Steel Rat was published in 1961, although it drew on two earlier novelettes, The Stainless Steel Rat (1957) and The Misplaced Battleship (1960), which had appeared in the pulp magazine Astounding. A sequel would appear in 1970, to be followed by another ten books in the series.

James Bolivar diGriz is a criminal in a far-future world in which crime is extremely rare. It’s a world that could be described as a flawed utopia. There is law and order and stability and prosperity throughout the far-flung league of planets but these benefits have been purchased at the cost of an oppressive regime of surveillance and social control. But it’s soft oppression. Nobody really minds. Well, almost nobody.

There are a few misfits like James Bolivar diGriz. They turn to crime as an escape from the boredom of an excessively organised society. They crave challenge and adventure. The challenge is what seems to appeal most to diGriz. He likes outwitting the system.

He is a loner. That’s another part of his motivation. He just doesn’t like being told what to do. He hates to be a cog in anyone’s machine. He wants to make his own choices, even if they’re bad choices. He sometimes thinks of himself as a kind of rat, existing in the dark corners of society.

As the story opens he is regretfully shutting down a very successful illegal operation. It is time to move on, in fact it’s time to head for another planet. He finds a suitable planet and soon he has another criminal scheme lined up. But his luck has run out.

Being caught is bad enough, but he is to suffer a fate much more unpleasant than prison. He is informed that he is now a member of the Special Corps, an elite interstellar police squad recruited entirely from former criminals. To his horror he is now a cop.

It’s as boring as he thought it would be, until he discovers something very odd and interesting in the computer files. It’s the blueprint of a space freighter under construction. But to diGriz it doesn’t look like a freighter. It looks uncannily like a space battleship from a thousand years earlier, a time when space battleships were built that were infinitely more powerful than anything known in the present day. He manages to get himself sent on a mission to find out what is going on, and that’s the beginning of a series of wild adventures.

The mission will also bring into into contact with Angelina. Angelina is a lady super-villain. She is a merciless killer, cruel and vindictive and totally lacking in any redeeming qualities. He is horrified by her. She is an evil woman who must be hunted down. At the same time he has to admit that he is strongly attracted to her. She is evil but fascinating. He can see the similarities between Angelina and himself - they’re both both misfits and rebels. He isn’t evil, in fact in all his criminal endeavours he has never actually killed anyone. But the similarities are there. Angelina is like his dark mirror image.

This is a semi-comic adventure romp. Don’t expect the science and technology to be even remotely plausible. Harrison clearly has no interest in such things. He doesn’t even resort to technobabble to try to explain things like faster-than-light travel. He just assumes it’s possible because it’s necessary to the story. 

This is superficially a science fiction novel but Harrison could just as easily have set the story in a world of magic.

The story is what matters, and the high adventure, and most of all the characters. Angelina is a wonderful character. Like diGriz we can’t feel being both repelled and fascinated by her. She might be a bad girl on an epic scale but she lives her life to the full and she loves the risks involved in her lifestyle and she loves the thrills. She’s an adventure junkie.

And diGriz is just as intriguing. He lacks Angelina’s ruthlessness and bloodthirstiness but he has a cheerfully amoral attitude and he’s just as much of an adrenalin junkie. He’s totally dishonest. He will cheat a cabdriver for the sheer pleasure of outwitting him, and will then leave an enormous tip.

Angelina and diGriz are drunk on life.

The Stainless Steel Rat is fine space opera but mostly it’s just superb entertainment. Highly recommended.

John Cleve's Master of Misfit (Spaceways #5)

Between 1982 and 1985 Playboy Press published the nineteen books in the Spaceways series of science fiction sleaze paperbacks. Master of Misfit was the fifth book in the series. It was published in 1982.

These books were credited to John Cleve, a pseudonym used by American science fiction writer Andrew J. Offutt (1934-2013). He wrote under a dozen or so different pseudonyms. To confuse things somewhat the name John Cleve was used by other writers. It’s possible that some of the Spaceways books may have been collaborations.

Like most sleaze fiction these books have either been ignored or regarded with a sneer. And science fiction fans are often quite disapproving of the idea of injecting sex into their favourite genre. But like so much American sleaze fiction of the period from the 50s to the 80s they were written by a guy who wrote “legitimate” science fiction as well as sleaze. And the other book in this series that I’ve read, Purrfect Plunder, was a rather pleasant surprise.

Master of Misfit opens with a bit of a cyberpunk vibe. Cyberpunk was just starting to make waves in the science fiction genre in 1982. The movie Blade Runner came out that year, William Gibson had had his first cyberpunk story published, Bruce Sterling’s first stories set in his Shaper/Mechanist universe had appeared. The cyberpunk ethos was already in the air.

Dorjan is a thief. Dorjan is one of his names. He has many others. He’s a very successful thief and pirate. He’s not quite human. He spent some time as the slave/pet/personal stud of the very wealthy and very powerful Murrah an Rahmyne. It amused her to have certain modifications made to her slave’s body. Some were intended to enhance his performance as her personal stud but others were intended simply to amuse her. Dorjan has retractable razor-sharp claws, he has 360 degree vision and he has lightweight but extremely powerful wings which can be neatly and unobtrusively folded when not in use. Dorjan is the captain of the pirate spacecraft Misfit and other members of his crew have also been enhanced by genetic and biomechanical means.

All of which, when combined with a universe in which high-tech crime and space piracy both thrive, certainly qualify this novel as proto-cyberpunk if not an early example of full-fledged cyberpunk.

Dorjan is out to steal the Heart of the Universe. This is a fabulously valuable necklace of gold inlaid with firegems, firegems being (literally) living gems. Stealing this jewel is impossible, or would be impossible for an ordinary Galactic (as the descendants of the humans from Earth who colonised this corner of the galaxy are known). But Dorjan is much more than human.

It’s not just a matter of stealing the necklace. Dorjan and his crew have to make a safe getaway from the planet Panish.

We’re also introduced very early on to Coppertop. She has had many names also, and an adventurous life. She has been a slave and a whore but now she’s the very rich widow of a very rich man. She is now known as Lizina Harish. She loved her husband very much and she mourned his passing sincerely but now two months have elapsed and for those two months Lizina has not had a man. She’s practically crawling the walls as a result. Tonight she is most definitely going to have a man. She has one picked out. He seems to be rich and very good-looking. She’s more than willing to accept his invitation to spend the night at his penthouse. Instead of getting a night of passion she gets kidnapped by slavers, and subjected to exquisite tortures (after she’s been raped).

The two plot strands intersect when Dorjan realises that the gorgeous woman he couldn’t help noticing is a slave. He knows she’s a slave because his First Mate has an unusual talent. He has a kind of limited psychic ability. He just knows when someone is a slave, even when they don’t appear to be.

Dorjan and his crew are thieves and pirates but they draw the line at slavery. Most of them, including Dorjan, have been slaves themselves. They have an intense dislike of slavers, and they are always willing to take a break from thieving to rescue a slave.

Dorjan and his crew have another agenda. At one point in their wanderings through the galaxy they discovered an asteroid that had been turned into a spacious habitat capable of housing several thousand people. Since the asteroid had been abandoned they claimed it. They intend to establish their own tiny independent community there, a haven for escaped slaves.

There are going to be complications. Coppertop belongs to Ganessa. Ganessa operates the finest mobile whorehouse in the galaxy. Coppertop was to be a star attraction. Ganessa is not a woman who takes kindly to having her possessions stolen from her, and she paid good money for Coppertop.

There are plenty of adventures to come, plenty of action, more thieving and lots of sex. Including sex with aliens. Dorjan has discovered a new species of intelligent alien. She’s incredibly cute, incredibly female and there’s nothing in the universe she likes more than having sex. And she’s totally sexually compatible with humans. There’s also some much weirder alien sex but there’s lots of god old-fashioned regular sex as well.

The secret of combining sleaze fiction with other genres such as science fiction is to integrate the sex fully into the plot. In this case the author does that very successfully, since the plot mostly revolves around prostitution and sex slavery, but with a definite science fictional flavour.

The sex is reasonably graphic.

Master of Misfit is fast-paced, action-packed and very sleazy. The cyberpunk feel is very marked (and handled in a fairly effective way). I suppose you could call this book sleazepunk. Whatever you decide to call it it’s entertaining and it’s highly recommended.

I also recommend the next book in the series, Purrfect Plunder (which features a particularly interesting alien species).

John Cleve’s Purrfect Plunder

John Cleve’s Purrfect Plunder, published in 1982, was the sixth of the nineteen science fiction sleaze paperbacks published by Playboy Press between 1982 and 1985.

Andrew J. Offutt (1934-2013) was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy. He wrote sleaze fiction under a dozen or so different pseudonyms, including John Cleve. To make things a little bit more confusing the name John Cleve was used by other writers and to make things really murky some of the Spaceways books may have been collaborations.

Purrfect Plunder starts with an epic space battle.

Kenowa is one of the officers of the Dauntless. It’s not quite clear what her position is but we know that she’s sleeping with the ship’s commander, Captain Sword. After the battle the spaceship Dauntless is left a drifting wreck. Kenowa finds herself stripped naked and carried off by some kind of tentacled robot. She is placed in a tiny cubicle, in a hold that contains countless other naked females.

It’s a grim situation but things are not as they seem to be.

Then an interstellar cargo ship, the India Spring, sends a distress message. It’s been attacked by pirates. Captain Jonuta picks up the signal in his ship the Coronet and decides to answer the distress call and rescue the merchantman. Which is a little surprising. Captain Jonuta is after all a slaver. That possibly makes him marginally less lawless and disreputable than a pirate, but not much. Jonuta has never been known to do anything unless there’s a healthy profit in it for him.

The India Spring is carrying a couple of passengers. One of them is a female HRal. Her name is HReenee. This is a newly discovered species. They’re felinoprimates. They’re humanoid, but part cat. They’re an intelligent advanced species but they have some very definite feline tendencies. The capture of the India Spring by the pirates was actually fortunate for HReenee since at the time one of the India Spring’s crew members was raping her. Or rather trying to rape her, and in the process discovering that HRal have razor-sharp slashing claws.

What follows are the usual adventures you’d expect in a story about space pirates. Prisoners escape, there are lots of fights and there’s a tense climactic space battle as Jonuta faces off against a hated rival, Captain Corundum. There’s also a complicated four-way romantic/sexual tangle involving HReenee, her stepbrother HRadem, Captain Jonuta and his first officer Kenowa.

There are three lengthy explicit sexual scenes but I figure that if you’re going to be reading a science fiction sleaze novel (or if you’re going to read a review of a sci-fi sleaze novel) you’re probably going to be able to deal with that. And given the setup outlined earlier you’re probably going to be prepared for some inter-species sexual encounters.

Mostly though this is space opera. And it’s pretty good space opera. The author was an actual science fiction writer and he knows how to write space opera. He’s also familiar with at least some of the realities of space travel, things like zero gravity and creating an artificial gravity effect by having a spacecraft rotating. Most of the science and technology stuff is not outlandishly implausible by space opera standards.

And he knows how to handle action. There are some fine zero-gravity fights and the space battles are quite exciting.

There are several things that make this book a bit more interesting than you might expect. The human characters are just a little bit more than cardboard cut-outs. Jonuta is a slaver so he’s a criminal and his ethical standards are very flexible. But he does have ethical standards. He doesn’t like killing. Sometimes it’s an unfortunate necessity and he’s not going to wallow in guilt about it but it’s something he prefers to avoid. He’s had countless lovers but he’s not entirely predatory towards women (just slightly predatory). Jonuta is no Boy Scout. He is not a conventional hero nor is he a conventional villain. He’s a kind of anti-hero, albeit a reasonably likeable anti-hero.

Kenowa is sex-obsessed but not entirely without at least some romantic feelings. Jonuta and Kenowa are not madly in love but they suit each other and their relationship is not entirely based on sex.

The best thing about this novel however is that it features some of the best aliens in science fiction. Catwomen (or catpeople) were by no means an original idea in 1982. They’d been featured in various movies and the best known fictional examples were the kzinti in Larry Niven’s Known Space stories. But the HRal are a lot more interesting and a lot more convincing than the kzinti. The HRal really are both humanoid and feline. They have an advanced technological society and they’re as intelligent as humans but culturally, socially, emotionally and sexually they’re totally cat-like. And the author gives us both a female HRal (HReenee) and a make HRal (HReenee’s step-brother HRadem). HReenee is cat-like in a very female way and HRadem is cat-like in a very male way. HReenee really is a wonderful character - she is totally alien and yet believable. The behaviour of the HRal throughout the book is completely consistent with nature as feline humanoids.

Unlike many science fiction writers Cleve doesn’t seem to have any ideological axe to grind. There is a galactic empire of sorts but in practice it exercises limited control over the various member planets. There’s a galactic police force but it’s overworked ad undermanned and doesn’t achieve very much. Cleve is one of the few science fiction authors to realise that no central government could possibly exercise any real control over an interstellar empire - the distances are too great and it takes too long to cross those distances. It makes no difference what kind of central government you have, they will still be very very limited in what they can do.

The author has obviously given Playboy Press what they wanted - a science fiction adventure spiced up with lots of sex. But he’s also managed to produce a very entertaining space opera with very cool aliens. This book is much much better than you might expect. It's still trashy, but it's quality trash. And sexy space opera turns out to be a rather attractive concept. Purrfect Plunder is highly recommended.

Edmond Hamilton’s Crashing Suns

Edmond Hamilton (1904-1977) was an American science fiction writer. He was married to fellow science fiction writer Leigh Brackett. Crashing Suns, published in 1965, is a collection of some of his very early work in the genre dating back to the 1920s.

It has to be emphasised that this is very very early space opera. In fact in some ways these stories mark a transitional phase between the scientific romances of the late Victorian era and the space opera of the early part of the “golden age” of science fiction.

These stories recount the adventures of the Interplanetary Patrol, later renamed the Interstellar Patrol. They are very much space opera in general theme but they take place in a very different universe compared that to the universes we find in later space opera. In the late 1920s it still seemed quite possible that planets such as Saturn and Jupiter would be habitable. The nature of the great gas giants was as yet not generally understood. These are also stories that still assume that the vast reaches of outer space are not vacuum but are filled by that mysterious substance known as the æther. Light was believed to be propagated by means of waves in the æther.

In actual fact the æther theory had been pretty much abandoned by the 1920s, having been rendered unnecessary by relativity. At least it had been abandoned by physicists but to non-scientists like Hamilton relativity was still new-fangled esoteric stuff. Hamilton understood that faster-than-light travel was a problem but his understanding of the problem was rather primitive. My impression also is that despite his love for epic scale Hamilton really could not conceive of the ramifications of the vastness of interstellar space.

Most of the science in these stories is completely fanciful and would not have been wildly out of place in the works of Wells and Verne. For some readers this might be a problem. For me it just adds to the charm and the fun. This is Flash Gordon stuff but I happen to love Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. The best way to enjoy these stories is to pretend that they take place in an alternative universe in which all the laws of physics are different. It’s easy enough to accept magic in a fantasy story so it’s really not that much of a problem. And I rather like the idea of a universe that works in a late Victorian manner. 

The novella Crashing Suns, one of Hamilton’s most famous works, first appeared in 1928. It takes place a hundred thousand years in the future and it can’t be accused of lacking ambition. A dying red giant star is on a collision course with our sun! Mankind has only just developed the technology to achieve interstellar travel. A brilliant young scientist has designed an interstellar drive which creates its own waves in the æther which the spaceship then rides. Young Interplanetary Patrol cruiser captain Jan Tor is put in command. His mission is to reach the dying red star and find a way to stop it!

This story has delightfully goofy science, high adventure and an epic space battle. Most of all though it has sweeping scale. This is pure pulp space opera and it’s terrific fun.

The Star Stealers is on an equally gigantic scale. Aliens are trying to steal our sun! There are might space battles and lots of breathless excitement and you have to love the idea of an inhabited sun, with cities on it.

Within the Nebula concerns another threat to the galaxy. The vast nebula at the centre of the Milky war has started to spin. If it keeps spinning it will fly apart, ending death and destruction to all the worlds of the Federation. A new star cruiser, designed to withstand intense heat, is dispatched to discover the cause of this impending disaster. The three crew members, of three different species, penetrate into the heart of the nebula itself. Inside they find a strange world and the source of the menace but it seems they may be powerless to avert the coming catastrophe.

The Comet Drivers presents yet another deadly menace to the galaxy - a gigantic vampire comet! As the story title suggests this comet does not follow a random orbit - it is controlled by some form of intelligent life. Intelligent but distinctly unfriendly.

The Cosmic Cloud presents the interstellar civilisation with yet another horrific threat - a gigantic cloud of darkness at the centre of the galaxy. This is a region of absolute utter darkness. There is no light at all. Not a glimmer. Of course it’s impossible that any kind of intelligent life could survive under such conditions. Or is it? This world of darkness is one of Hamilton’s most unsettling concepts.

Hamilton’s style is pure pulp. There is absolutely zero characterisation. It’s all action and all on the vastest scale and the breadth of imagination is nothing if not impressive.

As you may have gathered by now these five stories are all variations on a single theme. A massive heavenly body of some kind is about to destroy the galaxy, there are malevolent aliens directing these events, these aliens are entirely evil with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, the heroes are captured and must escape, there is a race against time and there is at least one huge space battle. It’s a formula that was working for Hamilton at the time and he stuck to it quite rigidly.

It’s interesting to contrast Hamilton’s early work with the early work of his wife Leigh Brackett (here’s the link to my review of some of her early stories). Brackett was interested in the fate of individuals. Hamilton is interested solely in the fate of galaxies. Brackett was fascinated by the past, by ancient civilisations. Hamilton writes about a 200,000-year-old civilisation but he tells us not one single thing about its history. In fact he tells us very little of any kind about this civilisation.

Of course these tales were written by Hamilton when he was in his mid-twenties. He may have developed a much greater sophistication in his later books. These stories did however establish him as a writer of space opera. His faults, like his stories, are on the grand scale. Those faults are balanced by real strengths - breathless pacing and non-stop excitement. Their pulpiness makes E.E. Doc Smith seem subtle and polished. But they are fun and the odd late Victorian scientific concepts give them a distinctive flavour. 

The quality of the five stories, written between 1928 and 1930, is quite consistent. All are fun in their own way.

Recommended, especially if your tastes run to early space opera and you have no problems with wildly unrealistic science.

Buck Rogers - The Airlords of Han

Philip Francis Nowlan (1888-1940) wrote a number of science fiction stories but is best remembered as the creator of Buck Rogers. Buck Rogers made his debut in the 1928 novella Armageddon - 2419 A.D. and later featured in a long-running comic strip (also written in its early days by Nowlan). 

The Airlords of Han, the second Buck Rogers novella, appeared in 1929. The two novellas were later republished in a single volume edition.

In 1927 Anthony “Buck” Rogers is overcome by radioactive gas in an abandoned coal mine and left in a state of suspended animation. When he is finally revived in the year 2419 he finds that the United States has changed rather dramatically. After a long and disastrous war against Bolshevik-dominated Europe the US has been conquered by an Asiatic race known as the Han (although in fact they are not of entirely earthly origin). Most of the US population has been killed. The survivors carry on a guerilla war against the Han. Initially the Han have all the technological advantages - they have repeller beams to power their spacecraft and deadly disintegrator beams. The Americans, organised into scattered tribes, have however made some technological breakthroughs of their own, such as the manufacture of the weightless and totally inert element inertron.

The Han dominate the country through their fifteen major cities such as Nu-Yok and Bos-Tan. The Americans have come to dominate the countryside.

This is the background to Armageddon - 2419 A.D. which deals with the early stages of the great war against the Han in which Buck Rogers will play an important role.

In The Airlords of Han the war intensifies as both sides develop new weapons and tactics and the conflict becomes ever more savage. Rogers is captured during one battle and subjected to months of hypnotic and moral torture. During his captivity he learns much that would be of value to the American forces but escape seems impossible.

Nowlan isn’t content just to tell us that these armies of the future have weapons like disintegrator guns. He tells us how these technologies work. We therefore get some of the most intricately detailed technobabble in all of science fiction. The downside is that he gives us this information in slightly clumsy and excessively lengthy infodumps but the upside is that it’s all so gloriously silly that it’s difficult to complain.

While the explanations of the workings of the technology are pure pseudoscience the book does anticipate many later technological developments - such as drone strikes. Most of the Han industry is essentially robotic with humans controlling the process through telescreens without having to leave their comfortable apartments. Interestingly enough while enormous claims were being made in 1929 about the potential of airpower to win wars on its own Nowlan seems very sceptical. He clearly believed that a future war would ultimately be won by boots on the ground with artillery being more important than airpower.

In between the infodumps the action is pretty much non-stop and surprisingly violent it is too. The First World War had obviously made an impression on Nowlan and the future war that he describes is very much total war with civilians being considered to be perfectly legitimate targets. This is more than just a war - it is a clash between civilisations that regard each other with hatred and contempt. Although Nowlan died in 1940 one gets the feeling that the emergence of total war in the 1939-45 conflict would not have surprised him.

These Buck Rogers novellas can be considered to more or less belong to the space opera  sub-genre although the action takes place entirely on Earth. The epic scale of the battles is certainly what you expect in space opera. 

The Han are described as Mongolians but it is hinted that their origins may lie beyond the Earth and that they are not entirely human. Their partly Asiatic origins might lead you to suspect that these stories form part of the then-popular Yellow Peril genre but I’m not sure this is quite true. The Han civilisation is avowedly materialistic and atheist and may be more reflective of the Bolshevik Peril than the Yellow Peril. The Han civilisation seems like a mix of feudalism and communism and the author makes it clear that it is also very much a decadent civilisation. Oddly enough, given that the book was written in 1929, the Han bear a closer resemblance to the soviet communism of the 50s and 60s than to the Soviet Union of the late 20s.

It should be noted that in these two early novellas the hero Anthony Rogers has not yet acquired the nickname Buck. He’s a typical square-jawed action hero. Generally there’s no attempt whatsoever at characterisation, although the chief villain San-Lan is quite interesting.

This is military sci-fi rather than adventure sci-fi - there’s plenty of action but it’s large-scale action with the hero’s own exploits playing a comparatively minor role.

Buck Rogers would go on to feature in an excellent 1939 movie serial and the fun 1970s TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

The Airlords of Han is pretty enjoyable. Recommended.

Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Space

Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Space was serialised in Astounding in 1934 and later published in book form. Williamson’s idea was to take the classic adventure tale The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas père, combine it with a larger-than-life character based on Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff and then turn it into a space opera.The results were highly successful and several sequels followed (the last of them being published as late as 1983).

The Legion of Space is a fine example of the space opera of the pulp era. Williamson did not quite have Doc Smith’s gift for space opera on a truly epic scale. Williamson was probably aware of this. While Doc Smith would portray space warfare on the grand scale Williamson opts instead for a tighter focus, giving us space warfare on a more human scale.

The book starts with an old soldier in 1945 setting down his recollections of the future. He has, or claims to have, the ability to remember events that will happen in the future. His descendants, the Ulnar family, will play crucial rôles in the history of humanity for the next thousand years. Over the course of this coming millennium humanity will colonise the rest of the Solar System and will eventually reach a nearby star where they will encounter an advanced and very dangerous alien civilisation. Our own civilisation will see democracy decline and fall to be replaced by an empire, only to have the empire collapse and democracy resurgent. An Ulnar will become emperor. After the fall of the empire the family will survive and continue to cherish imperial ambitions. In the thirtieth century an Ulnar will make a fresh bid for empire, while another Ulnar will be the champion of democracy.

This vast story forms the prologue to the novel. The novel itself focuses on a period of a few months during which a handful of will decide humanity’s destiny.

John Ulnar has just graduated from the Academy and is now a member of the famed Legion of Space, sworn to defend democracy and civilisation. The young officer owes his chance to serve in the Legion to a powerful and influential kinsman, the commander of the Legion itself, Adam Ulnar. Adam Ulnar is now the leader of the purple faction whose aim is to put an Ulnar once more on the imperial throne. Young John Ulnar however knows nothing of his kinsman’s treachery or of the even more dangerous treachery of his uncle Eric Ulnar.

Eric Ulnar led the ill-fated expedition to Barnard’s Star. They discovered the civilisation of the Medusae, an ancient and malevolent race. One of the five ships comprising the expedition returned safely, bringing with it tales of madness and death.

Our species is not defenceless. We have a super-weapon but the weapon is so terrifying that its secret is known only to one living person at a time. That person in the thirtieth century is a young woman. John Ulnar has been assigned to protect the life of that young woman. It will prove to be a difficult task but he will find three faithful allies in the form of three ill-assorted but courageous legionnaires. 

John Ulnar is of course a science fictional version of d’Artagnan while the three legionnaires are the Three Musketeers. One of the three, Giles Habibula, is the Falstaff character. Giles is a broken-down old soldier much given to grumbling but he has some surprising talents, having been a master thief in his youth. Giles Habibula can not only open any lock devised by man, but any lock devised by any intelligent race.

The story is, like The Three Musketeers, an outrageous tale of adventure with countless narrow escapes and fights against seemingly impossible odds. The four heroes, along with  the girl who holds the secret to human survival, will journey across the stars to take on the Medusae in their stronghold.

Williamson might not have Doc Smith’s genius for describing space battles on a galactic scale but he can certainly tell an exciting story. He can also create characters who are more vivid and colourful than Smith’s. His villains are complex and their motivations are believable. Williamson also makes use of what were then the exciting new-fangled ideas about time and space developed by physicists like Einstein. Williamson is bold enough to predict faster-than-light travel and to offer an explanation for it that at least sounds vaguely plausible. He can also create a very effective atmosphere of strangeness and menace.

If The Legion of Space cannot quite equal Smith’s Galactic Patrol it is nonetheless supremely entertaining and thrilling space opera of the highest quality. Highly recommended.

E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Galactic Patrol

E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Galactic Patrol was serialised in Astounding in 1937 and published in book form in 1950. It was the first of his famous Lensman books to be written. Smith later rewrote his 1934 novel Triplanetary to make it a prequel to the Lensman series and then wrote First Lensman as a bridge between Triplanetary and the Lensman series proper. Galactic Patrol then became the third book of the Lensman series although it works perfectly fine as a standalone novel.

Galactic Patrol demonstrates very neatly why Smith’s name became synonymous with space opera. This is space opera in its purest form with the emphasis on fast-moving action and adventure entertainment.

Kim Kinnison is one of the handful of cadets to complete his training as a Lensman. Only a tiny fraction of the candidates ever completes the course. He is now an officer of the Galactic Patrol, but he is far more than this. He is now a Lensman. The Lens is now placed on his wrist and only death can remove it. Lensmen are so carefully selected that they are absolutely trustworthy. They belong to many different races but any Lensman can contact another Lensman at any time by pure thought and the Lens allows him to understand any language no matter how alien it might be. It is impossible to steal a Lens - if anyone but its rightful wearer tries to wear it the result is instant death.

The Lens is a badge of office, a symbol of trust and a sophisticated communications device. It is actually far more than that, but as yet no-one has penetrated its secrets or understands its full potentialities.

The Galactic Patrol is a kind of interstellar police force, with practically unlimited powers. It is now even more absolutely essential than usual, with the galaxy being ravaged by pirates. These pirates are, as Kim Kinnison gradually comes to realise, more than mere pirates. They are an empire, and an evil one, and of a power and with technologies that can scarcely be imagined. Their ultimate aims of the pirates of Boskone go far beyond crime, although the exact nature of those aims is uncertain. 

The Lens is the product of the Arisian civilisation, a civilisation so ancient and so advanced that the Arisians seem to operate in the realms of pure thought and to take no active interest in other races or civilisations. The fact that they have devised the Lens and supplied it to the Galactic Patrol does however indicate that the Arisians are not as indifferent to galactic events as they appear to be.

As Kim Kinnison discovers the full powers of the Lens modern readers will discern the very obvious influence of the Lensman series on the concept of the Force from the Star Wars movies. In fact a modern reader will spot many parallels between Doc Smith’s books and the Star Wars saga.

Kim Kinnison has been assigned to command a new immensely powerful but experimental  space battleship, the Britannia. The Galactic Patrol and the Boskone pirates are engaged in an arms race, both sides trying desperately to gain a decisive technological edge. This is an element that gives the book a distinctive flavour compared to most space operas of its era. The outcome of individual battles is of little importance - what matters is to gain access to the enemy’s latest technological breakthroughs while preventing him from getting his hands on one’s own technology.

The great fear of the Galactic Patrol is that will find themselves drawn into a meat-grinder war of attrition with the pirates. Smith was born in 1890 so the war of attrition that the First World War became would have been something that he was all too aware of.

That’s not to say that battles play no part in the story. There are enough battles and enough action to satisfy any space opera fan. Kim Kinnison will go through a series of thrilling adventures. He is not however merely an action hero. He is the man who will finally learn to unleash the full powers of the lens. This is a rousing tale of adventure but it’s also a kind of quest story, with the hero slowly discovering his full potential and moving towards his destiny. This is space opera, but space opera with a bit more to it.

The pirates of Boskone can be seen as having something in common with the totalitarian dictatorships whose shadow loomed so large and so menacingly over the world at the time the story was written, but they can also be seen as a warning of the havoc that results when organised crime gets its hands on the levers of political power.

As a writer Smith had no great literary skills and no gift at all for characterisation but he had other qualities that make him a crucially important writer in the genre. He could tell a story with energy and a great deal of élan, and he could tell stories on a truly epic scale. His imagination was more than sufficient for his task. He could create strange and vivid alien worlds and people them with strange and fascinating alien creatures. He could combine straight-out full-bore excitement with just enough of a philosophical underpinning to add extra zest, and he could seamlessly blend the quasi-mystical element of the Lens into his story.

However rough and ready his style may have been (and his ear for dialogue was very poor) this is space opera of the highest order, immensely influential and still today wonderfully entertaining. Highly recommended.

E. E. "Doc" Smith’s Triplanetary

E. E. "Doc" Smith’s novel Triplanetary was initially published in serial form in Astounding Stories in 1934. Smith later extensively reworked the novel to serve as the first of two prequels to his Lensman series. The reworked version was published in book form in 1948.

Triplanetary tells the initial part of the aeons-long struggle between two highly advanced civilisations, the Arisians and the Eddorians. The Arisians are very much the good guys while the Eddorians are equally emphatically the bad guys. The Eddorians, to all practical purposes immortal and formless, have the ability to take on many corporeal forms.

The Arisians are aware of the uncomfortable fact that they cannot defeat the Eddorians. They can however direct the evolution of other life-forms that will eventually (if the Arisians’  long-term plans work out) be able to stop the Eddorians.

Humans are the species chosen for the Arisians’ long-range eugenics program. The first half of the novel takes us first to ancient Rome and then to the three great 20th century world wars. A gladiator is the instrument chosen to destroy the emperor Nero, who is in fact an Eddorian whose mission is to destroy Roman civilisation. In the world wars various members of the Kinnison family play a key role. The Kinnisons are one of the blood-lines destined to be the instrument for a final war against the Eddorians.

Human civilisation is all but destroyed but is rebuilt by the Arisians. Human civilisation spreads throughout the solar system in the Triplanetary League. 

The second half of the novel is the saga of an epic struggle between the Triplanetary League and space pirates led by a man called Roger. Like Nero Roger is an Eddorian in human (or at least humanoid) form. The struggle becomes a three-way conflict when another advanced civilisation, that of the Nevians, intervenes. The Nevians are distinctly non-humanoid amphibians. Their spaceships and weapons rely for their awesome power on a very rare element indeed, iron. The Nevians’ discovery that iron is plentiful on Earth, plentiful to an extent beyond their wildest imaginings, will prove to be of crucial importance directly to the Nevians, and indirectly to human civilisation.

Triplanetary’s second half is pure space opera, albeit space opera of a fabulously inventive kind. Triplanetary secret agent Conway Costigan is a classic square-jawed space opera hero of the Flash Gordon type that became so popular in the 1930s. Smith is very adept at  describing epic space battles and is equally skilled in the imagining of strange alien worlds such as the aquatic world of the Nevians. The submarine battles on Nevia are as spectacular as the space battles between the Triplanetary League and the pirates.

The Nevians prove to be formidable adversaries but they are not conventional villains. Their actions make perfect sense from their point of view and Costigan and his fellow adventurers, captured by these amphibian space roamers, develop a grudging respect for them. While the Eddorians are pure evil the Nevians are simply alien, pursuing their own interests as they understand them. The Nevians regard humans with fascinated repugnance but as the story progresses the fascination comes to outweigh the repugnance.

The discovery that iron can be an immensely powerful fuel source allows the Triplanetary League to complete a super spaceship named the Boise. The Boise allows humans to achieve faster-than-light travel and to expand their horizons far beyond the solar system.

Smith’s style is rather pulpy but it’s wonderfully energetic. The scope of his imagination is dazzling and puts the novel in a different league from the Flash Gordon brand of space opera. Triplanetary’s story spans not merely centuries but billions of years. To the Arisians and the Eddorians the span of a human life is so brief as to be inconsequential.

Triplanetary offers excitement combined with ideas on the grand scale and you can’t ask for much more from science fiction. Highly recommended.