By Jonathan Klotz | Published
Hollywood was built on adaptations, incl Gone with the wind. And The Wizard of Ozand over the last few decades, it feels like every single Phillip Dick sci-fi novel has made it to the screen. Sci-fi novels are difficult to bring to life, which is why studios love Dick’s works, which eschew the classic space opera style for a more grounded, psychological take on technology. Budgetary concerns must be one of the main reasons why the work of EE Doc Smith, the father of space opera and, at one point, America’s most famous sci-fi novelist, was never adapted. If you’ve never heard of Smith or read any of his novels, you’ve at least seen other projects heavily influenced by his novels, including Babylon 5 And Star Wars.
EE Doc Smith was born in Wisconsin in 1890 and became a chemical engineer in 1915 when a late-night conversation with a college friend about space travel planted the seeds for what would become history’s greatest, would become one of the most influential writing careers. Smith and his wife, Jane McDougall, were hosting Carl and Lee Garby when Carl tried to convince his friend to start writing down his grandiose ideas about space travel. Smith loved the science aspects but knew the need for a successful story to include romance, which he felt was woefully inadequate to provide.
Lee Garby volunteered to write the romantic dialogue, which led to a partnership that led to the famous Skylark series, which would eventually create the sci-fi genre we now know as “space opera”. know from
Skylark of Space
The Skylark of Space Now it reads like a series of sci-fi clichés one after the other, but that’s because EE Doc Smith invented these tropes. Or rather, Smith and Garby took the classic tropes of Westerns and placed them in an interstellar sci-fi setting, swapping six-shooters and horses for massive galactic empires using lasers and spaceships. Rival scientists and their romantic partners provide the drama as a war rages between competing factions on the planet Osnome.
I was serialized. amazing stories, Started in 1928, The Skylark of Space It was cast aside by the serious literary critics of the time, but it quickly found a fan base. It is often said that artists are not appreciated in their lifetime, but EE Dr. Smith became an overnight sensation, then the sequel, Skylark ThreeReleased in 1930, it would include one of the most influential scenes in sci-fi history: the attack on Mardonalian Castle. Writing on his own without Garby’s assistance for dialogue, Smith wrote the first epic space battle and earned the praise of titans of science fiction, including Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Hanlin (the father of military science fiction).
Lensman
Having defined space opera with the Skylark series, EE was Doctor Smith’s follow-up to, as he himself described, “a galactic police series.” For fans of DC Comics, the series may sound familiar, as Lensman is about the highly advanced Arisian race that forms the Galactic Patrol, which is made up of species that have been selectively bred for races, including humans. , which can use Lens. This special device endows its wielder with superior mental abilities. If this sounds like a Green Lantern cover, you’re right.
Bigger and bolder than Skylark , The Lensman novels became epics spanning billions of years, cementing EE Doc Smith’s place in the pantheon of science fiction trailblazers. Smith even wrote side stories set in the same universe, as published Vortex Blasterwhich had no bearing on the main plotline, follows genius Neil Cloud, a failed lensman, as he uses his intellect to mathematically figure out how to fly a vortex, and the path In, deal with villains and mob bosses on alien planets.
Lack of Hollywood adaptations
EE Doc Smith was a superstar writer in his later years, even attending as many science fiction conventions as he could, and helping to influence your favorite authors, so Hollywood never produced the Skylark or Lensman series. Why not mold? It may be that the first wave of science fiction inspired by Smith’s novels, in turn, became so popular that the original stories seemed derivative. Sounds like the plots of the Skylark novels, in particular. Star Trek: The Original SeriesWhereas the Lensman novels seem like Green Lantern again.
This is why Michael Moorcock’s early steampunk novels Warrior of the Wind (published in 1971) and Keith Laumer’s Groundbreaking Worlds of the Imperium (since 1962) is not adapted, but instead, we get Engines of Death And Hugo. K. Gowda’s novels Dr. Savage There was never a movie, but Indiana Jones became a blockbuster franchise. When a work is so influential that it spawns tributes, parodies, and in this case an entire genre of literature and film, it gets lost in the process.
From superstar to oblivion, EE Doc Smith is still regarded as a legend by die-hard science fiction fans, but in pop culture, he has been surpassed by Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov, among others. has gone Even his friend, Robert Heinlein, another important writer, has been largely ignored by Hollywood. Although Starship Troopers A cult classic, we’re getting a Warhammer 40k adaptation, while Number of animals It’s been in publication since the 1980s, and even though multiverses are hot now, it’s never been adapted.
If Hollywood tries to adapt EE Doc Smith’s stories, it is likely that they will meet the same fate as an adaptation of the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who created and wrote Tarzan. John Carter of Mars. Disney infamously produced one of the greatest sci-fi novels of the 20th century John CarterStarring Taylor Kitsch, it became the biggest box office bomb in history. Joker: Foley A. Dukes took the crown. Disney didn’t know how to market the film and squashed the original story by trying to cover up and downplay the fantastic sci-fi elements of the story.
Science fiction fans are used to bad adaptations that miss the point of the original story, which is the most likely outcome of any big-budget Skylark adaptation. The closest we got to an on-screen EE Doc Smith came thanks to J. Michael Straczynski, who attempted to adapt the Lensman novels. After nearly a decade of work on the project, it was abandoned due to budget issues with bringing the space opera epic to life.
George R.R. Martin, when he first wrote Game of Thrones and launched into A Song of Fire and Snow, saying he wanted the novel to be “non-filmic”. EE Dr. Smith never said so, but his stories are so grandiose in their scope, spanning billions of years, multiple planets, including military armadas engaged in epic battles against fierce rivals and married couples living inside their own personal spaceships. Arguing on the fabric, that Hollywood can never do them justice.
EE Doc Smith was a visionary, a genius creative talent whose vision could only be realized in one place: your imagination.
