The Best of E. E. "Doc" Smith

Don't get me wrong, I love E. E. Doc Smith, and was really looking forward to this collection. I imagined it having a wide variety of short stories that I couldn't find elsewhere. Imagine my disappointment when two of the short stories are excerpts from his longer novels. These are much better in the novels then as stand alone stories. Anther story D'Alembert is, I believe the last thing he wrote, and was intended to be the beginning of another long series that would probably become a book. It did eventually become a series of books finished by another author, which you can probably find at many used book stores. So, if you dont include stories which are excerpts from books, you are only left with 4 stories. These are: Tedric, Lord Tedric-- These stories involve time travel and sword and sorcery, which I thought was a great idea, but the stories weren't all that good. The main problem is that the hero, Tedric, always achieves what he wants in the most linear fashion possible with nobody being able to stand in his way. Robot Nemesis--This is a pretty good story about robots wanting to destroy humanity and the people who fight them. Subspace Explorers--A story about people on a ship when the subspace drive suddenly breaks, and how they go about surviving. This is mostly a good hard science fiction story, though there is an entirely unnecessary part about what seem to be space gangsters which most have been tacked on to add more action to the story. Probably the best part of the collection isn't the stories, but a short essay on the end where Smith discusses how he writes his stories. It isn't long, but it does give you real insight into what he thinks about the writing process. In all, it's not a must have even for an E.E. "Doc" Smith fan, but it is entertaining enough to read for a couple days.

The title just about says it all. This book is a collection of eight stories from the master of the space opera, E.E. "Doc" Smith. Some of it is familiar sampling to anyone who has read much Doc Smith's books: To the Far Reaches of Space is a short section from the first Skylark book, Skylark of Space, and Imperial Stars feature the Flying D'Alemberts, a family of intergalactic spies. And to round out the familiar, there's a segment from Triplanetary, the first of the great Lensman books and one from the Vortex Blaster, the very last of the series. Other stories are not so well known. In two of the stories, the lead character is Lord Tedric, a much more intelligent and humorous version of Conan the Barbarian. Then there's Subspace Explorers and Robot Nemesis, two short stories; one from the 30's and the other from the 60's but both stories show Doc Smith at his best. Doc Smith influenced so many sci-fi writers such as Heinlein, James H. Schmitz, and others, and his ideas of negative matter bombs and hyperspatial tubes, subspace radio, and the like were the basis for such popular movies and series as Star Trek, Star Wars, and Babylon 5. This book is both a fine introduction to Doc Smith and a rare find for his fans who are looking for more of his great works of science fiction and fantasy.