E. E. Smith's Spacehounds of IPC

E. E. “Doc” Smith (1890-1965) was arguably the founding father of space opera, writing his first such book, The Skylark of Space, in 1920.

Spacehounds of IPC was serialised in Amazing Stories in 1931 and published in book form in 1947.

The giant passenger spaceship IPV Arcturus is part of the fleet of IPC (the Inter-Planetary Corporation). Spaceflight seems to be the province of private enterprise rather than government.

On a routine voyage the Arcturus is attacked by a mysterious spacecraft of totally unknown origin. The enemy has terrifying weaponry. The Arcturus is literally sliced into little pieces. Two survivors make their escape in an improvised space lifeboat.

They are Dr Percival Stevens, known to everyone as Steve, and Nadia Newton, the young daughter of the chairman of the IPC.

One thing that might confuse readers initially is that Steve is a computer. That doesn’t mean that he is a machine. He is an ordinary flesh and blood man but in this imaginary future electronic computers do not exist (and of course in 1931 they did not exist), so a computer is merely a human physicist with specialised mathematical abilities. In this imaginary future all the calculations necessary for inter-planetary spaceflight are done on paper. There are not even calculating machines.

In 1931 General Relativity and quantum mechanics were wild new theories. Rocketry was in its infancy. No-one really had any idea how spaceflight might be achieved but science fiction writers were confident that it would happen. I don’t know if any revisions were made for the 1947 book publication but I suspect that if any were made such revisions were minor. The novel seems to reflect the scientific and technological knowledge of 1931 rather than 1947. That’s what makes it fun.

Giant terrestrial power plants beam power to spaceships in space. Or rather, in the ether. Yes, Smith still believed in the luminiferous aether which in 1931 was an idea already all but discarded. There are visirays which reflect 1930s sci-fi notions of television as a kind of magic ray that can allow one to see just about anything that is happening anywhere. Almost all the technology in the story is pretty much straight-out magic. That gives the story much of its charm. There is so much crazy pseudoscience and delirious technobabble gobbledygook.

And it clearly dates from a time when knowledge of the other planets of the solar system was very very sketchy. Smith assumes that Jupiter is a rocky planet covered in a very thick atmosphere.

Mars, Venus and the satellites of Saturn and Jupiter are all inhabited by humanoids all of whom are believed to be descended from a common ancestor. They differ wildly in appearance from terrestrial humans, having evolved to survive in very different environments, but they all consider themselves to be human and they have formed an inter-planetary federation. There are also bizarre non-humanoid intelligent creatures on the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn and the Arcturus has just had a very unpleasant encounter with one such life-form.

Steve and Nadia take refuge on Ganymede which is very earth-like. They will make contact with humanoids from the Jovian satellites. And since this is Doc Smith there will be epic space battles involving wonderfully bizarre spacecraft and weaponry. And of course Steve and Nadia will fall in love.

This is a story in which genius scientists like Steve can overcome complex scientific challenges in a couple of days. Building a spaceship takes longer, but for an expert it’s a totally achievable do-it-yourself project. This is fast-paced pulpy fun and there are crazy cool aliens and lots of stuff gets blown up. A highly recommended classic of early space opera.

I’ve also reviewed Smith’s The Skylark of Space, Galactic Patrol and Triplanetary and they’re all enjoyable.