Name: The Skylark of Space
ISBN: 9781434400475

The Skylark of Space

Skylark Series, Book 1 of 4 Brilliant government scientist Richard Seaton discovers a remarkable faster-than-light fuel that will power his interstellar spaceship, The Skylark. His ruthless rival, Marc DuQuesne, and the sinister World Steel Corporation will do anything to get their hands on the fuel. They kidnap Seaton's fiancée and friends, unleashing a furious pursuit and igniting a burning desire for revenge that will propel The Skylark across the galaxy and back. The Skylark of Space is the first and one of the best space operas ever written. Breezy dialogue, romantic intrigue, fallible heroes, and complicated villains infuse humanity and believability into a conflict of galactic proportions. The Amazing Stories publication of The Skylark of Space in 1928 heralded the debut of a major new voice in American pulp science fiction and ushered in its golden age. Legions of interstellar epics have been written since that time, but none can match the wonder, dazzle, and sheer fun of the original.

What Hacker News says

kabdibOct 2014

When I was 12 or 13 I discovered E E "Doc" Smith, John W Campbell and Philip Nowlan. I'd been reading more contemporary authors like Heinlein and Andre Norton, and the sheer "noise" of these older books were astonishing. What teenage boy doesn't like antimatter planets being flung at Boskonian space pirate outposts, or spaceships powered by solidified light? For a while I loved them.

I still have fond memories of Smith's galaxy-spanning Skylark series, the planet bashing swagger of the Lensman series, and Campbell's unapologetic "super science", but the prose has not aged well and I find them difficult to read now. I feel a little sad about that.

I can still recommend Smith's The Skylark of Space and Skylark Three, and Campbell's The Moon is Hell, but not much else.

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PaulHouleDec 2023

Going way back the Skylark of Space series was all about people showing up to some solar system where two species are fighting it out and then they settle it but then they find some other species is planning to wipe them all out so now they need to speed run 10,000 years of technological development to survive.

The Lensman books by the same author are about a drug war and space war that is secretly (to the people in the books) a war against diabolical invaders from another universe.

I am reading Pohl Anderson’s The Star Fox (1965) which is about a space navy veteran who that wages a private war against aliens who attacked a human settlement and (it turns out rightly) believes that aliens have no interest in sharing space with humans or any other species. Notably he is opposed by the violent “militants for peace” movement.

Niven certainly thought it was a good thing that man won the Man-Kzin wars even though he himself only wrote about them as a historical event until he got other people to write more details about it.

I would say the peace orientation was a product of the “New Wave” that ran from maybe 1960-1980, once the 1980s came around you had Tor Press which was consciously right-wing and published books like Ender’s Game, Forge of God, etc. I recently re-read The Four Lords of the Diamond, which I see as pro-war even if it ends very badly for humans.

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