WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.879 I want you to picture a scene. It's roughly 1919. 00:00:03.279 --> 00:00:05.639 Okay, setting the stage. Yeah, and we're in the 00:00:05.639 --> 00:00:09.419 back room of this massive industrial flour mill. 00:00:09.599 --> 00:00:12.759 Oh, wow. The air is just thick with white dust. 00:00:12.939 --> 00:00:15.800 It's loud. And there's a guy there, probably 00:00:15.800 --> 00:00:18.640 covered head to toe in this fine powder. And 00:00:18.640 --> 00:00:21.519 he is just obsessing over a chemical equation. 00:00:21.620 --> 00:00:24.289 Right, and he's not just, you know. A random 00:00:24.289 --> 00:00:26.190 line worker. No, not at all. He's a specialist. 00:00:26.510 --> 00:00:29.269 He is literally trying to figure out the exact 00:00:29.269 --> 00:00:32.170 tensile strength of dough. He's engineering the 00:00:32.170 --> 00:00:34.969 perfect crust for a donut. Exactly. Right. And 00:00:34.969 --> 00:00:38.210 this is his life. He is a food engineer, a guy 00:00:38.210 --> 00:00:40.869 who spent his days genuinely worrying about the 00:00:40.869 --> 00:00:45.109 viscosity of pastry mixes. And I think earlier 00:00:45.109 --> 00:00:47.090 he was working on the bleaching standards of 00:00:47.090 --> 00:00:50.079 oysters. Oysters, butter, yeah. Really glamorous 00:00:50.079 --> 00:00:52.340 stuff. But here's the thing that I just can't 00:00:52.340 --> 00:00:54.640 quite wrap my head around. When this man went 00:00:54.640 --> 00:00:57.020 home, you know, washed the flour out of his hair 00:00:57.020 --> 00:00:59.380 and sat down at his desk. He didn't write about 00:00:59.380 --> 00:01:02.280 baking. No, he certainly didn't. He sat down 00:01:02.280 --> 00:01:04.859 and essentially invented the concept of the Galactic 00:01:04.859 --> 00:01:07.939 Empire. It's so wild to think about. He designed 00:01:07.939 --> 00:01:11.260 starships that were miles long. He casually destroyed 00:01:11.260 --> 00:01:14.659 entire planets. He created the absolute blueprint 00:01:14.659 --> 00:01:17.540 for interstellar warfare that we are frankly. 00:01:18.060 --> 00:01:20.140 Still using in fiction today. It's the ultimate 00:01:20.140 --> 00:01:21.780 double life. I mean, we're talking, of course, 00:01:21.780 --> 00:01:24.239 about Edward Elmer Smith. Yes. Better known to 00:01:24.239 --> 00:01:27.180 history and to sci -fi fans everywhere as E .E. 00:01:27.219 --> 00:01:30.400 Doc Smith. The man who specialized in donut mixes 00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:33.900 by day and blew up solar systems by night. It 00:01:33.900 --> 00:01:36.180 sounds like a joke, but it's actually the key 00:01:36.180 --> 00:01:39.120 to understanding the entire genre of space opera. 00:01:39.299 --> 00:01:41.079 I mean, if you've ever watched Star Wars. Right. 00:01:41.180 --> 00:01:42.680 If you've played Mass Effect, if you've read 00:01:42.680 --> 00:01:45.000 Dune or Foundation. You are walking through a 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:47.459 door that Doc Smith just kicked open while all 00:01:47.459 --> 00:01:50.819 his colleagues were asleep. Exactly. So, the 00:01:50.819 --> 00:01:52.980 mission for our deep dive today is pretty specific. 00:01:53.200 --> 00:01:55.420 We've got a ton of historical sources, letters, 00:01:55.560 --> 00:01:58.439 and literary analyses to pull from. But we aren't 00:01:58.439 --> 00:02:00.840 just doing a dry biography. No, definitely not. 00:02:03.790 --> 00:02:06.450 A guy grounded in the most mundane, practical, 00:02:06.930 --> 00:02:12.270 literal science imaginable managed to dream bigger 00:02:12.270 --> 00:02:14.610 than literally anyone else in his generation. 00:02:14.870 --> 00:02:17.129 And we're going to look at the tangible impact 00:02:17.129 --> 00:02:19.069 of those dreams because this isn't just about 00:02:19.069 --> 00:02:20.930 literary history, right? We're actually going 00:02:20.930 --> 00:02:23.210 to talk about how his wild fiction influenced 00:02:23.210 --> 00:02:26.710 the design of U .S. Navy warships in World War 00:02:26.710 --> 00:02:30.189 II. Yes. That is the connection I am most excited 00:02:30.189 --> 00:02:33.349 to unpack today. It's huge. The idea that a pulp 00:02:33.349 --> 00:02:36.050 sci -fi novel helped win a war in the Pacific. 00:02:36.349 --> 00:02:38.990 It's a bold claim, but the evidence and the sources 00:02:38.990 --> 00:02:42.490 is absolutely there. But before we get to the 00:02:42.490 --> 00:02:44.610 warships and the galactic patrols, we really 00:02:44.610 --> 00:02:47.370 have to understand the man himself. Because Doc 00:02:47.370 --> 00:02:50.229 Smith is, well, he's a bit of a paradox. For 00:02:50.229 --> 00:02:52.449 sure. So let's rewind. Let's go all the way back 00:02:52.449 --> 00:02:54.909 to the beginning. Who was this guy before he 00:02:54.909 --> 00:02:57.219 became the father of space opera? Well, he was 00:02:57.219 --> 00:03:01.360 a Midwestern boy born in May of 1890 in Sheboygan, 00:03:01.419 --> 00:03:05.139 Wisconsin. A very grounded place to start a galactic 00:03:05.139 --> 00:03:07.819 journey. Very grounded. His parents were staunch 00:03:07.819 --> 00:03:10.479 Presbyterians. His father was actually a sailor 00:03:10.479 --> 00:03:12.699 who later transitioned to farming. Oh, interesting. 00:03:12.819 --> 00:03:14.800 Yeah. And they moved around a lot from Wisconsin 00:03:14.800 --> 00:03:18.620 to Spokane, Washington. And eventually they settled 00:03:18.620 --> 00:03:20.659 in Idaho. And you have to remember, we're talking 00:03:20.659 --> 00:03:22.360 about the turn of the century in the American 00:03:22.360 --> 00:03:24.699 West here. Right. This wasn't a life of leisure. 00:03:25.099 --> 00:03:26.979 Not at all. Looking at the notes we have here, 00:03:27.039 --> 00:03:29.000 he wasn't exactly born with a silver spoon in 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:30.819 his mouth. He was working heavy manual labor, 00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:33.560 right? Very heavy manual labor. He was working 00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:36.400 with his hands, doing the kind of backbreaking 00:03:36.400 --> 00:03:39.620 physical work that builds a really specific kind 00:03:39.620 --> 00:03:43.460 of physical toughness. Yeah. But then when he 00:03:43.460 --> 00:03:47.020 was 19, he had what we might call a sliding doors 00:03:47.020 --> 00:03:50.180 moment. A moment that kind of changed everything. 00:03:50.419 --> 00:03:54.319 Yeah. There was a fire. And Smith was fleeing 00:03:54.319 --> 00:03:56.879 from it. And in the chaos of running away, he 00:03:56.879 --> 00:03:59.780 tripped or fell and severely injured his wrist. 00:03:59.919 --> 00:04:02.000 Oh, wow. Which is a career ending injury for 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:04.400 a manual laborer back then. Exactly. He physically 00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:06.620 couldn't do the heavy lifting anymore. So he 00:04:06.620 --> 00:04:08.840 had to pivot. And if that fire hadn't happened. 00:04:08.919 --> 00:04:11.139 Or if he hadn't tripped. Right. If he hadn't 00:04:11.139 --> 00:04:13.520 hurt his wrist, he might have spent his entire 00:04:13.520 --> 00:04:17.540 life as a farmer or a lumberjack in Idaho. We 00:04:17.540 --> 00:04:19.800 might never have had the Lensman series. That 00:04:19.800 --> 00:04:23.860 is just wild to think about. A broken wrist gives 00:04:23.860 --> 00:04:26.779 us the galactic patrol. Yep. So because of the 00:04:26.779 --> 00:04:30.360 wrist, he pivots to academia. He does. He goes 00:04:30.360 --> 00:04:32.399 to the University of Idaho, graduating in the 00:04:32.399 --> 00:04:35.939 class of 1914. And this is where we really start 00:04:35.939 --> 00:04:39.259 to see that Smith wasn't just a grinder. He was, 00:04:39.360 --> 00:04:42.519 well, energetic is an understatement. Yeah, I 00:04:42.519 --> 00:04:44.279 was looking at his list of extracurriculars in 00:04:44.279 --> 00:04:46.139 college. It reads like he was trying to win some 00:04:46.139 --> 00:04:48.519 kind of main character of the universe contest. 00:04:48.680 --> 00:04:51.759 It really does. I mean, he was predictably. The 00:04:51.759 --> 00:04:53.740 president of the chemistry club. Sure, makes 00:04:53.740 --> 00:04:55.680 sense. But he was also president of the chess 00:04:55.680 --> 00:04:58.060 club. Okay, smart guy stuff, check. But then 00:04:58.060 --> 00:04:59.879 he was also the president of the guitar club. 00:04:59.939 --> 00:05:02.660 The guitar club? Yes. And the captain of the 00:05:02.660 --> 00:05:05.240 drill and rifle team. So wait, he's a chemist 00:05:05.240 --> 00:05:08.879 who plays chess, plays guitar, and is a crack 00:05:08.879 --> 00:05:12.060 shot with a rifle. And just to round it out completely, 00:05:12.279 --> 00:05:15.740 he sang the bass lead in the university's Gilbert 00:05:15.740 --> 00:05:18.689 and Sullivan operettas. Okay, stop. That is just 00:05:18.689 --> 00:05:21.370 too much. I know. You have this rifle toting, 00:05:21.430 --> 00:05:23.610 guitar strumming, opera singing chemist. You 00:05:23.610 --> 00:05:26.069 can kind of see the DNA of his future heroes 00:05:26.069 --> 00:05:28.589 right here, can't you? Absolutely. These characters 00:05:28.589 --> 00:05:30.410 are always these hyper -competent people who 00:05:30.410 --> 00:05:33.009 can just do everything. Exactly. He was living 00:05:33.009 --> 00:05:36.569 that life. He valued competence above almost 00:05:36.569 --> 00:05:39.589 anything else. It wasn't enough to just be smart. 00:05:39.730 --> 00:05:41.850 You had to be capable. You had to be able to 00:05:41.850 --> 00:05:44.529 handle a rifle and a complex chemical equation 00:05:44.529 --> 00:05:47.649 at the same time. So he finishes his undergrad. 00:05:48.199 --> 00:05:50.459 Writing a thesis, by the way, called Some Clays 00:05:50.459 --> 00:05:52.819 of Idaho. Oh, yeah. Which I'm sure was just an 00:05:52.819 --> 00:05:54.939 absolute page turner. Thrilling stuff. And then 00:05:54.939 --> 00:05:56.740 he heads to George Washington University for 00:05:56.740 --> 00:05:59.639 his Ph .D. Correct. He gets his Ph .D. in chemical 00:05:59.639 --> 00:06:02.980 engineering in 1918. This is where the Doc nickname 00:06:02.980 --> 00:06:05.800 actually comes from. He earned it. He put in 00:06:05.800 --> 00:06:08.040 the work. He really did. And his dissertation 00:06:08.040 --> 00:06:10.319 title is worth reading in full because it tells 00:06:10.319 --> 00:06:12.560 you exactly how his brain worked. Lay it on me. 00:06:12.839 --> 00:06:15.879 It was titled, The Effect of Bleaching with Oxides 00:06:15.879 --> 00:06:18.199 of Nitrogen Upon the Baking Quality and Commercial 00:06:18.199 --> 00:06:21.980 Value of Wheat Flour. That is wow. That is incredibly 00:06:21.980 --> 00:06:24.720 specific. It is. But think about what that means. 00:06:24.860 --> 00:06:27.899 He was studying how to use dangerous chemicals, 00:06:28.040 --> 00:06:31.100 oxides of nitrogen, to improve something as wholesome 00:06:31.100 --> 00:06:34.139 and everyday as bread. Huh. He was looking at 00:06:34.139 --> 00:06:36.740 the actual molecular structure of food to engineer 00:06:36.740 --> 00:06:39.939 a better, more commercially viable result. So 00:06:39.939 --> 00:06:42.160 when he eventually starts writing about space 00:06:42.160 --> 00:06:44.800 drives and energy weapons, he's approaching it 00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:48.040 with that exact same mindset. Precisely. He wasn't 00:06:48.040 --> 00:06:50.019 a fantasy writer who just waved a magic wand 00:06:50.019 --> 00:06:53.000 to make a ship go fast. He was an engineer. Even 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:54.860 when he was completely making things up, he was 00:06:54.860 --> 00:06:56.959 trying to engineer them to make sense. He wanted 00:06:56.959 --> 00:06:59.500 to know the baking quality of the universe, so 00:06:59.500 --> 00:07:01.579 to speak. That's a great way to put it. It grounds 00:07:01.579 --> 00:07:03.759 the wilder ideas, I think. If you know the guy 00:07:03.759 --> 00:07:06.279 writing about a faster -than -light inertialist 00:07:06.279 --> 00:07:09.779 drive also knows exactly how nitrogen affects 00:07:09.779 --> 00:07:13.360 flour down to the molecule, just trust him a 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:15.920 bit more as a reader. Exactly. You buy into his 00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:18.160 reality. And we can't skip over his personal 00:07:18.160 --> 00:07:20.319 life here because it actually becomes the template 00:07:20.319 --> 00:07:23.649 for his fiction. Right. 1915, he married Jean 00:07:23.649 --> 00:07:25.889 Craig McDougall. The classic roommate -sister 00:07:25.889 --> 00:07:29.170 romance, if I recall. It was. She was the sister 00:07:29.170 --> 00:07:32.189 of his college roommate. She was Scottish. And 00:07:32.189 --> 00:07:34.829 the sources describe her as remarkably beautiful 00:07:34.829 --> 00:07:38.110 and highly intelligent. And for Smith, she became 00:07:38.110 --> 00:07:41.209 the absolute archetype. The mold for his characters. 00:07:41.470 --> 00:07:44.829 Yes. If you look at the Lensman series, the ultimate 00:07:44.829 --> 00:07:47.850 heroine in that universe, Clarissa McDougall, 00:07:47.970 --> 00:07:51.639 is explicitly based on Jean. even sharing the 00:07:51.639 --> 00:07:54.240 maiden name. So he was basically writing a love 00:07:54.240 --> 00:07:56.680 letter to his wife into the history of the galaxy. 00:07:56.920 --> 00:08:00.180 In a way, yeah. They had three kids, Roderick, 00:08:00.180 --> 00:08:03.180 Verna, and Clarissa. It was a very stable, traditional 00:08:03.180 --> 00:08:06.220 family unit. And I really think that stability 00:08:06.220 --> 00:08:08.519 is what allowed him to have such a wild imagination. 00:08:08.939 --> 00:08:10.660 That makes sense. He had a solid anchor at home 00:08:10.660 --> 00:08:12.720 so his mind could safely wander to the edge of 00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:15.540 the cosmos. Let's talk about the day job again. 00:08:15.819 --> 00:08:17.800 Because we mentioned the donuts at the very beginning, 00:08:17.899 --> 00:08:20.100 but that wasn't the only thing he did. No, not 00:08:20.100 --> 00:08:22.899 at all. He started out as a junior chemist at 00:08:22.899 --> 00:08:25.160 the Bureau of Standards in D .C., working on 00:08:25.160 --> 00:08:27.279 those butter and oyster standards we joked about. 00:08:27.459 --> 00:08:29.519 Then he actually worked for the Commission for 00:08:29.519 --> 00:08:32.980 Relief in Belgium during World War I. And here 00:08:32.980 --> 00:08:34.799 is a detail from the sources that I think is 00:08:34.799 --> 00:08:38.679 absolutely crucial. Smith desperately wanted 00:08:38.679 --> 00:08:41.399 to go to war. Wanted to fight. He wanted to fly. 00:08:41.600 --> 00:08:44.740 He tried to enlist as a pilot. He wanted to get 00:08:44.740 --> 00:08:47.879 into one of those canvas and wood Jenny biplanes 00:08:47.879 --> 00:08:50.899 and dogfight over Europe. Wow. But they wouldn't 00:08:50.899 --> 00:08:53.940 let him. No, chemists were way too valuable to 00:08:53.940 --> 00:08:56.559 the war effort. Or, as he later joked about it, 00:08:56.620 --> 00:08:58.419 the planes were too expensive for the military 00:08:58.419 --> 00:09:01.100 to trust him with one. That's funny. But that 00:09:01.100 --> 00:09:03.220 frustration, that deep desire to be up in the 00:09:03.220 --> 00:09:06.159 air, controlling a powerful machine, dogfighting 00:09:06.159 --> 00:09:08.679 that never left him. You can see that channeling 00:09:08.679 --> 00:09:11.139 directly into his writing. If the army wouldn't 00:09:11.139 --> 00:09:13.720 let him fly a biplane over France, he was going 00:09:13.720 --> 00:09:16.200 to fly a miles -long dreadnought over the galactic 00:09:16.200 --> 00:09:19.820 core. Exactly. It's pure wish fulfillment. So 00:09:19.820 --> 00:09:21.919 after the war, he goes into the private sector. 00:09:21.980 --> 00:09:24.039 He becomes the chief chemist for F .W. Stock 00:09:24.039 --> 00:09:26.500 & Sons and later the production manager at the 00:09:26.500 --> 00:09:29.480 Don Donut Company. That was around 1936. And 00:09:29.480 --> 00:09:31.379 this wasn't some cushy desk job where he just 00:09:31.379 --> 00:09:33.470 signed papers and went golfing. Far from it. 00:09:33.509 --> 00:09:36.190 The records show he was working 18 -hour days, 00:09:36.350 --> 00:09:39.049 seven days a week. That is brutal. He was physically 00:09:39.049 --> 00:09:42.389 in the factory developing new mixes, troubleshooting 00:09:42.389 --> 00:09:45.789 the production lines. This was grueling, high 00:09:45.789 --> 00:09:47.870 -pressure industrial work. It's just incredible 00:09:47.870 --> 00:09:50.549 to visualize. He's standing there, smelling frying 00:09:50.549 --> 00:09:52.649 dough, completely exhausted, probably covered 00:09:52.649 --> 00:09:54.990 in flour, like we said. And meanwhile, in the 00:09:54.990 --> 00:09:57.110 back of his head, he's plotting the trajectory 00:09:57.110 --> 00:10:00.309 of a starship. Yeah. How did he actually make 00:10:00.309 --> 00:10:02.909 that leap? Like, how does a tired donut engineer 00:10:02.909 --> 00:10:06.509 actually sit down and start writing The Skylark 00:10:06.509 --> 00:10:09.149 of Space? It all traces back to one specific 00:10:09.149 --> 00:10:12.460 night in 1915. The Smiths were living in Washington, 00:10:12.639 --> 00:10:15.039 D .C., and they were visiting an old classmate 00:10:15.039 --> 00:10:17.899 of his, Dr. Carl Garvey, and his wife, Lee. Ah, 00:10:18.220 --> 00:10:20.759 the Big Bang of space opera. It really was. They 00:10:20.759 --> 00:10:22.899 were sitting around after dinner, and the conversation 00:10:22.899 --> 00:10:25.200 just naturally turned to space travel. Just pure 00:10:25.200 --> 00:10:27.080 speculation. You know, could we ever go to the 00:10:27.080 --> 00:10:29.120 stars? What would we find out there? And amidst 00:10:29.120 --> 00:10:31.940 this excitement, someone told Smith, you have 00:10:31.940 --> 00:10:33.519 these incredible ideas. You should write them 00:10:33.519 --> 00:10:37.100 down. Right. But Smith hesitated. He didn't really 00:10:37.100 --> 00:10:39.740 think of himself as a writer. Why not? He clearly 00:10:39.740 --> 00:10:42.220 had the imagination. He had a very specific insecurity. 00:10:42.539 --> 00:10:45.200 He said he could handle the science, the action, 00:10:45.299 --> 00:10:48.820 the exploration, no problem. But he felt a novel 00:10:48.820 --> 00:10:52.379 needed romantic elements. Human drama. Exactly. 00:10:52.440 --> 00:10:56.610 It needed human drama. The rigorous, serious 00:10:56.610 --> 00:10:59.769 scientist felt super uncomfortable writing about 00:10:59.769 --> 00:11:03.029 love and emotions and, you know, flirting. Which 00:11:03.029 --> 00:11:04.809 is funny, considering he was happily married 00:11:04.809 --> 00:11:08.289 to a woman he clearly adored. True. But experiencing 00:11:08.289 --> 00:11:10.490 love and writing it for an audience are two very 00:11:10.490 --> 00:11:12.649 different things. So they came up with a solution. 00:11:12.870 --> 00:11:15.789 A collaboration. Yes. Lee Garby, his friend's 00:11:15.789 --> 00:11:17.970 wife, offered to write the love interest parts 00:11:17.970 --> 00:11:20.509 and the dialogue. That's amazing. And Smith would 00:11:20.509 --> 00:11:23.289 handle the physics, the battles, and the aliens. 00:11:23.590 --> 00:11:25.720 It's like a split -brain novel. One hemisphere 00:11:25.720 --> 00:11:27.940 is doing feelings and dialogue. The other hemisphere 00:11:27.940 --> 00:11:30.460 is doing orbital mechanics and explosions. And 00:11:30.460 --> 00:11:33.220 it worked. The main characters in the Skylark 00:11:33.220 --> 00:11:36.419 of Space are basically just them. The heroes, 00:11:36.620 --> 00:11:39.299 the Setons, were clearly modeled on the Smiths. 00:11:39.299 --> 00:11:41.919 The wealthy, cultured friends who come along, 00:11:42.159 --> 00:11:45.059 the Cranes, were the Garbys. They just wrote 00:11:45.059 --> 00:11:47.159 themselves into their own space adventure. They 00:11:47.159 --> 00:11:48.740 really did. So they finished the book around 00:11:48.740 --> 00:11:52.419 1920. Do they just pop champagne and become instant 00:11:52.419 --> 00:11:55.000 bestsellers? Absolutely not. They hit a massive 00:11:55.000 --> 00:11:57.940 wall. You have to remember, in 1920, science 00:11:57.940 --> 00:12:00.159 fiction wasn't really a category on the bookshelf. 00:12:00.399 --> 00:12:02.519 It was barely a concept. Right. Publishers were 00:12:02.519 --> 00:12:05.299 completely baffled by it. Smith sent the manuscript 00:12:05.299 --> 00:12:08.259 out again and again. He actually later calculated 00:12:08.259 --> 00:12:11.000 that he spent more money on postage stamps sending 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:13.059 the manuscript to publishers than he eventually 00:12:13.059 --> 00:12:15.860 received as his first paycheck for it. Oh, man, 00:12:15.960 --> 00:12:17.940 that is depressing. It is. But the rejection 00:12:17.940 --> 00:12:20.360 letters are fascinating historical documents. 00:12:20.700 --> 00:12:23.100 There was one from Bob Davis, who was the editor 00:12:23.100 --> 00:12:25.860 of Argosy magazine. And Argosy was a big deal 00:12:25.860 --> 00:12:28.440 back then. Huge deal. Davis actually liked the 00:12:28.440 --> 00:12:30.159 story. He wrote that he thought it was exciting. 00:12:30.909 --> 00:12:33.529 But he still rejected it. Why? He said it was, 00:12:33.690 --> 00:12:36.850 quote, too far out. Too far out. He genuinely 00:12:36.850 --> 00:12:39.330 thought the readers in 1922 just wouldn't be 00:12:39.330 --> 00:12:42.230 able to suspend their disbelief. A story about 00:12:42.230 --> 00:12:45.070 traveling to other stars, it was too wild. It 00:12:45.070 --> 00:12:47.230 was too imaginative for the market. I mean, in 00:12:47.230 --> 00:12:50.269 hindsight, that is a badge of honor. Your book 00:12:50.269 --> 00:12:52.649 is literally too creative for our audience to 00:12:52.649 --> 00:12:54.929 comprehend. Seriously. So what finally changed? 00:12:55.009 --> 00:12:57.470 How did it get published? The world finally caught 00:12:57.470 --> 00:13:00.590 up to Doc Smith. Specifically, a magazine called 00:13:00.590 --> 00:13:03.649 Amazing Stories launched. This was the first 00:13:03.649 --> 00:13:06.730 magazine ever dedicated solely to what they called 00:13:06.730 --> 00:13:10.210 science fiction. Okay. And in 1928, the editor, 00:13:10.389 --> 00:13:13.529 T. O 'Connor Sloan, finally bought Skylark. And 00:13:13.529 --> 00:13:16.750 what was that massive paycheck? A whopping $75. 00:13:17.009 --> 00:13:20.509 Ouch. Which was eventually raised to $125. Still 00:13:20.509 --> 00:13:22.830 not exactly quits your donut job money? No, definitely 00:13:22.830 --> 00:13:25.929 not. But the reaction from the readers was explosive. 00:13:26.009 --> 00:13:29.830 It ran. as a serial in the magazine and people 00:13:29.830 --> 00:13:31.970 completely lost their minds they had never seen 00:13:31.970 --> 00:13:34.490 scale like this before because before smith if 00:13:34.490 --> 00:13:37.309 you had a space story it was usually what a dream 00:13:37.309 --> 00:13:39.690 sequence or maybe a trip to the moon or mars 00:13:39.690 --> 00:13:44.529 exactly wells or verne very localized smith gave 00:13:44.529 --> 00:13:47.169 them the entire galaxy he gave them infinite 00:13:47.169 --> 00:13:50.460 speeds he gave them godlike power and weapons 00:13:50.460 --> 00:13:52.960 that could crack planets it was the very first 00:13:52.960 --> 00:13:56.220 time readers actually felt the true size of the 00:13:56.220 --> 00:13:59.340 universe in fiction it was but here's the kicker 00:13:59.340 --> 00:14:02.659 smith himself later looked back on skylark and 00:14:02.659 --> 00:14:05.379 was actually pretty critical of it really Why? 00:14:05.539 --> 00:14:08.080 It launched his career. He made a strict distinction 00:14:08.080 --> 00:14:10.879 between scientific fiction and pseudoscience. 00:14:11.279 --> 00:14:14.299 He felt that in Skylark, he had cheated way too 00:14:14.299 --> 00:14:16.600 much. He played too fast and loose with the rules 00:14:16.600 --> 00:14:19.200 of physics. Ah, the engineer's guilt. Exactly. 00:14:19.539 --> 00:14:22.139 He considered Skylark to be pseudoscience. He 00:14:22.139 --> 00:14:23.759 wanted to do something tighter, something that 00:14:23.759 --> 00:14:25.779 felt more real, more like a police procedural 00:14:25.779 --> 00:14:28.320 set in space. And that desire for structure is 00:14:28.320 --> 00:14:30.960 what leads us to his absolute masterpiece, the 00:14:30.960 --> 00:14:33.200 Lensman series. Yes. This is where Smith stops 00:14:33.200 --> 00:14:35.110 just writing Sun's story. and starts building 00:14:35.110 --> 00:14:38.330 a cohesive universe. By 1927, he was already 00:14:38.330 --> 00:14:40.870 thinking about a space police novel. Which is 00:14:40.870 --> 00:14:43.629 such a staple trope for us now. I mean, you've 00:14:43.629 --> 00:14:45.970 got the Green Lantern Corps, you've got the Jedi 00:14:45.970 --> 00:14:49.100 Order, the Spectres and Mass Effect. But back 00:14:49.100 --> 00:14:52.220 then, Cops in Space was a totally fresh idea. 00:14:52.440 --> 00:14:54.759 Completely fresh. And he approached it like a 00:14:54.759 --> 00:14:57.940 literal research project. He read other sci -fi 00:14:57.940 --> 00:15:00.960 stories specifically to analyze cops and robbers' 00:15:01.039 --> 00:15:04.139 troops. He was studying the genre. He cited writers 00:15:04.139 --> 00:15:06.759 like Starzl and Williamson as positive examples. 00:15:07.220 --> 00:15:09.620 He wanted to know what worked and what didn't 00:15:09.620 --> 00:15:12.059 mechanically in a story. And when he finally 00:15:12.059 --> 00:15:14.860 sat down to plan the Lensman series, he didn't 00:15:14.860 --> 00:15:16.960 just scribble some notes on a napkin. I read 00:15:16.960 --> 00:15:19.000 about this. The outline. was massive wasn't it 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:21.500 it was an engineering document she wrote an 85 00:15:21.500 --> 00:15:24.639 page outline for the core novels before he wrote 00:15:24.639 --> 00:15:27.759 a single line of the actual text 85 pages that's 00:15:27.759 --> 00:15:29.740 not an outline that's a whole novella and he 00:15:29.740 --> 00:15:32.259 didn't just write text in this outline he created 00:15:32.259 --> 00:15:35.000 graphs graphs like literally an x and y axis 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:37.759 literally graphs he graphed the peaks of emotional 00:15:37.759 --> 00:15:40.889 intensity you're kidding No, he wanted to visually 00:15:40.889 --> 00:15:43.509 map out the reader's heart rate over the course 00:15:43.509 --> 00:15:46.370 of the book. He also graphed what he called valleys 00:15:46.370 --> 00:15:49.549 of characterization, creating a visual representation 00:15:49.549 --> 00:15:52.730 of when the action needed to slow down so that 00:15:52.730 --> 00:15:55.370 characters could breathe and develop. That is 00:15:55.370 --> 00:15:57.429 the most chemical engineer thing I have ever 00:15:57.429 --> 00:16:00.909 heard in my life. It's like, if I add 15 % more 00:16:00.909 --> 00:16:04.070 emotional intensity here, the reaction will be 00:16:04.070 --> 00:16:07.429 stable. It really is. But he was also self -aware 00:16:07.429 --> 00:16:10.169 enough as a writer to know that plans change. 00:16:10.429 --> 00:16:13.049 He actually noted in his letters that his characters 00:16:13.049 --> 00:16:15.730 would often get away from him and, quote, do 00:16:15.730 --> 00:16:18.490 exactly as they damn please. Which is the mark 00:16:18.490 --> 00:16:21.070 of good writer, honestly. If the characters feel 00:16:21.070 --> 00:16:23.950 real enough in your head to disobey your 85 page 00:16:23.950 --> 00:16:26.159 outline. You're doing something right. Definitely. 00:16:26.259 --> 00:16:28.279 But to keep the universe consistent, because 00:16:28.279 --> 00:16:30.659 he hated loose ends, he did something very clever. 00:16:30.879 --> 00:16:33.100 He actually wrote the very end of the entire 00:16:33.100 --> 00:16:35.360 series, the conclusion of the final book, Children 00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:37.600 of the Lens, immediately after finishing the 00:16:37.600 --> 00:16:40.000 rough draft of the first book, Galactic Patrol. 00:16:40.340 --> 00:16:42.639 Wow. He built the exit before he even built the 00:16:42.639 --> 00:16:45.460 maze. He had to. He wanted to make absolute sure 00:16:45.460 --> 00:16:49.299 that every single plot thread, every alien race 00:16:49.299 --> 00:16:52.039 he introduced in book one, would tie up perfectly 00:16:52.039 --> 00:16:54.580 in book six. It was a massive... architectural 00:16:54.580 --> 00:16:57.399 feat. And clearly the readers responded to that 00:16:57.399 --> 00:17:00.059 level of detail. They devoured it. When Grey 00:17:00.059 --> 00:17:02.960 Lensman was published in 1939 in Astounding Stories, 00:17:03.299 --> 00:17:05.680 the reader polls showed it was the best story, 00:17:05.759 --> 00:17:08.480 quote, by a light year. He was the undisputed 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:10.700 king of the genre at that point. But he did have 00:17:10.700 --> 00:17:12.420 some friction with the editors, specifically 00:17:12.420 --> 00:17:14.960 John W. Campbell, right? Right. Campbell is a 00:17:14.960 --> 00:17:17.039 massive titan in sci -fi history. He was the 00:17:17.039 --> 00:17:19.319 editor of Astounding. Now, Campbell respected 00:17:19.319 --> 00:17:21.880 Smith's popularity. He knew Smith sold magazines 00:17:21.880 --> 00:17:24.279 like crazy. But they had fundamentally different 00:17:24.279 --> 00:17:27.079 philosophies on what sci -fi should be. How so? 00:17:27.339 --> 00:17:29.680 Campbell wanted psychological stories. He wanted 00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:32.240 nuance, moral ambiguity, characters wrestling 00:17:32.240 --> 00:17:35.579 with internal demons. Smith dealt in absolutes. 00:17:35.799 --> 00:17:38.539 Good versus evil, black versus white, civilization 00:17:38.539 --> 00:17:42.480 versus chaos. So by the 1950s? By the 50s, Campbell 00:17:42.480 --> 00:17:45.200 started to view Smith's style as a bit of a dinosaur, 00:17:45.500 --> 00:17:47.980 a relic of the pulp era. He bought... very little 00:17:47.980 --> 00:17:50.559 from him later on. It's the classic old guard 00:17:50.559 --> 00:17:54.220 versus the new wave. Exactly. But even if Campbell 00:17:54.220 --> 00:17:56.339 thought the literary style was old fashioned, 00:17:56.680 --> 00:17:59.180 he could never deny that Smith's technological 00:17:59.180 --> 00:18:01.980 ideas were revolutionary. And this brings us 00:18:01.980 --> 00:18:03.559 to what I think is the most important part of 00:18:03.559 --> 00:18:06.450 our discussion today. The science. and the real 00:18:06.450 --> 00:18:09.490 -world impact. Yes, because we teased this in 00:18:09.490 --> 00:18:11.990 the intro, the connection between Doc Smith's 00:18:11.990 --> 00:18:14.569 fiction and the U .S. Navy. This is a story that 00:18:14.569 --> 00:18:16.829 still completely blows my mind. Walk us through 00:18:16.829 --> 00:18:19.750 it. Okay, so in the Lensman series, Smith describes 00:18:19.750 --> 00:18:22.670 a specific room aboard a command ship called 00:18:22.670 --> 00:18:25.470 the Directrix. What exactly is the Directrix? 00:18:25.470 --> 00:18:27.869 Imagine a massive darkened room. It's referred 00:18:27.869 --> 00:18:30.579 to as a tank. Inside this room, fleet commanders 00:18:30.579 --> 00:18:33.960 can see a real -time, three -dimensional visualization 00:18:33.960 --> 00:18:36.859 of the entire battle space. They aren't looking 00:18:36.859 --> 00:18:39.220 out a glass window at the stars. They are looking 00:18:39.220 --> 00:18:42.019 at screens, lighted displays showing the position 00:18:42.019 --> 00:18:44.579 of every single ship, friend and foe, in the 00:18:44.579 --> 00:18:47.319 fleet. They can communicate instantly with any 00:18:47.319 --> 00:18:50.319 unit. It is a central nerve center for gathering 00:18:50.319 --> 00:18:53.329 and processing tactical information. Right. Now, 00:18:53.470 --> 00:18:55.549 to a modern listener, that just sounds like a 00:18:55.549 --> 00:18:58.210 normal war room or, honestly, a video game mini 00:18:58.210 --> 00:19:00.190 -map. Exactly. We take it for granted. Yeah. 00:19:00.230 --> 00:19:03.849 But you have to contextualize this. In the 1930s, 00:19:03.849 --> 00:19:06.349 when he was conceiving this, naval battles were 00:19:06.349 --> 00:19:08.730 incredibly chaotic. Right. How did they work 00:19:08.730 --> 00:19:10.690 back then? The captain was usually standing on 00:19:10.690 --> 00:19:12.750 the bridge, physically looking out, shouting 00:19:12.750 --> 00:19:16.349 orders. Information came in haphazardly via signal 00:19:16.349 --> 00:19:19.329 flags, flashing lights, or crackly radio, but 00:19:19.329 --> 00:19:22.319 it was fragmented. There was no single... dedicated 00:19:22.319 --> 00:19:24.859 place deep inside the ship where all the radar, 00:19:24.960 --> 00:19:27.059 sonar, and visual information was integrated 00:19:27.059 --> 00:19:30.519 into one cohesive picture. So Doc Smith basically 00:19:30.519 --> 00:19:32.619 invented the concept of an integrated information 00:19:32.619 --> 00:19:35.160 center. He did. And the U .S. Navy was apparently 00:19:35.160 --> 00:19:38.680 paying attention. Fast forward to 1947. John 00:19:38.680 --> 00:19:40.500 W. Campbell, the editor we just talked about, 00:19:40.579 --> 00:19:42.940 writes a letter to Smith. And in this letter, 00:19:43.039 --> 00:19:45.140 Campbell relays a message he received from a 00:19:45.140 --> 00:19:47.539 U .S. Navy officer named Captain Cal Lanning. 00:19:47.599 --> 00:19:49.819 And what did Captain Lanning say? Lehning confirmed 00:19:49.819 --> 00:19:52.880 that he had read Smith's books, and he acknowledged 00:19:52.880 --> 00:19:55.880 openly that the design of the U .S. Navy's Combat 00:19:55.880 --> 00:19:58.759 Information Centers, the CICs that they developed 00:19:58.759 --> 00:20:02.160 during World War II, was, and I quote, taken 00:20:02.160 --> 00:20:04.920 specifically, directly, and consciously from 00:20:04.920 --> 00:20:06.700 the directrix. Wait, Plaz, I just want to make 00:20:06.700 --> 00:20:08.599 sure I and everyone listening fully understand 00:20:08.599 --> 00:20:10.160 this. You were telling me that during World War 00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:13.380 II, while fighting this massive... desperate 00:20:13.380 --> 00:20:15.680 naval war against the Japanese in the Pacific, 00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:18.799 the United States Navy reorganized its entire 00:20:18.799 --> 00:20:21.559 command structure based on a pulp sci -fi novel 00:20:21.559 --> 00:20:24.599 written by a donut chemist. That is exactly what 00:20:24.599 --> 00:20:26.680 happened. Campbell told Smith in that letter, 00:20:26.839 --> 00:20:29.759 you, sir, were 100 % right, as the Japanese Navy 00:20:29.759 --> 00:20:32.200 learned at an appalling cost. That is insane. 00:20:32.500 --> 00:20:34.380 The Japanese had excellent ships. They had brave 00:20:34.380 --> 00:20:36.539 sailors, but they lacked that central nervous 00:20:36.539 --> 00:20:39.319 system on their vessels. The U .S. Navy adopted 00:20:39.319 --> 00:20:42.119 Smith's directrix concept, creating the CIC. 00:20:42.380 --> 00:20:45.559 and it gave them a decisive, overwhelming tactical 00:20:45.559 --> 00:20:48.740 advantage. That is absolutely wild. I mean, it's 00:20:48.740 --> 00:20:51.259 one thing for a sci -fi writer to predict a gadget, 00:20:51.420 --> 00:20:54.180 right? Like a flip phone or an iPad. It's another 00:20:54.180 --> 00:20:57.599 thing entirely to fundamentally redesign the 00:20:57.599 --> 00:20:59.990 architecture of modern warfare. It really shows 00:20:59.990 --> 00:21:02.450 that Smith understood the core problem of command. 00:21:02.990 --> 00:21:05.690 He understood that as battles got bigger, faster, 00:21:05.809 --> 00:21:08.529 and involved more units, the human brain simply 00:21:08.529 --> 00:21:10.589 couldn't keep up without a dedicated interface 00:21:10.589 --> 00:21:13.630 to process the data. So he designed the interface. 00:21:13.990 --> 00:21:16.029 And the military actually built it. Yep. And 00:21:16.029 --> 00:21:17.930 he didn't stop there either. He was making predictions 00:21:17.930 --> 00:21:20.750 all over the place in his books. Oh, yes. The 00:21:20.750 --> 00:21:23.390 man was a prophet of technology. In Skylark, 00:21:23.490 --> 00:21:25.910 which he wrote right after World War I, he describes 00:21:25.910 --> 00:21:28.250 energy processes that look suspiciously like 00:21:28.250 --> 00:21:30.880 cold fumes. Wow. He talks about releasing the 00:21:30.880 --> 00:21:34.559 energy of the atom with negligible waste decades 00:21:34.559 --> 00:21:37.359 before the atomic bomb or nuclear reactors were 00:21:37.359 --> 00:21:40.559 a reality. And he was way into IT before IT even 00:21:40.559 --> 00:21:43.700 existed as a field. Oh, heavily. He invented 00:21:43.700 --> 00:21:45.759 something called the mechanical educator, which 00:21:45.759 --> 00:21:48.440 is basically direct brainwave learning. Think 00:21:48.440 --> 00:21:51.200 of the Matrix, right? I know Kung Fu. Yeah, uploading 00:21:51.200 --> 00:21:53.440 knowledge directly. Smith wrote about that in 00:21:53.440 --> 00:21:56.500 the 1930s. He also wrote about the electronic 00:21:56.500 --> 00:21:59.359 brain, which was a machine that could compute 00:21:59.359 --> 00:22:02.759 using all energy bands, tachyonic, gravity, electromagnetic. 00:22:03.119 --> 00:22:05.900 He was basically envisioning supercomputing and 00:22:05.900 --> 00:22:08.420 quantum computing long before the transistor 00:22:08.420 --> 00:22:11.160 was even invented. He also tackled military concepts 00:22:11.160 --> 00:22:16.210 like stealth, AYCS, the ODA loop. And I love 00:22:16.210 --> 00:22:18.750 this one. He highlighted the difficulty of maintaining 00:22:18.750 --> 00:22:22.029 technological secrecy. Right. The idea that once 00:22:22.029 --> 00:22:24.730 a weapon is used on the battlefield, the enemy 00:22:24.730 --> 00:22:26.990 will inevitably reverse engineer and duplicate 00:22:26.990 --> 00:22:29.369 it. Which is exactly how the arms race works. 00:22:29.609 --> 00:22:32.869 Exactly. But as much as he got right, we have 00:22:32.869 --> 00:22:34.990 to talk about the one major thing he got wrong. 00:22:35.109 --> 00:22:37.450 Or rather, the thing he intentionally broke for 00:22:37.450 --> 00:22:39.890 the sake of the story. Ah, the inertialist drive. 00:22:40.210 --> 00:22:42.289 The Bergeron drive. This is a brilliant example 00:22:42.289 --> 00:22:45.599 of Smith the Engineer battling Smith the... Explain 00:22:45.599 --> 00:22:47.859 the physics problem he was trying to solve here. 00:22:48.059 --> 00:22:50.700 The problem is Albert Einstein. Special relativity 00:22:50.700 --> 00:22:53.539 dictates that nothing can travel faster than 00:22:53.539 --> 00:22:56.960 the speed of light. And worse, as an object with 00:22:56.960 --> 00:22:59.220 mass accelerates and gets closer to the speed 00:22:59.220 --> 00:23:02.140 of light, its mass effectively becomes infinite. 00:23:02.559 --> 00:23:05.220 So if you try to punch it to light speed, your 00:23:05.220 --> 00:23:07.640 ship becomes infinitely heavy, which means it 00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:10.140 requires infinite energy to push it. Exactly. 00:23:10.140 --> 00:23:12.599 It's a cosmic speed limit. You cannot break it. 00:23:13.559 --> 00:23:16.569 Smith wanted a galactic empire. You can't have 00:23:16.569 --> 00:23:19.049 a galactic empire if it takes 100 ,000 years 00:23:19.049 --> 00:23:21.630 just to send a radio message across the galaxy, 00:23:21.829 --> 00:23:24.450 let alone a fleet. He needed a way for his ships 00:23:24.450 --> 00:23:27.210 to travel impossibly fast. So did he just wave 00:23:27.210 --> 00:23:29.650 his hands and ignore Einstein? No, he respected 00:23:29.650 --> 00:23:32.329 Einstein way too much for that. Instead, he looked 00:23:32.329 --> 00:23:35.309 for a loophole. He postulated a fictional device 00:23:35.309 --> 00:23:38.690 that could completely negate inertia. If a ship 00:23:38.690 --> 00:23:42.089 has zero inertia, no mass resistance to acceleration, 00:23:42.529 --> 00:23:45.089 then the relativistic rule about infinite mass 00:23:45.319 --> 00:23:47.599 doesn't apply to it. You can accelerate instantly 00:23:47.599 --> 00:23:49.880 to any speed you want, millions of times the 00:23:49.880 --> 00:23:52.180 speed of light, using barely any thrust. It's 00:23:52.180 --> 00:23:55.460 a cheat code. It is a total cheat code. But he 00:23:55.460 --> 00:23:58.680 tried so hard to justify it. He actually cited 00:23:58.680 --> 00:24:01.200 Bigelow's theoretical chemistry in the text of 00:24:01.200 --> 00:24:03.700 the novel to give the drive a veneer of academic 00:24:03.700 --> 00:24:07.059 plausibility. He knew it was impossible by the 00:24:07.059 --> 00:24:09.539 physics of his day, but he called it his one 00:24:09.539 --> 00:24:12.279 big lie. The one big lie rule. I've heard writers 00:24:12.279 --> 00:24:14.960 talk about this. You get one major impossibility, 00:24:14.980 --> 00:24:17.200 and then everything else that follows has to 00:24:17.200 --> 00:24:20.519 be completely logical. Exactly. Once you ask 00:24:20.519 --> 00:24:22.240 the reader to accept that the inertialist drive 00:24:22.240 --> 00:24:25.039 works, everything else, how the ships navigate, 00:24:25.299 --> 00:24:27.920 how they fight, what happens if the drive fails 00:24:27.920 --> 00:24:30.759 mid -flight, is treated with rigorous, unbending 00:24:30.759 --> 00:24:33.069 logic. Like what? What's an example? Well, for 00:24:33.069 --> 00:24:35.430 example, if you are moving at a million miles 00:24:35.430 --> 00:24:37.890 an hour without inertia and you suddenly turn 00:24:37.890 --> 00:24:40.569 off the drive. You instantly stop. No, your intrinsic 00:24:40.569 --> 00:24:43.549 inertia returns instantly. You would revert exactly 00:24:43.549 --> 00:24:46.430 to your original velocity relative to your surroundings 00:24:46.430 --> 00:24:48.750 before you turn the drive on. Oh, that's weird. 00:24:48.890 --> 00:24:51.069 Right. And because you have zero inertia while 00:24:51.069 --> 00:24:53.369 moving under the drive, you don't splat against 00:24:53.369 --> 00:24:55.069 the wall of the ship when you turn it off and 00:24:55.069 --> 00:24:58.069 suddenly stop. Because there's no momentum to 00:24:58.069 --> 00:25:00.329 carry you forward into the bulkhead. Precisely. 00:25:00.809 --> 00:25:03.470 It creates a very unique, logically consistent 00:25:03.470 --> 00:25:06.630 tactical environment for his space battles. It's 00:25:06.630 --> 00:25:08.450 fascinating that he put that much thought into 00:25:08.450 --> 00:25:10.910 the actual mechanics of his own cheat. It's what 00:25:10.910 --> 00:25:13.250 makes him the father of space opera. He wasn't 00:25:13.250 --> 00:25:15.250 just writing an adventure story. He was writing 00:25:15.250 --> 00:25:17.829 complex systems. Let's talk about that title, 00:25:17.930 --> 00:25:20.930 the father of space opera. The sources list him 00:25:20.930 --> 00:25:23.390 as one of the three novas of 20th century sci 00:25:23.390 --> 00:25:26.589 -fi. Yes, along with Stanley G. Weinbaum and, 00:25:26.670 --> 00:25:29.690 of course, Robert A. Heinlein. And his relationship 00:25:29.690 --> 00:25:31.490 with Heinlein is something I really want to dig 00:25:31.490 --> 00:25:34.970 into because Heinlein is an absolute giant in 00:25:34.970 --> 00:25:38.349 the field. But he looked up to Smith. He revered 00:25:38.349 --> 00:25:40.509 him. They were actually very close friends in 00:25:40.509 --> 00:25:43.269 real life. Heinlein dedicated his book Methuselah's 00:25:43.269 --> 00:25:46.069 Children to Smith. And Heinlein famously admitted 00:25:46.069 --> 00:25:48.089 that he learned more about writing from Doc Smith 00:25:48.089 --> 00:25:50.109 than from all other writers put together. Wow. 00:25:50.210 --> 00:25:52.150 And there is a story in the sources about them 00:25:52.150 --> 00:25:54.410 buying a car together that I absolutely love. 00:25:54.509 --> 00:25:57.369 It paints such a vivid, hilarious picture of 00:25:57.369 --> 00:25:59.849 their friendship. Oh, the Superman car test. 00:26:00.109 --> 00:26:03.089 It is legendary. So Heinlein is looking to buy 00:26:03.089 --> 00:26:06.470 a used car. He asks Smith, the brilliant engineer, 00:26:06.710 --> 00:26:09.089 to come along and help him inspect it to make 00:26:09.089 --> 00:26:12.069 sure it's a good deal. Two absolute geniuses 00:26:12.069 --> 00:26:14.789 kicking the tires on a used Chevy. Right. So 00:26:14.789 --> 00:26:17.130 Smith gets in the driver's seat. He takes the 00:26:17.130 --> 00:26:20.210 car out to a quiet country back road and he starts 00:26:20.210 --> 00:26:24.079 driving. Fast. Okay. Like highly illegal speeds. 00:26:24.140 --> 00:26:26.579 He is just tearing down this dirt road. Testing 00:26:26.579 --> 00:26:29.319 the engine output. Testing the chassis. But here's 00:26:29.319 --> 00:26:31.660 the visual you have to picture. While Smith is 00:26:31.660 --> 00:26:34.779 driving like an absolute maniac, both he and 00:26:34.779 --> 00:26:37.579 Heinlein have their heads pressed firmly up against 00:26:37.579 --> 00:26:40.200 the roof of the car. Why? Why would they do that? 00:26:40.380 --> 00:26:43.279 Bone conduction. You're kidding. Nope. Smith 00:26:43.279 --> 00:26:45.259 claimed that by pressing their skulls directly 00:26:45.259 --> 00:26:47.559 against the metal frame of the roof, they could 00:26:47.559 --> 00:26:49.980 hear subtle vibrations and squeaks in the chassis 00:26:49.980 --> 00:26:52.480 that the human ear alone would miss over the 00:26:52.480 --> 00:26:54.700 sound of the engine. That is the most absurd, 00:26:54.819 --> 00:26:57.180 wonderful image. Two of the greatest minds in 00:26:57.180 --> 00:26:59.299 the history of science fiction speeding down 00:26:59.299 --> 00:27:01.900 a dirt road. Heads just mashed against the ceiling, 00:27:02.019 --> 00:27:05.119 listening for squeaks. It sums them up perfectly, 00:27:05.319 --> 00:27:07.339 doesn't it? They weren't just dreamers. They 00:27:07.339 --> 00:27:09.359 were mechanics at heart. They wanted to know 00:27:09.359 --> 00:27:11.920 exactly how the machine worked. Whether it was 00:27:11.920 --> 00:27:14.440 a used car or a fictional galactic government, 00:27:14.660 --> 00:27:16.400 they wanted to look under the hood. And that 00:27:16.400 --> 00:27:19.220 influenced the mechanical world building. It 00:27:19.220 --> 00:27:22.900 ripples out to people who maybe never even read 00:27:22.900 --> 00:27:25.039 Smith directly. I mean, we have talked about 00:27:25.039 --> 00:27:26.700 Star Wars. You cannot have Star Wars without 00:27:26.700 --> 00:27:29.799 Lensman, period. George Lucas has cited the Lensman 00:27:29.799 --> 00:27:32.839 series as a major influence on his youth. Smith 00:27:32.839 --> 00:27:36.059 is the unacknowledged progenitor of so much of 00:27:36.059 --> 00:27:38.240 that universe. Give us the specifics. What's 00:27:38.240 --> 00:27:40.200 the DNA match here? Okay, look at the lens itself. 00:27:40.460 --> 00:27:43.200 In the books, it is a device given only to a 00:27:43.200 --> 00:27:45.900 select group of incorruptible, highly trained 00:27:45.900 --> 00:27:49.400 officers, the lensmen. Right. It gives them telepathic 00:27:49.400 --> 00:27:52.599 powers, it acts as a universal translator, and 00:27:52.599 --> 00:27:55.700 it identifies them universally as the elite guardians 00:27:55.700 --> 00:27:58.160 of civilization. I mean, that sounds a whole 00:27:58.160 --> 00:28:00.220 lot like a lightsaber and the force wrapped into 00:28:00.220 --> 00:28:02.930 one. It is the Jedi order. The galactic patrol 00:28:02.930 --> 00:28:05.269 is the direct model for the Jedi. And then you 00:28:05.269 --> 00:28:08.500 have the. broader background conflict in lensman 00:28:08.500 --> 00:28:12.400 there are two ancient super powerful races the 00:28:12.400 --> 00:28:15.059 arisians who are good and the adorians who are 00:28:15.059 --> 00:28:17.940 evil okay and these ancient races are secretly 00:28:17.940 --> 00:28:21.619 manipulating all the younger races humans aliens 00:28:21.619 --> 00:28:24.539 guiding them toward a massive final confrontation 00:28:24.539 --> 00:28:26.779 which sounds exactly like the light and dark 00:28:26.779 --> 00:28:29.579 sides of the force or even um the vorlons and 00:28:29.579 --> 00:28:33.170 the shadows in babylon 5 exactly J. Michael Straczynski, 00:28:33.289 --> 00:28:35.309 the creator of Babylon 5, openly acknowledged 00:28:35.309 --> 00:28:38.730 his debt to Smith. That specific trope, the idea 00:28:38.730 --> 00:28:41.430 of elder races guiding the younger races, is 00:28:41.430 --> 00:28:44.460 pure Doc Smith. And Jerry Siegel, the creator 00:28:44.460 --> 00:28:46.880 of Superman, was hugely impressed by the optimistic 00:28:46.880 --> 00:28:49.339 future Smith laid out in Skylark. It's everywhere. 00:28:49.579 --> 00:28:51.279 And we even see it in early video games, right? 00:28:51.380 --> 00:28:54.099 Space War. Yes, Space War, the great -grandfather 00:28:54.099 --> 00:28:56.079 of all computer games. It was developed at MIT 00:28:56.079 --> 00:28:59.500 in the early 60s. Steve Slug Russell, the primary 00:28:59.500 --> 00:29:01.420 programmer, said explicitly that he was trying 00:29:01.420 --> 00:29:03.559 to recreate the space battles from the Lensman 00:29:03.559 --> 00:29:06.180 series on a computer screen. So when he was coding 00:29:06.180 --> 00:29:08.960 the physics of the ships, he was trying to code 00:29:08.960 --> 00:29:12.400 Doc Smith's physics. The way the ships drifted. 00:29:12.430 --> 00:29:15.529 the way they fired torpedoes, the tactical maneuvering. 00:29:15.750 --> 00:29:18.289 So honestly, if you're playing Halo or EVE Online 00:29:18.289 --> 00:29:21.930 today, there is a direct line of code, metaphorically 00:29:21.930 --> 00:29:24.950 speaking, leading all the way back to Doc Smith's 00:29:24.950 --> 00:29:27.769 donut factory. The multi -billion dollar gaming 00:29:27.769 --> 00:29:30.490 industry owes a debt to the donut guy. I absolutely 00:29:30.490 --> 00:29:32.490 love it. It's incredible. And we should probably 00:29:32.490 --> 00:29:34.869 touch on his later life because he actually lived 00:29:34.869 --> 00:29:36.930 to see the world change in ways he predicted. 00:29:37.369 --> 00:29:39.910 He finally retired from the donut business in 00:29:39.910 --> 00:29:43.220 1957. The end of an era. No more 18 -hour shifts. 00:29:43.400 --> 00:29:46.200 Right. He retired to Florida and later moved 00:29:46.200 --> 00:29:49.029 to Oregon. By this time, he was a massive celebrity 00:29:49.029 --> 00:29:51.210 in the sci -fi world. He was the guest of honor 00:29:51.210 --> 00:29:54.029 at conventions, and he genuinely loved the fans. 00:29:54.230 --> 00:29:57.009 There's a great photo of him at Shikanai in 1940, 00:29:57.269 --> 00:30:00.750 actually masquerading as Northwest Smith, a character 00:30:00.750 --> 00:30:03.069 created by another writer, C .L. Moore. Oh, that's 00:30:03.069 --> 00:30:04.630 cool. He wasn't a snob about it. He was a fan 00:30:04.630 --> 00:30:06.549 himself. He was a huge fan of the genre he helped 00:30:06.549 --> 00:30:09.630 build. But ironically, for a guy who literally 00:30:09.630 --> 00:30:12.390 invented the concept of the inertialist drive 00:30:12.390 --> 00:30:15.569 to travel the stars, I read he didn't like flying. 00:30:15.730 --> 00:30:18.740 No. It's so funny. The man who desperately wanted 00:30:18.740 --> 00:30:21.200 to be a World War I fighter pilot eventually 00:30:21.200 --> 00:30:23.819 developed a strong dislike for commercial airplanes. 00:30:24.279 --> 00:30:27.180 He insisted on driving everywhere. Probably with 00:30:27.180 --> 00:30:28.539 his head pressed against the roof of the car 00:30:28.539 --> 00:30:30.960 the whole way. Probably. Listening for squeaks 00:30:30.960 --> 00:30:33.660 all the way from Florida to Oregon. I do want 00:30:33.660 --> 00:30:36.380 to take a second to clear up one specific point 00:30:36.380 --> 00:30:38.200 of confusion that always comes up with Smith. 00:30:39.199 --> 00:30:41.559 There are some books on the shelves credited 00:30:41.559 --> 00:30:44.700 to E .E. Doc Smith called Lord Tedrick. Ah, yes. 00:30:45.119 --> 00:30:46.900 And people often point to those books and say, 00:30:46.940 --> 00:30:49.700 look, he invented the Death Star. Right. This 00:30:49.700 --> 00:30:51.640 is a very common misconception in the fandom. 00:30:51.839 --> 00:30:54.319 Let's clear it up. Smith wrote a short story 00:30:54.319 --> 00:30:57.069 called Tedrick. It was about a blacksmith. It 00:30:57.069 --> 00:30:59.890 was a very small -scale contained story. Decades 00:30:59.890 --> 00:31:02.069 later, a writer named Gordon Eklund was hired 00:31:02.069 --> 00:31:04.430 to expand that single short story into a full 00:31:04.430 --> 00:31:06.670 series of novels. So Eklund wrote the books, 00:31:06.690 --> 00:31:08.730 but they slapped Smith's name on the cover to 00:31:08.730 --> 00:31:11.950 sell copies. Effectively, yes. And in those later 00:31:11.950 --> 00:31:14.710 books written by Eklund, there is a weapon called 00:31:14.710 --> 00:31:18.009 the Iron Sphere that destroys planets. It looks 00:31:18.009 --> 00:31:20.210 and acts exactly like the Death Star from Star 00:31:20.210 --> 00:31:23.089 Wars. But that was entirely Eklund's invention, 00:31:23.289 --> 00:31:26.470 not Smith's original idea. Okay, so we can't 00:31:26.470 --> 00:31:28.430 give Smith credit for the Death Star specifically. 00:31:28.750 --> 00:31:32.109 No. But to be fair, in his actual books, he did 00:31:32.109 --> 00:31:34.730 invent something called the sunbeam, which could 00:31:34.730 --> 00:31:37.329 literally turn a sun into a directed weapon. 00:31:37.490 --> 00:31:40.210 So he really wasn't far off in terms of destructive 00:31:40.210 --> 00:31:42.509 scale. Planet killer, sun killer, close enough. 00:31:42.589 --> 00:31:44.829 He worked... right up until the very end, didn't 00:31:44.829 --> 00:31:48.329 he? He did. He died on August 31st, 1965. And 00:31:48.329 --> 00:31:51.289 in a really poetic twist, the final Skylark novel, 00:31:51.470 --> 00:31:53.690 Skylark Duquesne, was published that exact same 00:31:53.690 --> 00:31:57.069 year. Wow. So he started the series in 1915 with 00:31:57.069 --> 00:32:00.690 Lee Garby and finished it in 1965. A 50 -year 00:32:00.690 --> 00:32:02.869 span. Just think about the technological progress 00:32:02.869 --> 00:32:05.289 in that specific window. When he started writing 00:32:05.289 --> 00:32:07.170 Skylark, people were still driving horse -drawn 00:32:07.170 --> 00:32:09.490 buggies in the streets. When he finished it, 00:32:09.569 --> 00:32:11.569 the Gemini space program was flying and we were 00:32:11.569 --> 00:32:13.349 only four years away from... Literally walking 00:32:13.349 --> 00:32:15.390 on the moon. He didn't just watch the future 00:32:15.390 --> 00:32:17.809 happen. He wrote the brochure for it. He really 00:32:17.809 --> 00:32:21.769 did. So as we bring this deep dive in for a landing 00:32:21.769 --> 00:32:24.529 today, we've gone from the dusty flour mill in 00:32:24.529 --> 00:32:27.769 1919 to the center of the galaxy. We've seen 00:32:27.769 --> 00:32:30.690 how a working class chemist used his rigorous 00:32:30.690 --> 00:32:33.809 engineering brain to build an entire universe. 00:32:34.549 --> 00:32:37.039 What is the big takeaway here for you? For me, 00:32:37.099 --> 00:32:38.819 looking at all these sources, it's about the 00:32:38.819 --> 00:32:42.059 sheer power of competence and optimism. Smith's 00:32:42.059 --> 00:32:44.460 world is a world where science actually works, 00:32:44.640 --> 00:32:47.079 where human reason and engineering work. Yeah. 00:32:47.160 --> 00:32:49.480 His heroes aren't angsty or conflicted about 00:32:49.480 --> 00:32:51.119 whether they should save the day. They see a 00:32:51.119 --> 00:32:53.259 massive problem, they engineer a logical solution, 00:32:53.440 --> 00:32:55.859 and they execute it perfectly. It's an incredibly 00:32:55.859 --> 00:32:58.339 optimistic view of humanity. It basically says 00:32:58.339 --> 00:33:00.259 that if we are smart enough and if we work hard 00:33:00.259 --> 00:33:02.740 enough, we can solve literally anything, even 00:33:02.740 --> 00:33:05.140 interstellar war. Exactly. And the fact that 00:33:05.140 --> 00:33:07.480 the U .S. Navy actually used his ideas to build 00:33:07.480 --> 00:33:09.839 the CIC proves that he wasn't just daydreaming. 00:33:09.960 --> 00:33:12.220 He was engaged in high level problem solving 00:33:12.220 --> 00:33:15.119 through the medium of fiction. That loop from 00:33:15.119 --> 00:33:17.640 imagination to reality is what really sticks 00:33:17.640 --> 00:33:20.460 with me. He imagined the directrix, the Navy 00:33:20.460 --> 00:33:23.380 built the CIC based on it, and now modern sci 00:33:23.380 --> 00:33:26.019 -fi writers grow up in a world completely defined 00:33:26.019 --> 00:33:28.660 by that technology, which they then put into 00:33:28.660 --> 00:33:30.839 their own books. It's a perfect circle of influence. 00:33:31.059 --> 00:33:32.980 It makes you wonder what fiction being written 00:33:32.980 --> 00:33:35.000 today is secretly going to be the blueprint for 00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:37.259 the next century of human advancement. That is 00:33:37.259 --> 00:33:39.720 the question. Doc Smith was working exhausting 00:33:39.720 --> 00:33:42.839 18 -hour days in a donut factory. And in the 00:33:42.839 --> 00:33:46.220 tiny slivers of time he had left over, he changed 00:33:46.220 --> 00:33:49.460 the world. He undeniably did. So here's my final 00:33:49.460 --> 00:33:51.740 provocative thought for you to chew on today. 00:33:52.160 --> 00:33:55.559 If a donut engineer in 1920 could dream up the 00:33:55.559 --> 00:33:57.640 template for modern naval warfare in the multi 00:33:57.640 --> 00:33:59.920 -billion dollar video game industry in his spare 00:33:59.920 --> 00:34:03.460 time, what visionary world -changing ideas are 00:34:03.460 --> 00:34:05.900 currently hiding in the notebooks of the person 00:34:05.900 --> 00:34:07.680 sitting in the cubicle next to you right now? 00:34:08.039 --> 00:34:09.880 Or perhaps what ideas are hiding in your own 00:34:09.880 --> 00:34:12.219 notebooks. Exactly. Don't throw those ideas away 00:34:12.219 --> 00:34:14.980 just because they seem too far out. Thanks for 00:34:14.980 --> 00:34:16.780 joining us for this deep dive into the massive 00:34:16.780 --> 00:34:20.000 universe of E .E. Doc Smith. Keep looking up. 00:34:20.099 --> 00:34:21.239 And keep reading.