Family and education Edward Elmer Smith was born in
Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on May 2, 1890, to Fred Jay Smith and Caroline Mills Smith, both staunch
Presbyterians of British ancestry. His mother was a teacher born in Michigan in February 1855; his father was a sailor, born in
Maine in January 1855 to an English father. They moved to
Spokane, Washington, the winter after Edward Elmer was born, where Mr. Smith was working as a contractor in 1900. near the
Pend Oreille River, in
Kootenai County, Idaho. He had four siblings, Rachel M. born September 1882, Daniel M. born January 1884, Mary Elizabeth born February 1886 (all of whom were born in Michigan), and Walter E. born July 1891 in
Washington. Smith worked mainly as a manual laborer until he injured his wrist while fleeing from a fire at the age of 19. He attended the
University of Idaho. (Many years later he would be installed in the 1984 Class of the University of Idaho Alumni Hall of Fame.) He entered its
prep school in 1907, and graduated with two degrees in
chemical engineering in 1914. He was president of the Chemistry Club, the Chess Club, and the Mandolin and Guitar Club, and captain of the Drill and Rifle Team; he also sang the bass lead in
Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. His undergraduate thesis was
Some Clays of Idaho, co-written with classmate Chester Fowler Smith, who died in California of
tuberculosis the following year, after taking a teaching fellowship at Berkeley. Whether the two were related is not known. On October 5, 1915, in
Boise, Idaho he married Jeanne Craig MacDougall, the sister of his college roommate, Allen Scott (Scotty) MacDougall. (Her sister was named Clarissa MacLean MacDougall; the heroine of the
Lensman novels would later be named Clarrissa MacDougall.) Jeanne MacDougall was born in
Glasgow, Scotland; her parents were Donald Scott MacDougall, a violinist, and Jessica Craig MacLean. Her father had moved to Boise when the children were young, and later sent for his family; he died while they were en route in 1905. Jeanne's mother, who remarried businessman and retired politician John F. Kessler in 1914 worked at, and later owned, a boarding house on Ridenbaugh Street. The Smiths had three children. Roderick N., born June 3, 1918, in the
District of Columbia, was employed as a design engineer at
Lockheed Aircraft. Verna Jean (later Verna Smith Trestrail), born August 25, 1920, in Michigan, was E. E. Smith's literary executor until her death in 1994. (Her son Kim Trestrail is now the executor.)
Robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel
Friday to Verna. Clarissa M. (later Clarissa Wilcox), was born December 13, 1921, in Michigan.
Early chemical career and the beginning of Skylark After college, Smith was a junior
chemist for the
National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., developing standards for butter and for oysters, while studying food chemistry at George Washington University. He ended up being sent to the
Commission for Relief in Belgium headed by Herbert Hoover. who had also moved to Washington, D.C. He lived nearby in the Seaton Place Apartments with his wife,
Lee Hawkins Garby. A long discussion about journeys into outer space ensued, and it was suggested that Smith should write down his ideas and speculations as a story about interstellar travel. Although he was interested, Smith believed after some thought that some
romantic elements would be required and he was uncomfortable with that. Lee Garby offered to take care of the love interest and the romantic dialogue, and Smith decided to give it a try. The sources of inspirations for the main characters in the novel were themselves; the "Seatons" and "Cranes" were based on the Smiths and Garbys, respectively. About one third of
The Skylark of Space was completed by the end of 1916, when Smith and Garby gradually abandoned work on it. Smith earned his master's degree in chemistry from the
George Washington University in 1917, studying under Dr.
Charles E. Munroe, whom Smith called "probably the greatest high-explosives man yet to live". His dissertation,
The effect of bleaching with oxides of nitrogen upon the baking quality and commercial value of wheat flour, was published in 1919. '' cover story (August 1930) '', was novelized by
Gordon Eklund nearly 25 years later. died in 1958, Smith completed his unfinished novel,
Masters of Space. The novel was serialized in
If.
Writing Skylark In 1919, Smith was hired as chief chemist for F. W. Stock & Sons of
Hillsdale, Michigan, at one time the largest family-owned mill east of the Mississippi, working on doughnut mixes. He submitted it to many book publishers and magazines, spending more in postage than he would eventually receive for its publication. Bob Davis, editor of
Argosy, sent an encouraging rejection letter in 1922, saying that he liked the novel personally, but that it was too far out for his readers. Finally, upon seeing the April 1927 issue of
Amazing Stories, he submitted it to that magazine. It was accepted, initially for $75, later raised to $125. It was published as a three-part serial in the August to October 1928 issues (According to Warner, but no other source, Smith began work on the sequel,
Skylark Three, before the first book was accepted.) Garby, whose husband died in 1928, was not interested in further collaboration, so Smith began work on
Skylark Three alone. and he was paid ¾¢ per word, surpassing
Amazings previous record of half a cent.
Names used for publications The original magazine stories mostly have his name as
Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.. But more recent editions usually give his name as either
E. E. Doc Smith or
E. E. "Doc" Smith.
The early 1930s: between Skylark and Lensman Smith then began work on what he intended as a new series, starting with
Spacehounds of IPC, which he finished in the autumn of 1930. Even in 1938, after he had written
Galactic Patrol, Smith considered it his finest work. Even at the end of his career, he considered it his only work of true science fiction. It was published in the July through September 1931 issues of
Amazing, with
Sloane making unauthorized changes. Fan letters in the magazine complained about the novel's containment within the
Solar System, and Sloane sided with the readers. So when
Harry Bates, editor of
Astounding Stories, offered Smith 2¢/word—payable on publication—for his next story, he agreed. This meant that it could not be a sequel to
Spacehounds. Indeed, characters within the story point out its psychological and scientific implausibilities, and sometimes even seem to suggest self-parody. At other times, they are conspicuously silent about obvious implausibilities. The January 1933 issue of
Astounding announced that
Triplanetary would appear in the March issue, and that issue's cover illustrated a scene from the story, but
Astoundings financial difficulties prevented the story from appearing. Smith then submitted the manuscript to
Wonder Stories, whose new editor, 17-year-old
Charles D. Hornig, rejected it, later boasting about the rejection in a
fanzine. He finally submitted it to
Amazing, which published it beginning in January 1934, but for only half a cent a word. Shortly after it was accepted,
F. Orlin Tremaine, the new editor of the revived
Astounding, offered one cent a word for
Triplanetary. When he learned that he was too late, he suggested a third
Skylark novel instead. In the winter of 1933–34, Smith worked on
The Skylark of Valeron, but he felt that the story was getting out of control. He sent his first draft to Tremaine, with a distraught note asking for suggestions. Tremaine accepted the rough draft for $850, and announced it in the June 1934 issue, with a full-page editorial and a three-quarter-page advertisement. The novel was published in the August 1934 through February 1935 issues.
The Lensman series In January 1936, a time period where he was already an established science-fiction writer, he took a job for salary plus profit-sharing as production manager at
Dawn Donut Co. of
Jackson, Michigan. This initially entailed almost a year's worth of 18-hour days and seven-day workweeks. Individuals who knew Smith confirmed that he had a role in developing mixes for doughnuts and other pastries, but the contention that he developed the first process for making powdered sugar adhere to doughnuts cannot be substantiated. Smith was reportedly dislocated from his job at Dawn Donuts by prewar rationing in early 1940. Smith had been contemplating writing a "space-police novel" since early 1927; once he had "the Lensmen's universe fairly well set up", he reviewed his science-fiction collection for "cops-and-robbers" stories. He cites Clinton Constantinescue's "War of the Universe" as a negative example, and
Starzl and
Williamson as positive ones. Tremaine responded extremely positively to a brief description of the idea. Segmenting the story into four novels required considerable effort to avoid dangling loose ends. Smith cited
Edgar Rice Burroughs as a negative example. After the outline was complete, he wrote a more detailed outline of
Galactic Patrol, plus a detailed graph of its structure, with "peaks of emotional intensity and the valleys of characterization and background material." He notes, however, that he was never able to follow any of his outlines at all closely, as the "characters get away from me and do exactly as they damn please." After completing the rough draft of
Galactic Patrol, he wrote the concluding chapter of the last book in the series,
Children of the Lens. Gray Lensman, the fourth book in the series, appeared in
Astoundings October 1939 through January 1940 issues.
Gray Lensman was extremely well received, as was its cover illustration.
Campbell's editorial in the December issue suggested that the October issue was the best issue of
Astounding ever, and
Gray Lensman was first place in the Analytical Laboratory statistics "by a lightyear", with three runners-up in a distant tie for second place. The cover was also praised by readers in
Brass Tacks, and Campbell noted, "We got a letter from E. E. Smith saying he and [cover artist] Hubert Rogers agreed on how Kinnison looked." Smith was the guest of honor at
Chicon I, the second
World Science Fiction Convention, held in Chicago over
Labor Day weekend 1940, giving a speech on the importance of
science fiction fandom entitled "What Does This Convention Mean?" He attended the
convention's masquerade as
C. L. Moore's
Northwest Smith, and met fans living near him in Michigan, who would later form the Galactic Roamers, which previewed and advised him on his future work. After
Pearl Harbor, Smith discovered he "was one year over age for reinstatement" into the US Army. Instead he worked on high explosives at the Kingsbury Ordnance Plant in
La Port, Indiana, at first as a chemical engineer, but gradually worked his way up to chief. In late 1943 he became head of the Inspection Division, and was fired in early 1944.. error-ridden biography is in Sam Moskowitz's
Seekers of Tomorrow. Robert Heinlein and Smith were friends. (Heinlein dedicated his 1958 novel ''
Methuselah's Children "To Edward E. Smith, PhD".) Heinlein reported that E. E. Smith perhaps took his "unrealistic" heroes from life, citing as an example the extreme competence of the hero of Spacehounds of IPC''. He reported that E. E. Smith was a large, blond, athletic, very intelligent, very gallant man, married to a remarkably beautiful, intelligent, red-haired woman named MacDougal (thus perhaps the prototypes of 'Kimball Kinnison' and 'Clarissa MacDougal'). In Heinlein's essay, he reports that he began to suspect Smith might be a sort of "superman" when he asked Smith for help in purchasing a car. Smith tested the car by driving it on a back road at illegally high speeds with their heads pressed tightly against the roof columns to listen for chassis squeaks by
bone conduction—a process apparently improvised on the spot. In his novels written after his professional retirement,
Galaxy Primes (working title: "The Girl With The Green Hair"),
Subspace Explorers, and
Subspace Encounter, E. E. Smith explores themes of telepathy and other mental abilities collectively called "psionics", and of the conflict between
libertarian and socialistic/communistic influences in the colonization of other planets.
Galaxy Primes was written after critics such as
Groff Conklin and
P. Schuyler Miller in the early '50s accused his fiction of being passé, and he made an attempt to do something more in line with the concepts about which
Astounding editor John W. Campbell encouraged his writers to make stories. Despite this, it was rejected by Campbell, and it was eventually published by
Amazing Stories in 1959.
Subspace Safari, an unpublished novel intended as a sequel to the novelette "Subspace Survivors", was completed in 1962. Campbell requested substantial revisions before publishing it in
Astounding, but Smith declined to make the changes. Because the manuscript incorporated material from the earlier novelette, it could not readily be published elsewhere. Smith subsequently reworked the material, and decided he couldn't fit it all in one book. The first part,
Subspace Explorers, was published in 1965, and Smith began work on a sequel. He later set this aside in order to write the fourth
Skylark novel,
Skylark DuQuesne, which appeared in the June to October 1965 issues of
If, introduced by editor
Frederik Pohl with a summary of the earlier installments. His late story "The Imperial Stars" (1964), featuring a troupe of circus performers involved in sabotage in a galactic empire, recaptured some of the atmosphere from his earlier works and was intended as the first in a new series, with outlines of later parts rumored to still exist. In fact, the Imperial Stars characters and concepts were continued by author
Stephen Goldin as the "
Family D'Alembert series". While the book covers indicate the series was written by Smith and Goldin together, Goldin only ever had Smith's original novella to expand upon.
Lord Tedric Smith published two novelettes entitled "Tedric" in
Other Worlds Science Fiction Stories (1953) and "Lord Tedric" in
Universe Science Fiction (1954). These were almost completely forgotten until after Smith's death. In 1975, a compendium of Smith's works was published, entitled
The Best of E. E. "Doc" Smith, containing these two short stories, excerpts from several of his major works, and another short story first published in
Worlds of If in 1964 entitled "The Imperial Stars". In Smith's original short stories, Tedric was a smith (both
blacksmith and
whitesmith) residing in a small town near a castle in a situation roughly equivalent to
England of the 1200s. He received instruction in advanced metallurgy from a
time-traveler who wanted to change the situation in his own time by modifying certain events of the past. From this instruction, he was able to build better suits of armor and help defeat the villains of the piece. Unlike Eklund's later novels based on these short stories, the original Tedric never left his own time or planet, and fought purely local enemies of his own time period. A few years later and 13 years after Smith's death, Verna Smith arranged with
Gordon Eklund to publish another novel of the same name about the same fictional character, introducing it as "a new series conceived by E. E. 'Doc' Smith". Eklund later went on to publish the other novels in the series, one or two under the pseudonym "E. E. 'Doc' Smith" or "E. E. Smith". The protagonist possesses heroic qualities similar to those of the heroes in Smith's original novels and can communicate with an extra-dimensional race of beings known as the Scientists, whose archenemy is Fra Villion, a mysterious character described as a dark knight, skilled in whip-sword combat, and evil genius behind the creation of a planetoid-sized "iron sphere" armed with a weapon capable of destroying planets. As a result, Smith is believed by many to be the unacknowledged progenitor of themes that would appear in
Star Wars. In fact, however, these appear in the sequels written by others after Smith's death. ==Critical opinion==