E. E. "Doc" Smith + Lensman Saga

[Nonoxynol9]

Would anyone like to see these books made into movies? With the current state of SFX, now would be the time to do it... Only, who could do it right? These books are so massive in scope and scale that translating them to screen would be a monumental, if not "starkly impossible" task. Not to mention some of the out-dated technology, like vacuum tubes, diesel-powered spacecraft, the lack of transistors/computers, etc.

I think the Lensman saga is the greatest science-fiction story ever told, and it NEEDS to reach a wider audience. And we now have the capability to show thousands of spaceships warring madly in the depths of space.

[Nonoxynol9]

Well, screw you guys for not caring about the Beginning of sci-fi as we know it. Ignore posts, why don't you. Whatever.

[chrispenycate]

Hey, Im thinking about it. It's more than fourty years since I read those books, though there are a fair number of concepts remain (good sign, that)
Characterisation weak, dialogue weaker and plot linear (that's done, next size up, please) It'd have to be done in the comic book style, or even a modern "forbidden planet" - preferably in black and white. As a "Star Wars" type epic, I just don't see it.

How do you film something like that, which is already somewhat tongue in cheek, without making it totally for kids? Use the names, and ignore everything else? Or hit for the nostalgia market?

So, I'm not certain I'd want to see the films of the series; almost certain to be a diapointment, and done on the cheap because they're not expecting to be able to fill cinemas.

[Thanatos]

Apparently it has already been done in anime style by Kazuyuki Hirokawa and Yoshiaki Kawajiri. Check IMDB formore dtails.

[Rane Longfox]

I don't think I'd like it as a film, to be honest. I've got very definate mental pictures of what everything and everyone looks like... they should stay that way.

On a more positive note, I've just found "Subspace Explorers" in a book-trade shop, so I gave them my copy of Bryson's "Down Under" for it. Bargain

[Brown Rat]

All I remember about the books are rings.

Well, no, that's not quite all. Let me climb into the wayback machine here and set the dials for thirty-five years ago . . . I remember reading one of the books on a hot summer night out on the back porch, then trying to tell my cousin how great the book was. My cousin just looked puzzled, so I read aloud the passage I'd been describing--and suddenly realized that much of what I'd been describing wasn't actually on the page. I'd filled in the blanks and the emotions and added visual details to the scene, all in my head.

I'm not knocking the series. I loved it way back then.

[Snowdog]

These were some of the earlist sf books I read, and still stick in my mind more than most. Smith also wrote some good stand-alone novels. But a film? Whereas the great space battles could be rendered, any kind psi is difficult to represent on film, and with US filmmakers' need to explain everything in words of half a syllable, I think they'd ruin it.

[Mark Robson]

Ah, Kimball Kinnison! I haven't read about him in years. And Worzel, Nadreck ... I can't remember the fourth of the second stage lensmen ... I remember he looked something like a barrel on six legs, or something like that. Anyway, I must have read the series two or three times in my youth, as well as the Skylark series and the Family D'Alembert series. I loved E E 'Doc' Smith's stuff, but looking back now I would agree with Chrispenycate that the dialogue was not sparkling and the plots were very linear. Good rip-roaring tales, though, with plenty of action. Would almost fit into the YA shelves these days.

[iansales]

I reread EE Doc Smitjh's Masters of Space last year. I had fond memories of the book from my youth but, oh boy, did it *not* live up to them...

The plot in a nutshell: Earth's best brains are sent on a mission to find a planet of fuel. The scientists are all handsome virile men; their assistants are all gorgeous (but also brainy) women. They stumble into a war between an alien race and a race of humanoid androids. The latter are, apparently, servants created by the long-extinct race who seeded Earth. The androids accept the Earth scientists as their new masters. The scientists and assistants pair off, and then undergo a conversion to become near-immortal andriods themselves. The women particularly welcome this conversion because it means their boobs will never sag. I kid you not...

[GOLLUM]

Talk about blast from the past. I remember reading Doc Smith 25 years ago but unlike Brown Rat my time machine doesn't appear to be functioning too well. Can hardly remember anything from that series other than I thought it was OK at the time...

So is Doc Smith still around or not????

[iansales]

He died in 1965.

[j. d. worthington]

One of the first "classics" of sf -- Isaac Asimov read the first of these when he was just a lad. Dear old Edward E. Smith; wonderful man; his writing suffers in comparison to later writers, but oh, what a world of mind-boggling ideas he opened up -- one of the first to deal with the stuff that later became standard sf tropes....