The worst of both worlds

Venus Equilateral

George O Smith

2 volumes. When I finished the first I was up for the second, but 1/4 way into the second I just wanted it to be over.

These are ‘hard’ SF stories from the 40s, and everything is done with vacuum tubes. The future belongs cathode rays, and to mysterious rays that are like cathode rays but travel a lot faster … even than light.

Sorry, got to step back. Smith posits a big relay station trailing Venus by 120^o, so that Earth, Mars and Venus can always communicate, even when the sun is in the way. As might be expected in something written in a time before the transistor and the silicon chip, the thing is huge (houses like 3000 people) and all the serious thinking is done by men.

Not unexpected, given the time of composition.

The corny romance, the chipper, chiacking but unfunny dialogue — these are more of a problem. And then it plunges off into space pirates and their melodrama, so we kind of end up in the worst of both worlds — stories that are pinned down by adherence to semiscience, but ridiculous in plot at the same time. They lack the colour and exotic trimmings of space opera, and the rigour of, say, Arthur Clarke or Hal Clement, to take a couple of contemporaries, either of which would be a more rewarding read.

A story or 2 laying out the novel and interesting idea of orbiting relay stations — genuinely insightful as these ideas were — and  unfolding some of the complexities of the idea, would have been fine, and in fact the first couple are like that. But then, in true pulp tradition, Smith had to milk it, and I suspect that is where the trouble started. Where Clarke would have written one 15 page story (probably did), and then popular science articles (which he did), then tackled some other idea with similar economy, Smith continues straining his conceit until it loses all entertainment value.

Now, I am reading these 70+ years after their time, yes. But I have read other work from the era, and these are not great examples of work from the time. For the historian of SF only, I think.

Sorry