Seekers of Tomorrow Read Free

DuQuesne. Surely the stilted love scenes and the use of ephemeral slang in the dialogue de-tracted more than they added.
    Yet, despite the superficial Victorianisms of the plot, most likely it was the combination of these very elements with the superscience concepts that gave The Skylark of Space titanic stature in science fiction's hall of fame. The events described were happening to people, some of them stereotypes, others superhuman; but what happened in the novel was more than an attempt at prediction, it was a story. Characters reacted to mind-staggering situations.
    Not all the characters were cardboard. No more remark-able villain has been depicted in the annals of science fiction than DuQuesne. He steals the show. Physically powerful, mentally a genius, distinctly amoral, he is the ultimate prag-matist: murder without compunction for an end, but do not lift a finger for mere sadistic satisfaction nor permit a prom-ise of pleasure to distract you from your purpose. Despite the fact that Smith had a Ph.D. after his name and his character Seaton was prone to semitechnical monologues with jarring frequency, such hard-to-accept notions as speed many times that of light and the manipulation of matter by the power of the mind were strongly challenged in the "Discussion" department of subsequent issues of amazing stories. These criticisms failed to alter the fact that apotheo-sis to the Olympus of science fiction was immediately in prospect for the author. This soon-to-be saint of the starways, the second youngest of five children, was born to Fred J. Smith, an ex-whaler working at shipping on the Great Lakes, and Caroline Mills Smith on May 2, 1890, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Both par-ents were of British extraction and staunch Presbyterians. They christened the boy Edward Elmer, and the same year moved to Spokane, Washington, where the father became a contractor in carpentry and cabinet work. A poor business-man, after many lean times he settled on a homestead of 160 acres on the Pend d'Oreille River in northern Idaho, raising baking potatoes for the dining cars of The Great Northern Railroad.
    The youthful E. E. Smith logged in the winter, swamped brush, felled trees, worked in sawmills, did stretches as a lumberjack, and floated lumber down the river. His grammar school education was in the Spokane schools and he began high school at Priest River, five miles from home, where he was regarded as an outsider by the other children and had to pulverize every other boy in the school pugilistically to achieve minimal toleration, let alone friendship.
    There might have been no education beyond that had the father been less of an emotional disciplinarian. The break came at the age of 18 in a near-violent disagreement over the fine points of fertilizing a potato field with a load of manure. Young E. E. stormed off to Spokane for a brief stint as a conductor on a horse-drawn streetcar.
    There had been great closeness and affection between E. E., his two brothers, and his two sisters. His older brother, Daniel, soon teamed up with him to haul asphalt for a street-paving job. The profits from this enterprise, together with contributions from his older sister Rachel, were used to send him to prep school at the University of Idaho.
    After the first year, he decided he wanted to be a civil engineer. At the age of 19, he helped run a railroad line north from Belton, Montana, into Canada, but seven months of life in the wilderness changed his mind about civil engi-neering. He went to work in a mine to get enough money to re-enter school. One night he awoke in his room on the fourth floor of a boarding house to find that his bed was afire. In a single convulsive leap he was out through the window, sash and all. He broke five ribs and a leg, but the worst damage was to his wrist, which couldn't be used for a year and hurt for ten years more. Manual labor was now out of the question and home he came.
    The resourceful brother, Daniel, soon