Came By Post Today

 

On a whim a few days ago I ordered this book – First Lensman, © 1950, by E. E. “Doc” Smith. It’s been two months since I’ve read some good ol’ SF, and for some reason this book popped into my mind. Now, it’s not exactly a classic, in the sense that Asimov’s Foundation, Clarke’s Childhood’s End, or Heinlein’s Starship Troopers is. Indeed, Smith is not of that Holy Trinity of Science Fiction, that Pantheon of the Gods. But if Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein (and also Bradbury and Silverberg, I would argue) are the Olympians of Science Fiction, E. E. “Doc” Smith was a member of the Titans, their predecessors.

First Lensman is actually the second of seven interrelated novels, which in turn evolved from stories Smith published in the pulps in the ‘’40s. The first novel, I am told, is not essential to the story, but the others should be read in sequence.

Unfortunately, I first came across Smith fourteen years ago when I picked up – again on a whim, always on a whim – the seventh and final book in the series, Children of the Lens. I liked it, sorta, but was kinda lost, and I’m thinking it was because, well, I’m reading the final book of the series and there’s a whole galaxy of stuff referenced in it that I’m quite unaware of. So it was always in the back of my mind to start at the beginning, or close to it, at some undefined future point in time.

That time is now. I think.

 

 

In a nutshell, Smith is the quintessential “space opera” guy. The writer whose books George Lucas and Steven Spielberg devoured when they were wee lads. Children of the Lens struck me as very Flash Gordon-esque. I have a neat little memory of my father getting all excited introducing Flash Gordon to my brother and I one afternoon when he caught it on the black and white TV. I enjoyed it, as much as one could who was in the thrall of Star Wars, before Star Wars was known as Episode IV: A New Hope.

So that’s what I envisioned when I read Children of the Lens a decade-and-a-half ago, piecing together the plot and the setting as best I could while fighting my employer, raising a three year old and dealing with a pregnant wife, and trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Soon after I had all my heart issues and the basement flooded – the one and only time it did because the sleep-deprived Mrs. forgot to shut off a water valve – a flood which resulted in the destruction of numerous books, Children of the Lens included.

One of my aunts somehow learned of this and bought me a replacement copy. Which, to this day, sits in the On Deck circle on the shelf behind me. (Well, until it got packed away a few weeks ago as we prepare for The Move.) I’d like to revisit it, this time prepared. Hence, First Lensman now in my hands.

A review to follow in the next couple of weeks …

Don't Like This World Right Now

 

In 2013, I watched my first Mets game in three decades, got hooked, spent the entire season rooting for them and going to Citi Field and buying all sorts of merch, and enjoyed every heartbreaking minute of it.

In 2014, I spent some time reading through about ninety-nine percent of the published works of horror forerunner H. P. Lovecraft, and enjoyed every creepy minute of it.

In 2015, I got my middle-aged buttock in gear and walked a two or three hundred miles and lifted a couple tons of iron, and enjoyed every sweaty, strenuous minute of it.

In 2016, I began studying for my tax certification to begin a part-time gig preparing taxes for the masses for some extra coin, and enjoyed every overly complicated minute of it.

In 2017, I jammed for hours and hours on the Gibson Epiphone guitar the Mrs. got me for my fiftieth birthday, and enjoyed every calloused finger and off-key minute of it.

In 2018, I marched with Napoleon throughout 18th-century Europe and studied side-by-side with this complex god-emperor, and enjoyed every harshly fascinating minute of it.

In 2019, I dove deep into the Beatles oeuvre, read up on Custer and his eponymous massacre, delved into the mirror-sports world of Bundesliga soccer, marathoned through seasons of Under the Dome and 24 with the girls after work, reread a half-dozen classic – to me – novels, and even nursed an ankle sprain that nearly separated my metatarsals from my tibias and fibulas, and enjoyed every glorious minute of it.

Why can’t we have good things anymore?

 

Saturn 3

 

Amidst all the busyness of getting the house in order to sell, getting Little One ready for her SATs, getting Patch to her various soccer practices, games, and workouts, and celebrating my 20th wedding anniversary with the Mrs., I ran into a spell of insomnia in the wee early morning hours of Saturday.

I woke around 2:30 am, tossed and turned, visited the bathroom and the medicine cabinet, went back to bed, got up to switch the fan on, turned and tossed some more. Thirty minutes later I realized there was no more sleep for me this day. So I got up, trudged down two flights of stairs to my writing desk, flipped on the laptop and set to my favorite timewaster of late, Youtube.

However, this time was different.

In my feed was a review of the little-remembered, sparsely-accoladed science fiction flick, 1980’s Saturn 3. That instantly brought back memories. Well, memories of memories. Because while I recall the movie existing (I was 12 years old the summer of 1980), I don’t think I ever saw more than a few scenes here and there.

So why watch a review of it online when I can, possibly, find the movie in its entirety? And sure enough, I did, all 88 minutes of it, right on that there Youtube.

I knew that the movie had a bad reputation, and that knowledge was epistemologically confirmed.

But I enjoyed it.

Saturn 3’s a bad movie, suffering always from bad-movie syndrome typically found in Hollywood: a visionary first-time director who shouldn’t be directing; an established Hollywood icon whose ego runs amuck; a sex symbol who can’t act her way out of a paper bag; a moody villain portrayed by a moody actor who hates the film; a producer who has no experience with making SF films; film execs who slash the budget mid-way through production.

I’ve read that the original script was good and was what got the film greenlit. And then all the above kicked it, forcing re-writes, edits, 180-degree turns and more chefs in the kitchen. The result is blah bland but not terrible. There is a shell of a movie here (perhaps on a cutting-room floor and stored in some long-forgotten vault), but what struck me is that it was made by people who had no idea what SF fans want. And since it’s also billed as a “horror” flick, it’s not particularly horrifying.

So what is Saturn 3, exactly?

In 1979 and 1980 I was enraptured fully and completely with absolutely one movie: Alien. My parents bought me the picture book and an uncle bought me the novelization. That alien egg commercial relentlessly aired on TV haunted and fascinated me (much like the commercial for Magic with that psychotic ventriloquist dummy). But I wasn’t allowed to see it since I was only 12. My imagination though more than made up for it. In this weird stage where I was no longer a kid but not yet a teen, I played out versions of the alien-killing-everyone-on-a-spaceship plotline with the action figures and SF toys I still had not yet phased out of my life.

Saturn 3 is kind of like Alien with a robot. The robot, “Hector” in the movie, is a headless eight foot cross between an arthritic Xenomorph and an automobile radiator. Here, see:

Hector basically turns evil when plugged into evil Captain Benson’s brain for programming, and spends the next hour chasing Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett around a space station that looks strangely like the set design of the Engineer’s ship from Alien. Hmm. That sentence I just wrote is more suspenseful and terrifying than anything in the entire movie. There’s long sequences of an oddly overdubbed Harvey Keitel pontificating about God-knows-what and scantily clad Kirk Douglas romping around with scantily clad Farrah Fawcett, thirty-year age difference be damned. The denouement is routine and unexciting, neither clever nor original.

But the atmosphere! While the model work was slightly above workmanlike,  the interior of the Saturn 3 station is worthy of praise. Not a surprise since the original story – and the film’s first director – was John Barry, an interior designer who worked on such films as A Clockwork Orange, Superman, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Plus there’s a real sinister element to Hector the robot that’s there on the surface, if not exactly fleshed out, no pun intended since the future Frankenstein’s monsters winds up wearing his creator’s head.

I guess ultimately the movie falls into that catch-all called childhood nostalgia. I remember pal’ing around with a bunch of guys in summer art school, reading those SF magazines, talking about the latest Star Wars and James Bond, Alien and The Incredible Melting Man, horror flicks like Phantasm and Prophecy, among countless forgotten and partially-remembered others. Saturn 3 fits snugly in there, and feels quite at home.

Grade: C