Subspace Explorers [Mass Market Paperback]

If you're silly enough to allow any deeper meaning for this space opera, then bear with me. It's clearly a product of its mid-60s, mid-cold-war era. The bad guys (as in Atlas Shrugged) are the leeches sucking the life out of industrial creativity, both union organizers and tax-wielding agents of the corrupt government. The other bad guys include The Nameless One, a mysterious and insane eastern potentate eager to rain nuclear he11 down on anyone who interferes with his fantasies - now that Kim Il Jong has demonstrated his nuclear flatus, it's a prescient image. The other-other bad guys are the robber-barons of industry, who've gone so far as to hide their new planetary slave camp, well into its seventh generation of social strangulation and serfdom. The other-cubed bad guys, this being the Cold War at its searing coldest, are the Soviets of New Russia, and that says all that matters.

Of course, in the midst of all these baddies, we have the good guys, a mere ninety planets or so against these schemers against all that's good, free, democratic, and based on hard currency. (I did mention Rand, didn't I?) Among other things, their super-psychics have the knack of finding planetary masses of uranium or any other useful ingredient for their super-scientists - who, being so very intelligent, must necessarily be good guys since being bad guys would be dumb, right? (Rand again.)

Having lasted well into the 1960s, Smith was forced to deal with women as powerful, capable people - kicking and screaming, maybe, but he did it. In an early scene, the two babes each take out a would-be assassin, who the menfolk promptly shred with bullets to save the little ladies from the upsetting thought that they'd have to take credit for their own kills (bare-handed, by the way). And, although some of the weaker sex are almost the equal of the square-jawed men in many respects, that highest level of super-psi-something or other is a mens club, ladies not admitted. The females have their own figures of merit, though, and not just the classic three measurements that summarize everything a fratboy wants to know. No, because they are such potent beings, these women seem to consider the "cat in heat" as the highest exemplar of their womanly values. Although a bit vague about details, frequent pregnancies figure heavily (pardon the pun) into how womanly they really are.

But, c'mon. Those great Bogart movies are scarcely more enlightened in their views of women, but good stories anyway. These stories (or at least their author) come from the same era, and Smith is to be applauded for the little bit that he was able to change with his times. He is to be applauded more loudly for dragging the Flash Gordon sense of heroism from the 1930s to the 60s without looking wholly antiquated doing it.

This is among his latest books, the last in his true spirit (and I deliberately omit the D'Alemberts from that list). I can't use the word "great" on any one these pot-boilers, but his ouvre as a whole reeks of squeaky clean, saturday afternoon, nickel-cinema greatness. A generation that can't sit back and wallow in these stories is a generation that has lost something happy and precious.

//wiredweird

I've read hundreds of sci fi books. Sci fi Hall of Fame EE Doc Smith is one of my favorite 1930s 1940s authors.His epic Lensmen series is one of the best sci fi series of all time 5 star plus and his Skylark series is 5 star. 40 plus years ago I read Subspace Explorers but forgot the story. I bought this book again to read and add to our family library.

The book starts out with a first officer on a space liner that is almost totally destroyed. Only 9 survive. 4 of the nine are killer mobsters that threaten the two officers, a genius multiple PHD man, and have eyes on the two beautiful women ( one with psychic powers used to find oil on other planets and a debutante). The mobsters are defeated and killed. The crewman get the liner limping to a landing on a planet, send a transmission and are rescued. A duel marriage between the two officers and the beautiful women is performed on the crippled liner in space. Both women get pregnant and have very long pregnancies due to the time difference in sub space. The children, a boy and a girl and born with growing great psychic powers.

All the grown 5 people find they have psychic powers and eventually learn telepathy and different psychic abilities and find a rich planet with lots of Uranium, the most precious metal used for the initiation of spaceships FTL drive. Many more psychic ability people are found and introduced to the new organization used for Subspace Exploration.

I won't go too much deeper into the book and ruin it for you.. Just say there are conglomerate gigantic corporations such as Plastics controlling a secret slave planet making goods for Earth and her sister worlds, Galactic Metals , a Diary and Meat conglomerate and others working on other worlds, highly efficient and automated. Also there is a Communist government and other governments involved.

EE Doc Smith's Subspace Explorers did not have much technology in it,ancient/outdated handheld weapons such as .45 autos, lots of mental powers, lots of conglomerate structure and secret government goings on. Also a huge space battle and liberation of a slave planet. Very little frightening aliens.

This was better than average sci fi but not as good as Smith's EPIC Lensmen series and very good Skylark series. An OK book to have in your family library and Sci Fi Hall of Fame EE Doc Smith collection. 3 1/3 stars.

Subspace Explorers, by Edgar E. Smith, is a very different book from most of the science fiction written by E.E. Smith (the Lensman series and Masters of the Vortex[sometimes called the "History of Civilization"], the Skylark series, Spacehounds of IPC, and the Galaxy Primes). These are generally standard, 1930s and 40s style science fiction with (possibly simplistically drawn) good guys counter posed with some sort of evil empire. {I've read the 6-volume Lensman series perhaps 30 times starting at age 10 ad the 4-volume Skylark series perhaps 10 times starting at age 18, and parts of the others 5 or 6 times.}

Subspace Explorers seems to try to extend the "History of Civilization" concept by adding the cold war, rapacious capitalists, corrupt unions, the generic battle between the totalitarian forces and the (top-down controlled) "democratic forces", a whole menagerie of mental powers (both between people and between people and physical objects), and lots of coupling between physically and mentally enhanced men and women to the mix. The babies produced by these couplings seem to disappear from the story until they reappear (with great powers) when necessary for culmination. The plots and subplots move like lightning, with little connection or transition between them.

My impression is that E.E. Smith was playing with interesting ideas here, but left too many disparate things hanging to achieve any sort of satisfactory syntheses.