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The Past is Retreating
Have you noticed how the past gets further away every time you get older?
I was reading the programme book for Constitution and Henry Gee remarks that EE 'Doc' Smith wrote his classic Lensman novels eighty years ago.
Now, I know they were old. I read them in my youth when one of my father's friends left his copy of 'Triplanetary' behind by accident and thus hooked me on the entire series. I remember being quite surprised to discover that this epic space opera was published many years before Lord of the Rings. But it wasn't eighty years old, back then!
Incidentally, it's always interesting to see which of the novels of your childhood are still worth reading when you grow up. Sadly, the Lensmen novels failed the test. They still had all the space battles, but I couldn't survive more than a chapter of the cardboard characters before I passed the books on to someone else.
Heinlein, on the other hand, passes with flying colours. His juvenile (YA) novels have held up remarkably well. Even the weakest (Farmer in the Sky) is just about worth reading to the end, and the best (Citizen of the Galaxy) is still a favourite. 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' remains my favourite of all his books. It sits between the period when he was writing young adult novels and when he became obsessed with sex and his own childhood. (All 'Wizard of Ox' and Depression America).
I was reading the programme book for Constitution and Henry Gee remarks that EE 'Doc' Smith wrote his classic Lensman novels eighty years ago.
Now, I know they were old. I read them in my youth when one of my father's friends left his copy of 'Triplanetary' behind by accident and thus hooked me on the entire series. I remember being quite surprised to discover that this epic space opera was published many years before Lord of the Rings. But it wasn't eighty years old, back then!
Incidentally, it's always interesting to see which of the novels of your childhood are still worth reading when you grow up. Sadly, the Lensmen novels failed the test. They still had all the space battles, but I couldn't survive more than a chapter of the cardboard characters before I passed the books on to someone else.
Heinlein, on the other hand, passes with flying colours. His juvenile (YA) novels have held up remarkably well. Even the weakest (Farmer in the Sky) is just about worth reading to the end, and the best (Citizen of the Galaxy) is still a favourite. 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' remains my favourite of all his books. It sits between the period when he was writing young adult novels and when he became obsessed with sex and his own childhood. (All 'Wizard of Ox' and Depression America).
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I find the opposite: it's getting closer and closer as I get older, because a couple of decades seems such a short span now. When I was a child, the war seemed a very long time ago; now I have begun to see myself as a wartime child, because seventeen years is a trifle, and I keep noticing that I still have habits dictated by the rationing which shaped my mother.
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I found the Lensman and Skylark of Space series excruciatingly badly written but full of brilliant ideas. I read and re-read them many times but ended up donating them to the local charity fete. Strangely though, I gained a better feeling for the culture that Doc Smith himself came from, as I did from all the Heinlein that I read.
Don't know if you read my post on the funeral of Henry Allingham but one of the points I had in mind is how physical mementos can give a sense of connection with what is now ancient history to most people.
The most neckhair-prickling experience for me was reading the original Parish Register for Kentisbere in Devon. The first enty was dated 1670ish and reading that, holding the register in my hands, really made me feel connected to that time and that place.
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I read the Lensman novels at least twice - like you, I loved the ideas and the vast scope of them. It's only with more experience that I demand writing skills as well.
Heinlein's culture giveaway is 'To Sail Beyond the Sunset'. It's the last book of his that I read in full, it was very poor in comparison to his earlier books.
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I also quite liked "The number of the beast", even though that book did mark the beginning of his jump over the shark.
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Somehow I managed to miss the Heinlein juveniles when I was a teenager. The first Heinlein I read was 'Number of the Beast' which left me scarred for life...!
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Without them I doubt we'd ever have had Trek which, for all its Treknobabble, like the Lensman books, opened up the universe to a generation of young SF fans with revolutionary ideas they'd never seen before.
BTW I agree about The Moon is a Harsh Mistress being one of my favourite Heinlein's, although I'm not so sure about some of his YA works (and the less said about his later works, apart from Job, the better!) For me, though, some of his best ideas were in his Future History series.
However Doc Smith was writing at a time when there was so little SF out there it was like not just exploring a whole new universe, but inventing it yourself.
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Then read 'Space Family Stone' for my favourite Heinlein female character of them all - Hazel Meade Stone.