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The Skylark Series

Author: E.e. “doc” Smith

The great innovation in American science fiction during the 1920s was the invention of the space opera, and that was largely down to E.E. "Doc" Smith. Sometime around 1916 he had the idea for a story about travelling through interstellar space, but he didn't write it until the mid-1920s, with a family friend, Mrs Lee Hawkins Garby, writing the romantic elements that Smith wasn't comfortable with. The first novel, The Skylark of Space, appeared in three parts in Amazing in 1928, and was so successful that the editor asked Smith for a sequel even before the first part had appeared. Two sequels appeared in the early 1930s, Skylark Three and Skylark of Valeron, and a fourth volume, Skylark DuQuesne was added in 1963, two years before Smith died. The story involves the discovery of an interstellar drive, with two families heading off to the stars, competing against the villainous DuQuesne, and encountering a dizzying array of strange planets and alien races. It is basically non-stop adventure, with some new technological development or alien encounter cropping up whenever the pace threatens to slow. Why it's on the list: Space opera was the first major subgenre of American science fiction, and it all began here. It's a thrilling read that stretches our credibility in every direction at once, but it really opened up the depths of space for all the science fiction that came after.

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