Norman Cook's Reviews > Galactic Patrol

I read this book because it was nominated for the Retro-Hugo Award. The last time I tried to read an E.E. Smith book I was so traumatized by the convoluted story and bad writing that I literally stopped reading fiction for several months. This time I managed to slog my way through to the end of the book. I know Smith is revered as a pioneer of science fiction, but his stuff just does not hold up to modern standards, if it ever did. The purple prose is so bad it leaks into the ultraviolet. Here’s the first paragraph:

“Dominating twice a hundred square miles of campus, parade-ground, airport, and spaceport, a ninety-story edifice of chromium and glass sparkled dazzlingly in the bright sunlight of a June morning. This monumental pile was Wentworth Hall, in which the Tellurian candidates for the Lens of the Galactic Patrol live and move and have their being. One wing of its topmost floor seethed with tense activity, for that wing was the habitat of the lordly Five-Year Men, this was Graduation Day, and in a few minutes Class Five was due to report in Room A.”

The whole book is written like this.

Smith’s space cadet Kim Kinneson is the model of squeaky-clean superpowered whiteness that undoubtedly helped lead to the ostracization of science fiction by critics and the general public as nothing more than kiddie literature. There is nothing Kinneson can’t do, and then he develops mental powers which allow him to do things like control others and to see through walls. Early in the story, soon after graduating at the top of his class in the fascist-run space academy, Kinneson is given command of a new, experimental, class of battle spaceship to test out. The reason given? High command doesn’t want to lose any of its experienced officers if something goes wrong! And they don’t think putting a green lieutenant in charge won’t lead to disaster? (Which, of course, is exactly what happens.) Then Kinneson hops around the galaxy searching for the dreaded Helmuth, a 2-dimensional villain who controls a vast army of space pirates. The book ends abruptly when Helmuth is dispatched, with no denouement whatsoever.

In addition to the poor writing, stereotypical characters, and implausible plot, Galactic Patrol is sexist, racist, and disturbingly homoerotic. I’ll give Smith his due in the history of science fiction as a major influencer, but there is really no reason to read his work in the 21st Century other than for its historical perspective.