Family and education
Edward Elmer Smith was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin on May 2, 1890 to Fred Jay Smith and Caroline Mills Smith, both staunch Presbyterians of British ancestry. His mother was a teacher born in Michigan in February 1855; his father was a sailor, born in Maine in January 1855 to an English father. They moved to Spokane, Washington the winter after Edward Elmer was born, where Mr. Smith was working as a contractor in 1900. In 1902 the family moved to Seneaquoteen, near the Pend Oreille River, in Kootenai County, Idaho. He had four siblings, Rachel M. born September 1882, Daniel M. born January 1884, Mary Elizabeth born February 1886 (all of whom were born in Michigan), and Walter E. born July 1891 in Washington. In 1910, Fred and Caroline Smith and their son Walter were living in the Markham Precinct of Bonner County, Idaho; Fred is listed in census records as a farmer.
Smith worked primarily as a manual laborer until he injured his wrist, at the age of 19, while escaping from a fire. He attended the University of Idaho. He was installed in the 1984 Class of the University of Idaho Alumni Hall of Fame. He entered its prep school in 1907, and graduated with two degrees in Chemical Engineering in 1914. He was president of the Chemistry Club, the Chess Club, and the Mandolin and Guitar Club, and captain of the Drill and Rifle Team; he also sang the bass lead in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. His undergraduate thesis was
Some Clays of Idaho, co-written with classmate Chester Fowler Smith, who died in California of tuberculosis the following year, after taking a teaching fellowship at Berkeley. It is not known whether the two were related.
On October 5, 1915, in Boise, Idaho he married Jeanne Craig MacDougall, the sister of his college roommate, Allen Scott (Scotty) MacDougall. (Her sister was named Clarissa MacLean MacDougall; the heroine of the
Lensman novels would later be named Clarissa MacDougall.) Jeanne MacDougall was born in Glasgow, Scotland; her parents were Donald Scott MacDougall, a violinist, and Jessica Craig MacLean. Her father had moved to Boise, Idaho when the children were young, and later sent for his family; he died while they were en route in 1905. Jeanne's mother, who remarried businessman and retired politician John F. Kessler in 1914 worked at, and later owned, a boarding house on Ridenbaugh Street.
The Smiths had three children:
- Roderick N., born June 3, 1918 in the District of Columbia (employed as a design engineer at Lockheed Aircraft).
- Verna Jean (later Verna Smith Trestrail), born August 25, 1920 in Michigan, his literary executor until her death in 1994. (Her son Kim Trestrail is now the executor.) Robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to Verna.
- Clarissa M.(later Clarissa Wilcox), born December 13, 1921 in Michigan.
Early chemical career and the beginning of Skylark
After graduating from college, Smith worked as a junior chemist for the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., working on standards for butter and for oysters. Smith may have served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War I, but in what capacity is not known; Smith apparently requested exemption from the draft, partly because his wife was solely dependent on him, and partly perhaps because of his service as a civilian chemist in the war effort.
On one evening in 1915, the Smiths were with visiting his former classmate from the University of Idaho, Dr. Carl Garby, who had also moved to Washington, D.C. They lived near the Smiths in the Seaton Place Apartments in Washington with his wife, Lee Hawkins Garby. A long discussion about journeys into outer space ensued. Then, it was suggested to Smith that he should write down his ideas and speculations as a story about interstellar travel. Although he was interested, Smith thought that some amount of romantic elements would be required as well...a task that he found himself uncomfortable with.
Mrs. Garby then made an offer to take care of the love interest and the romantic dialogue, and Smith decided to give it a try. The sources of inspirations for the main characters in the novel were themselves. The "Seatons" were based on the Smiths while the "Cranes" were drawn from the Garbys. About one-third of
The Skylark of Space was completed by the end of 1916, when Smith and Garby gradually abandoned work on it.
Smith earned his master's degree in chemistry from the George Washington University in 1917, studying under Dr. Charles E. Munroe. Smith completed his Ph.D. in chemical engineering, in 1918, emphasizing food engineering with a thesis entitled
The effect of bleaching with oxides of nitrogen upon the baking quality and commercial value of wheat flour, which was published in 1919. Warner and Fleischer instead give the thesis title as
The Effect of the Oxides of Nitrogen upon the Carotin Molecule ... C40H56, which is difficult to explain. Sam Moskowitz instead gives the date of the degree as 1919, which may reflect the differences between the thesis submission date, its defense date, and the degree certification date.
Writing Skylark
In 1919 Dr. Smith was hired as chief chemist for F. W. Stock & Sons of Hillsdale, Michigan, at one time the largest family-owned mill east of the Mississippi, working on doughnut mixes.
Late in 1919, after moving to Michigan, one evening Smith was baby-sitting (presumably for Roderick) while his wife attended a movie; he resumed work on
The Skylark of Space, finishing it in the spring of 1920. He submitted it to many book publishers and magazines, spending more in postage than he would eventually receive for its publication. He received an encouraging rejection letter from Bob Davis, editor of
Argosy, in 1922, saying that he liked the novel personally, but that it was too far out for his readers. (According to Warner, but no other source, Dr. Smith began work on the sequel,
Skylark III, before the first book was accepted.) Finally, upon seeing the April 1927 issue of
Amazing Stories, he submitted it to the magazine; it was accepted, initially for $75, later raised to $125. It was published in the August — October 1928 issues. It was such a success that managing editor T. O'Conor Sloane requested a sequel before the second installment had been published.
Mrs. Garby wasn't interested in collaborating further, so Dr. Smith began work on
Skylark Three on his own. It was published in the August through October 1930 issues of
Amazing. (In 1930 the Smiths were living in Michigan, at 33 Rippon Avenue in Hillsdale.) This was as far as he had planned to take the
Skylark series; it was praised in
Amazing's letter column, and he was paid 3/4¢ per word, surpassing
Amazing's previous record of half a cent.
The early 1930s: between Skylark and Lensman
Dr. Smith then began work on what he intended as a new series, starting with
Spacehounds of IPC, which he finished in the autumn of 1930. In this novel he took pains to avoid the scientific impossibilities which had bothered some readers of the
Skylark novels. Even in 1938, after he had written
Galactic Patrol, Dr. Smith considered it his finest work; he later said of it, "This was really scientific fiction; not, like the Skylarks, pseudo-science"; and even at the end of his career he considered it his only work of true science fiction. It was published in the July through September 1931 issues of
Amazing, but with unauthorized changes by Sloane. Fan letters in the magazine complained about the novel's containment within the solar system, and Sloane sided with the readers. So when Harry Bates, editor of Astounding Stories, offered Smith 2¢/word...payable on publication...for his next story, he agreed; this meant that it could not be a sequel to
Spacehounds.This book would be
Triplanetary, "in which scientific detail would not be bothered about, and in which his imagination would run riot." Indeed, characters within the story point out its psychological and scientific implausibilities, and sometimes even seem to suggest self-parody. At other times they are conspicuously silent about obvious implausibilities. The January 1933 issue of
Astounding announced that
Triplanetary would appear in the March issue, and that issue's cover illustrated a scene from the story, but
Astounding's financial difficulties prevented the story from appearing. Dr. Smith then submitted the manuscript to
Wonder Stories, whose editor, Charles D. Hornig, rejected it, later boasting about the rejection in a fanzine. He finally submitted it to
Amazing, which published it beginning in January 1934, but for only half a cent a word. Shortly after it was accepted, F. Orlin Tremaine, the new editor of the revived
Astounding, offered one cent a word for
Triplanetary; when he learned that he was too late, he suggested a third
Skylark novel instead.
In the winter of 1933-4 Dr. Smith worked on
The Skylark of Valeron, but he felt that the story was getting out of control; he sent his first draft to Tremaine, with a distraught note asking for suggestions. Tremaine accepted the rough draft for $850, and announced it in the June 1934 issue, with a full-page editorial and a three-quarter page advertisement. The novel was published in the August 1934 through February 1935 issues.
Astounding's circulation rose by 10,000 for the first issue, and its two main competitors,
Amazing and
Wonder Stories fell into financial difficulties, both skipping issues within a year.
The Lensman series
In January 1936, a time period where he was already an established science fiction writer, he took a job for salary plus profit-sharing, as a food technologist (a cereal chemist) at the Dawn Doughnut Company of Jackson, Michigan. This initially entailed almost a year's worth of eighteen-hour days and seven-day workweeks. Individuals who knew Dr. Smith confirmed that he had a role in developing mixes for doughnuts and other pastries, but the contention that he developed the first process for making powdered sugar adhere to doughnuts cannot be substantiated. Dr. Smith was reportedly dislocated from his job at Dawn Doughnuts due to pre-war rationing in early 1940.
Dr. Smith had been contemplating writing a "space-police novel" since early 1927; once he had "the Lensmen's universe fairly well set up", he reviewed his science fiction collection for "cops-and-robbers" stories. He cites Clinton Constantinescue's "War of the Universe" as a negative example, and Starzl and Williamson as positive ones. Tremaine responded extremely positively to a brief description of the idea.
Once Dawn Doughnuts became profitable in late 1936, Dr. Smith wrote an eighty-five page outline for what became the four core
Lensman novels; in early 1937 Tremaine committed to buying them. Segmenting the story into four novels required considerable effort to avoid dangling loose ends; Dr. Smith cites Edgar Rice Burroughs as a negative example. After the outline was complete, he wrote a more detailed outline of
Galactic Patrol, plus a detailed graph of its structure, with "peaks of emotional intensity and the valleys of characterization and background material." He notes, however, that he was never able to follow any of his outlines at all closely, as the "characters get away from me and do exactly as they damn please." After completing the rough draft of
Galactic Patrol, he wrote the concluding chapter of the last book in the series,
Children of the Lens. Galactic Patrol was published in the September 1937 through February 1938 issues of
Astounding; unlike the revised book edition, it was not set in the same universe as
Triplanetary.
Gray Lensman, the second book in the series, appeared in
Astounding's October 1939 through January 1940 issues. (Note that the frequent British spelling "grey" is simply a recurrent mistake, starting with the cover of the first installment; Moskowitz's usage,
"The Grey Lensman," is even harder to justify.)
Gray Lensman (and its cover illustration) was extremely well received. Campbell's editorial in the December issue suggested that the October issue was the best issue of
Astounding ever, and
Gray Lensman was first place in the
Analytical Laboratory statistics "by a lightyear", with three runners-up in a distant tie for third place. The cover was also praised by readers in
Brass Tacks, and Campbell noted, "We got a letter from E. E. Smith saying he and Hubert Rogers agreed on how Kinnison looked."
Dr. Smith was the guest of honor at Chicon I, the second World Science Fiction Convention, held in Chicago over Labor Day weekend 1940, giving a speech on the importance of science fiction fandom entitled "What Does This Convention Mean?" He attended the convention's masquerade as C.L. Moore's Northwest Smith, and met fans living near him in Michigan, who would later form the Galactic Roamers, which previewed and advised him on his future work.
Dr. Smith worked for the US Army between 1941 and 1945. An extended segment in the novel version of
Triplanetary, set during World War II, suggests intimate familiarity with explosives and munitions manufacturing. Some biographers cite as fact that, just as Smith's protagonist in this segment lost his job over failure to approve sub-standard munitions, Smith did as well. Smith began work for the J. W. Allen Company (a manufacturer of doughnut and frosting mixes) in 1946 and worked for them until his professional retirement in 1957.
Retirement and late writing
After Dr. Smith retired, he and his wife lived in Clearwater, Florida, in the fall and winter, driving the smaller of their two trailers to Seaside, Oregon, each April, often stopping at science fiction conventions on the way. (Dr. Smith did not like to fly.) Some of his biography is captured in an essay by Robert A. Heinlein, which was reprinted in the collection
Expanded Universe in 1980. There is a more detailed, although allegedly error-ridden, biography in Sam Moskowitz's
Seekers of Tomorrow.Robert A. Heinlein and Dr. Smith were friends. (Heinlein dedicated his 1958 novel
Methuselah's Children "To Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.") Heinlein reported that E. E. Smith perhaps took his "unrealistic" heroes from life, citing as an example the extreme competence of the hero of
Spacehounds of IPC. He reported that E. E. Smith was a large, blond, athletic, very intelligent, very gallant man, married to a remarkably beautiful, intelligent red-haired woman named MacDougal (thus perhaps the prototypes of 'Kimball Kinnison' and 'Clarissa MacDougal'). In Heinlein's essay, he reports that he began to suspect Smith might be a sort of "superman" when he asked Dr. Smith for help in purchasing a car. Smith tested the car by driving it on a back road at illegally high speeds with their heads pressed tightly against the roof columns to listen for chassis squeaks by bone conduction—a process apparently improvised on the spot.
In his non-series novels written after his professional retirement,
Galaxy Primes,
Subspace Explorers, and
Subspace Encounter, E. E. Smith explores themes of telepathy and other mental abilities collectively called "psionics", and of the conflict between libertarian and socialistic/communistic influences in the colonization of other planets.
Lord Tedric
Dr. Smith wrote a novelette entitled "Lord Tedric", published in
Other Worlds in 1952, and which was almost completely forgotten.
Much later, 13 years after Dr. Smith's death, Gordon Eklund published another novel of the same name about the same fictional character, introducing it as "a new series conceived by E. E. 'Doc' Smith". Eklund later went on to publish the other novels in the series, one or two under the pseudonym "E. E. 'Doc' Smith" or "E. E. Smith". The protagonist possesses similar heroic qualities common to the heroes in Dr. Smith's original novels and can communicate with an extra-dimensional race of beings known as The Scientists, whose archenemy is Fra Villion, a mysterious character described as a dark knight, skilled in whip-sword combat, and evil genius behind the creation of a planetoid-sized "iron sphere" armed with a weapon capable of destroying planets. As a result, Dr. Smith is believed by many to be the unacknowledged progenitor of themes that would appear in
Star Wars.
