@cstross

#EESmith gives you huge latitude on what counts as marooned, so you're alright.

In the #Skylark series one case was being so far across the universe that the mounting platform for the comms array had to be the size of a planet in order to damp vibration to the point that the beam wasn't wobbling across entire galaxies at the receiving end.

In the #Lensman series one case was being in a different universe where the speed of light was huge, and another was being so far across the multiverse that only True Love could locate which universe Our Hero was in.

Smith was all about going bigger in the next novel. (-:

@robparsons
#SciFi

@cstross

Heh! You say that, but …

E.E. Smith, in the #Lensman series, found a way to plausibly force space battles in the future to be fought by barbarians with (space-)axes. Dutch barbarians with heavy-gravity world muscles, no less.

There was even a point where they had to use clubs and lengths of chain against mind-controlled humans, in a universe with personal force screens, impenetrable (space-)armour, blasters, and inertialessness.

If memory serves, it was something to do with the strange physics of 'hyper-spatial tubes' or being rotated out of phase with the universe, or something.

@floatybirb
#EESmith #SciFi #Valerians #VanBuskirk

@futzle

Mostly, what they read are the old boy's #SciFi stories from around the 1930s and 1940s, where the male uberman genius industrialist, with his girlfriend along for the ride in the rocketship, saves the galaxy, and knows better and does better than stupid governments.

https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/115826293180493731

Every half-arsed idea that makes for a good boy's story but is terrible science, from greenfingering a planetary climate to swarms of 'AIs' in space, has a precursor of some kind in these tales.

It's not that they've missed LeGuin specifically. It's that they've missed six decades of thoughtful counterpoints to that old stuff beginning in the late 1960s.

#UrsulaLeGuin #EESmith #DocSavage #HarryHarrison

@PlanetMillie

This would make both Foundation and Skylark Of Space classic literature.

#IsaacAsimov #EESmith