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The Galaxy Primes
They were four of the greatest minds in the Universe: Two men and two women, all Psionic Primes, lost in an experimental spaceship billions of parsecs from home. And as they mentally charted the cosmos to find their way back to Earth, their own loves and hates were as startling as the worlds they encountered... Here is E. E. Smith's classic science fiction novel -- one of the greatest space operas of all time!
156 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
80 people are currently reading
399 people want to read
About the author
E.E. "Doc" Smith
217 books326 followersEdward Elmer Smith (also E.E. Smith, E.E. Smith, Ph.D., E.E. “Doc” Smith, Doc Smith, “Skylark” Smith, or—to his family—Ted), was an American food engineer (specializing in doughnut and pastry mixes) and an early science fiction author, best known for the Lensman and Skylark series. He is sometimes called the father of space opera.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
January 9, 2026
I loved Smith's Skylark books and the Lensmen series as a youth, but this one just wasn't very good. It's a kind of confused 1929 story that he attempted to update to the current 1959 by the mention of sex and some more violence and genocide. The first starship from Earth, the Pleiades, works well, but they can't steer it. (TARDIS anyone?) It's crewed by two men and two women who are psionic primes, a concept he fails to describe or explain very well. They go out and explore and hang out and meet some psionic primes and decide to start a galactic federation club and live happily ever after. I read it over thirty years ago and keep thinking I should give it another try but haven't managed it yet. It's probably better than I remember. It was first published as a serial in the March - May issues of Amazing Stories magazine in 1959 and was not released in book form until 1965 by Ace as one of their short-format paperbacks with a very busy Ed Valigursky cover. Fans of Kimball Kinnison should look elsewhere.
October 22, 2012
No likable characters. It's like every character is a Blackie duQuesne in personality. Ultimately in the service of Good, but still jerks.
July 18, 2016
This is a weird book, you guys. Weird even by the standards of sixties science fiction, weird even in the career of E.E. "Doc" Smith. Which is not to say that it's a very good book, by either of those standards; but it pushes against the mores of time, place and genre in a way that's interesting if you're a weirdo like me, who views society through the lens of what kind of people get to be protagonists.
Having read a lot of Smith's pre-World War II work, I was surprised at how different The Galaxy Primes felt - specifically, in the realm of character, it felt less like the other Smith work I've read, and more like the characterization of Smith's friend and compatriot Robert Heinlein. This is not a great thing, though, because our Prime couple shows the traits of Heinlein's most annoying protagonists - highly competent and highly defensive, puffing themselves up at the drop of a hat and making big speeches about how the world really works at anyone the narrative designates as lesser. And naturally, when they apply this behavior to each other, no matter how nasty and petty it gets (and no matter how painful in terms of sexism), it means they're Meant For Each Other.
At least, that's the status quo at the beginning of the book, when said couple and their not-quite-as-powerful-but-equally-competent-and-way-nicer friends are exploring the outer universe. (Incidentally, the female member of that couple is a person of color who gets to be beautiful, powerful, kind and skilled. She does, however, get saddled with the nickname "Brownie", because we can't have nice things.) Halfway thru, though, after a thinly veiled and very angry satire of the Cold War, things shift. It feels like Smith, in the process of getting inside his characters' heads, realized - wow, being someone who's constantly a superior jerk to everyone around them would actually really suck!?
At that point, we move back to Earth's galaxy, and our main couple travels around, discovering that nearly every inhabited planet has a pair of Primes, and almost every such pair are assholes who need to be taken down a peg before they're ready to be part of galactic civilization. It feels like a direct attack on a particular idea of "toughness" and "strength", an acknowledgement - incredibly rare in this era, especially among non-hippies - that being the loudest and the pushiest and the most confrontational doesn't actually mean that you're the best, or even good at what you do. This is especially true when the most pressing problem is that our main pair realizes that they, too, need to be taken down a peg - but how?
Like I said, this is a weird book. It seems to be reacting intuitively against several things - the framework of masculinity in mid-20th-century America, the mindset that being in the military imposes on you on what a Good Leader is and how they act. Yet at the same time, the not-so-intuitive level of the book is pushing the same old shit - a narrowly defined gender binary, the idea that military rank and discipline is preferable to debate and representative government. It's very of its time - the copy I got from a secondhand bookstore had cigarette ads in it - but also very much in reaction against and dialogue with that time. It's a frustrating read, but it has definite historical value, and it's reaching for the stars.
Having read a lot of Smith's pre-World War II work, I was surprised at how different The Galaxy Primes felt - specifically, in the realm of character, it felt less like the other Smith work I've read, and more like the characterization of Smith's friend and compatriot Robert Heinlein. This is not a great thing, though, because our Prime couple shows the traits of Heinlein's most annoying protagonists - highly competent and highly defensive, puffing themselves up at the drop of a hat and making big speeches about how the world really works at anyone the narrative designates as lesser. And naturally, when they apply this behavior to each other, no matter how nasty and petty it gets (and no matter how painful in terms of sexism), it means they're Meant For Each Other.
At least, that's the status quo at the beginning of the book, when said couple and their not-quite-as-powerful-but-equally-competent-and-way-nicer friends are exploring the outer universe. (Incidentally, the female member of that couple is a person of color who gets to be beautiful, powerful, kind and skilled. She does, however, get saddled with the nickname "Brownie", because we can't have nice things.) Halfway thru, though, after a thinly veiled and very angry satire of the Cold War, things shift. It feels like Smith, in the process of getting inside his characters' heads, realized - wow, being someone who's constantly a superior jerk to everyone around them would actually really suck!?
At that point, we move back to Earth's galaxy, and our main couple travels around, discovering that nearly every inhabited planet has a pair of Primes, and almost every such pair are assholes who need to be taken down a peg before they're ready to be part of galactic civilization. It feels like a direct attack on a particular idea of "toughness" and "strength", an acknowledgement - incredibly rare in this era, especially among non-hippies - that being the loudest and the pushiest and the most confrontational doesn't actually mean that you're the best, or even good at what you do. This is especially true when the most pressing problem is that our main pair realizes that they, too, need to be taken down a peg - but how?
Like I said, this is a weird book. It seems to be reacting intuitively against several things - the framework of masculinity in mid-20th-century America, the mindset that being in the military imposes on you on what a Good Leader is and how they act. Yet at the same time, the not-so-intuitive level of the book is pushing the same old shit - a narrowly defined gender binary, the idea that military rank and discipline is preferable to debate and representative government. It's very of its time - the copy I got from a secondhand bookstore had cigarette ads in it - but also very much in reaction against and dialogue with that time. It's a frustrating read, but it has definite historical value, and it's reaching for the stars.
October 17, 2014
‘The ship was called the Pleiades, and it was Earth’s first starship. It could travel instantaneously to literally anywhere in the universe – but that was just the trouble with it. For there was absolutely no way of predicting where in the infinities of space it would reappear when it winked out of the Solar System, and no way of knowing how to return.
it’s crew was two men and two women, each a Psionic Prime with mind-powers unparalleled in Earth’s history. The tale of how they pitted their powers against an entire universe is one of the daring adventure on the galactic scale such as could only have been written by science-fiction’s all-time great, Edward E. Smith.’
Blurb from the 1965 Ace paperback edition
A rather odd, late work from Smith in which he once more (as in his Skylark series) sends two couples off across the galaxy in a ship which, rather unimaginatively and improbably, has a Big Red Button. This, when depressed firmly, takes them to a random G-type planet in the universe.
No doubt in order to catch up with the times Smith introduces the tricky subject of sex into his Space Opera. There’s nothing raunchy about it. There’s a lot of talk about ‘pairing’. One couple eventually go off to a cabin together and emerge later for breakfast. In ‘Doc’ Smith terms, this is tantamount to porn.
The couple chosen for this voyage are the elite of Earth, a male and female ‘Prime’ (humans of high intelligence with telepathic, psychokinetic and teleportation powers) and two Gunther Firsts (as above, but with not so many powers).
They visit a succession of Earth-type planets in another galaxy, peopled by humans but with varying customs. Every planet is guarded by another race called the Arpalones who protect Humanity from various (and seemingly pointless) alien attacks.
Returning to our own galaxy after learning how to control the Big Red Button, they again find Humanity on many Planets, each with small numbers of Primes.
They set up what is essentially an ‘Interstellar Primes Club’ and return home to Earth where Belle Bellamy (the female Prime) deduces that the Universe is a vast living organism which has evolved the Arpalones as antibodies for one section of its body, while the Primes will do it in their own galaxy; ordinary Humanity being put in the role of blood cells, and evil aliens as diseases.
Once again, even at this late date, Smith throws in the quite agreeable (to all involved) concept of genocide, as when our heroic four help the Arpalones to wipe out a species of man-faced flying tiger which has been menacing the locals.
Also, quite absurdly, they save another world from Communism. Somehow, in this entirely separate galaxy, the Communist leaders have evolved Russian names.
From the author of ‘the Skylark’ and ‘Lensman’ series, this is a very sad point to which to sink.
it’s crew was two men and two women, each a Psionic Prime with mind-powers unparalleled in Earth’s history. The tale of how they pitted their powers against an entire universe is one of the daring adventure on the galactic scale such as could only have been written by science-fiction’s all-time great, Edward E. Smith.’
Blurb from the 1965 Ace paperback edition
A rather odd, late work from Smith in which he once more (as in his Skylark series) sends two couples off across the galaxy in a ship which, rather unimaginatively and improbably, has a Big Red Button. This, when depressed firmly, takes them to a random G-type planet in the universe.
No doubt in order to catch up with the times Smith introduces the tricky subject of sex into his Space Opera. There’s nothing raunchy about it. There’s a lot of talk about ‘pairing’. One couple eventually go off to a cabin together and emerge later for breakfast. In ‘Doc’ Smith terms, this is tantamount to porn.
The couple chosen for this voyage are the elite of Earth, a male and female ‘Prime’ (humans of high intelligence with telepathic, psychokinetic and teleportation powers) and two Gunther Firsts (as above, but with not so many powers).
They visit a succession of Earth-type planets in another galaxy, peopled by humans but with varying customs. Every planet is guarded by another race called the Arpalones who protect Humanity from various (and seemingly pointless) alien attacks.
Returning to our own galaxy after learning how to control the Big Red Button, they again find Humanity on many Planets, each with small numbers of Primes.
They set up what is essentially an ‘Interstellar Primes Club’ and return home to Earth where Belle Bellamy (the female Prime) deduces that the Universe is a vast living organism which has evolved the Arpalones as antibodies for one section of its body, while the Primes will do it in their own galaxy; ordinary Humanity being put in the role of blood cells, and evil aliens as diseases.
Once again, even at this late date, Smith throws in the quite agreeable (to all involved) concept of genocide, as when our heroic four help the Arpalones to wipe out a species of man-faced flying tiger which has been menacing the locals.
Also, quite absurdly, they save another world from Communism. Somehow, in this entirely separate galaxy, the Communist leaders have evolved Russian names.
From the author of ‘the Skylark’ and ‘Lensman’ series, this is a very sad point to which to sink.
March 20, 2009
Ah, old fashioned scifi space opera! Typical of E.E. "Doc" Smith, his heros and heroines are gorgeous hunks of men and women with stupendous mind powers and Boy Scout codes of ethics, out to bring order to the unruly universe. Untypical of Smith, this story is not all that good. The plot does not thicken so much as confuse. The characters are invested in bringing order to the universe in a very odd way and for reasons that are not all that clear. I think he tried to create a "universe as a living creature" scenario here, but he did it very badly. I enjoyed some of his other series very much, such as the Lensman series or the Subspace Explorers series. One of the things I enjoyed most about these very old fashioned series is that he tended to write very strong female characters - unusual for his time and genre. But both of the strong female leads in this story fell flat, just as the story itself failed to please.
February 25, 2017
I spent a lot of time in John Menzies, a newsagent-ish store in Dundee pondering what to spend my 50p on. I'd never heard the term Space Opera before but the blurb on the back of this novel got my attention. I'm sure I didn't pick it up on my first visit but after reading it and sniggering as someone was threatened with a fanny smacking ( it is US English), I devoured it and sought out the Lensman series and the Family D`Alembert series. My Golden Age was beginning.
June 4, 2015
This has got to be the WORST book i've ever read. Don't bother...a complete waste of time! To sum up my review, this book is just DUMB!
January 26, 2022
I’m not sure why I bothered powering through this book, perhaps to just get it over with. In truth, I’m still learning how to put a book down when I’m not enjoying it.
Classic sci-fi/ space operas! There can be a real charm to them, but this book doesn’t have any. It’s a tale about four humans (2 men, 2 women) on a mission to bring order to the universe. At some point they get paired off together, because of course, men and women can’t work with each other for long without sex happening. Confusion as to where the story was going never really subsided, and all of the characters irritated me. Even the nice ones! This book includes: spaceships, gender relations (dripping with misogyny), a failed attempt to create strong female characters, psychic abilities that never felt properly explained, flying tigers with man-faces (which, at least explained the cover of the book), genocide, etc. In a nutshell, lots of wandering around the universe coupled with never ending misogyny.
I wish this hadn’t been my first introduction to “Doc”, as I’ve heard great things about his Lensman series. After this doozy, I’ll be avoiding his books for a while. If I can leave you with one thought, just… don’t. Save yourself the pain I went through, and don’t bother reading this one.
Classic sci-fi/ space operas! There can be a real charm to them, but this book doesn’t have any. It’s a tale about four humans (2 men, 2 women) on a mission to bring order to the universe. At some point they get paired off together, because of course, men and women can’t work with each other for long without sex happening. Confusion as to where the story was going never really subsided, and all of the characters irritated me. Even the nice ones! This book includes: spaceships, gender relations (dripping with misogyny), a failed attempt to create strong female characters, psychic abilities that never felt properly explained, flying tigers with man-faces (which, at least explained the cover of the book), genocide, etc. In a nutshell, lots of wandering around the universe coupled with never ending misogyny.
I wish this hadn’t been my first introduction to “Doc”, as I’ve heard great things about his Lensman series. After this doozy, I’ll be avoiding his books for a while. If I can leave you with one thought, just… don’t. Save yourself the pain I went through, and don’t bother reading this one.
April 21, 2015
Two things always strike me whenever I pick up a book by the Doc: the primeval attitudes towards gender and the casual acceptance of the normality of smoking. This, being one of his later books, doesn't take quite such a dismissive attitude to the role and capabilities of women ... but there's still plenty of smoking! I surprise myself by how shocking I find it.
That aside, I've always found this book entertaining. It's a significant departure from his better known series, the Lensmen and Skylark books, in focussing on psionics and some of the ways that such capabilities might affect society and the new scientific avenues that might be explored (though one should always remember that the author was never too concerned about scientific realism!). It raises a number of intriguing ideas but, that said, they never seem to be fully fleshed out or developed; this book feels, in some ways, rather less complete than many of his other stories. I've come across no evidence that there was ever meant to be a sequel but that's to me it certainly feels like book one in a series.
Nonetheless, it's a standard E.E. "Doc" Smith romp in true space-opera style: the good guys win, the men and women happily pair off in true fairy-tale fashion by the end of the story, and our gallant heroes (and heroines in this case) get to slap down the cheeky upstarts from other planets. And it's pretty good fun.
That aside, I've always found this book entertaining. It's a significant departure from his better known series, the Lensmen and Skylark books, in focussing on psionics and some of the ways that such capabilities might affect society and the new scientific avenues that might be explored (though one should always remember that the author was never too concerned about scientific realism!). It raises a number of intriguing ideas but, that said, they never seem to be fully fleshed out or developed; this book feels, in some ways, rather less complete than many of his other stories. I've come across no evidence that there was ever meant to be a sequel but that's to me it certainly feels like book one in a series.
Nonetheless, it's a standard E.E. "Doc" Smith romp in true space-opera style: the good guys win, the men and women happily pair off in true fairy-tale fashion by the end of the story, and our gallant heroes (and heroines in this case) get to slap down the cheeky upstarts from other planets. And it's pretty good fun.
December 1, 2014
It's as though some parsimonious editor carefully expunged the three or so pages of exposition that introduces the setting and terminology. From the first page, the reader is swimming in jargon about "Gunther", "Gunther First", "Prime", "Operator", and "Prime Operator" that is somehow important in how this all works but is entirely unexplained. If this is what Smith meant to present, then he had no fear of dropping the reader right into the deep end, to sink or swim.
From what I can determine, the "Gunther" business involves technologically-produced energy fields that can be manipulated by psychic individuals as an instrumentality for physical effects. Or, alternatively, that it refers to a psychic ability far in advance in scope to the standard telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis, and so forth that is commonly depicted (abilities so advanced that there had to be new language to describe it).
In any case, it is yet another vehicle for late-era Smith to recycle and tinker the same damn subjects: psychic abilities, the pinnacle of human development, and gender relations, especially as those relations pertain to the examples of human perfection that are the protagonists.
From what I can determine, the "Gunther" business involves technologically-produced energy fields that can be manipulated by psychic individuals as an instrumentality for physical effects. Or, alternatively, that it refers to a psychic ability far in advance in scope to the standard telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis, and so forth that is commonly depicted (abilities so advanced that there had to be new language to describe it).
In any case, it is yet another vehicle for late-era Smith to recycle and tinker the same damn subjects: psychic abilities, the pinnacle of human development, and gender relations, especially as those relations pertain to the examples of human perfection that are the protagonists.
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April 24, 2015Mark Nelson's latest for LibriVox. I'm not usually crazy about Doc Smith but I am a fan of Mark Nelson!
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3 chapters in, I'm giving up. Even Mark Nelson can't make me enjoy this book. :-)
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3 chapters in, I'm giving up. Even Mark Nelson can't make me enjoy this book. :-)
December 31, 2023
As anachronistic as they were, I really enjoyed Smith's Skylark and Galactic Patrol series, but this? This just doesn't cut it. It's basically a book about a bunch of sex-obsessed cosmic bullies (who call themselves, oh-so-modestly, "Primes") from Earth (or "Tellus" as Smith insists on calling it) that travel around the universe (in a ship they can barely control) and essentially impose their assholish, prejudiced, dick-headed will upon every group of extraterrestrials they find (who, true to Smith form, are almost all humans of one sort or another). This imposition often involves the use of lethal (psionic) force upon those creatures they find unworthy of continued existence. And, of course, all of the human cultures they find out there quickly accept their dominance without question, recognizing that these "Tellurian Primes" are far advanced of their own cultures, and docilely acquiescing to being guided by these alien strangers (because everyone knows that humans are so very willing to accept "guidance" from "superior" alien forces, right?... Riiiight). Through all of this, there runs a not-so-subtle theme of eugenics, with pages and pages of dialogue devoted to the main characters expounding upon how advantageous it would be for the natives to "pair" with them, thus improving their gene pool by mixing it with that of these lofty and perfect "Tellurian Primes". Of course, they do not deign to sully themselves by diddling the natives, choosing instead to "pair" with their asshole "Prime" shipmates, with whom they exchange heated insult after heated insult, which of course leads to them falling in some semblance of "love" with each other, because, yeah, that makes sense. Not a single character in this book is in the least bit likeable or relatable, with the possible exception of "Brownie", whose naivety gives her at least some small token of humility, though even she is clearly quite impressed with herself in her brown-person, "aww shucks" sort of way. But at least she takes some interest in understanding the cultures they encounter, even if it is from a dated, 19th-century anthropological science sort of viewpoint. Overall, this book has Nietzscheian Superman philosophy written all over it, and is mostly a rather poorly written story about a bunch of truly-distasteful, narcissistic egotists spreading their poisonous, elitist, solipsistic philosophy of superiority throughout the universe. If you like that sort of thing, have at it!
September 24, 2022
Doc Smith is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me - I love the Lensman series and have read it multiple times, but the Skylark series is really not very good. This novel falls somewhere in between them.
There are echoes of the Lensman series here, although Doc Smith has a far more libertarian mindset showing through in this novel than was ever present in his best known work. There are also passages where I feel I am reading Heinlein - I know Heinlein acknowledged Doc Smith as a major influence on him, so perhaps Heinlein's work is echoing Smith's work, but I have read more Heinlein, so I am more familiar with his writing.
Anyway, the story was a bit disjointed at the start, but pulled together, and was classic Doc Smith by the end - it would not have surprised me if he had intended this as a series starter.
There are echoes of the Lensman series here, although Doc Smith has a far more libertarian mindset showing through in this novel than was ever present in his best known work. There are also passages where I feel I am reading Heinlein - I know Heinlein acknowledged Doc Smith as a major influence on him, so perhaps Heinlein's work is echoing Smith's work, but I have read more Heinlein, so I am more familiar with his writing.
Anyway, the story was a bit disjointed at the start, but pulled together, and was classic Doc Smith by the end - it would not have surprised me if he had intended this as a series starter.
July 8, 2018
This was an odd story, it had all the elements of a typical Doc Smith novel, but just not quite up to the level. In this one we find out that each planet has a pair of Primes, a man and a woman who have super ESP and other mental abilities beyond that of everyone else on the planet. The Earth primes learn how to pilot a spaceship that can go between galaxies, let alone solar systems.
In all this traveling, the Earth Primes find all the other Primes throughout the galaxy, and a Galactic League is formed.
I do not know if this book is part of a larger series, but if it is, it is not like any of the other Smith series I have read. In all the other series, people do not have super mental powers like these people.
In all this traveling, the Earth Primes find all the other Primes throughout the galaxy, and a Galactic League is formed.
I do not know if this book is part of a larger series, but if it is, it is not like any of the other Smith series I have read. In all the other series, people do not have super mental powers like these people.
July 8, 2019
The Galaxy Primes involves yet more "psionics", a common theme in Doc Smith's works. And like most Smith novels, it moves along with a lot of action. A team of mentally advanced people takes out an experimental space ship, and quickly gets lost in a vast universe. They do eventually figure out how the ship works and manage to control it and come home. There is a surprising discovery involved, but I don't want to give it away in a review. Overall, this is a pleasant diversion, but not something that will go on anyone's "must read" list. I happen to be a huge fan of Doc Smith and have read just about everything he wrote. This is a work that exemplifies "pulp fiction".
I read this as part of a collection "The Works of E.E. "Doc" Smith"
I read this as part of a collection "The Works of E.E. "Doc" Smith"
March 9, 2021
The Lensman series is still a classic in driving the concept of space opera. Sure, it's a bit dated, but it's rip-roaring fun. This book, on the other hand, was his attempt to join the late 50s and early 60s, but it's a bad attempt. Though he attempts to present women as equals, he doesn't know how. The misogyny was so up front it drove me crazy. There's also no real plot, just people wandering the universe dealing with other humans (they're almost all humans), smoking, making sexist cracks, and not really doing anything. I'll stick with Lensman.
December 29, 2022
So, as a huge fan of Smith's work, I have to admit that this is my least favourite. There were several times that I felt that I wouldn't be able to finish it. It got better in parts, so it isn't a one star but...
While I will regularly go back and re-read the Lensman saga, and periodically reread the Skylark books, similarly the Subspace and other singletons.... I will probably not come back to this one. There are some interesting parts, but I also suppose that every group needs to have a least good member, so this is most definitely my least enjoyed Smith story.
While I will regularly go back and re-read the Lensman saga, and periodically reread the Skylark books, similarly the Subspace and other singletons.... I will probably not come back to this one. There are some interesting parts, but I also suppose that every group needs to have a least good member, so this is most definitely my least enjoyed Smith story.
January 24, 2024
A standalone from a classic SF writer from "back in the day" (publication date 1959). It was fun! A bit heavy on dialogue and light on world-building for my taste. It doesn't bear scrutiny at the current level of polite behavior (everyone seems to smoke) but there are strong female characters, which is reasonably well done and somewhat uncommon (looking at you, Asimov). Worth a read if you are interested in this era of SF, otherwise, I have heard that Smith's "Lens" series is much better.
November 8, 2025
I am a fan of Doc Smith's lensman series, so I was keen to read this. However, it took several attempts to get far enough in to persist to the end and it really isn't very good. In particular the, er, "romance" element in the book is pretty bad. When this disappears into the background for a bit the book gets better, and it does have some interesting sci-fi ideas. However, the romance always comes back and the good elements aren't enough to save it.
February 12, 2021
Fantasy reading 📚
A fantasy Sci-Fi adventure novella in the galaxy with interesting will developed characters. The story line is fast moving as the characters attempt to organize the planets of the galaxy. I would recommend this novella to readers of Sci-Fi fantasy. Enjoy reading 🔰2021 😣
A fantasy Sci-Fi adventure novella in the galaxy with interesting will developed characters. The story line is fast moving as the characters attempt to organize the planets of the galaxy. I would recommend this novella to readers of Sci-Fi fantasy. Enjoy reading 🔰2021 😣
October 13, 2022
Interesting but at times so unclear I ended up with a very limited idea of what the problem was they were trying to solve. At times the author just seemed to skip entire parts of the conversation and I guess we were meant to infer what was said, but there wasn't enough information to do so.
Would have made a better short story.
Would have made a better short story.
December 1, 2023
Surprisingly poor considering this was written after the Lensman series. The plot was thin, story arc limited, characters two dimensional. I can see now why the author wasn't happy. For completionists only. Sorry EE.Doc Smith RIP but the Lensman series was great and ignited my passion for sci-fi almost 45 years ago.
April 26, 2019
This is so dated it was really hard to read. And the plot was horrible. It got worse as I went along. I don't know why I finished this but i did. I guess I was hoping for some big revelation at the end but it was just a silly theory that made the whole book even worse in hindsight.
January 20, 2020
They're fussin! They're fightin! They're fixin the universe with grins, genocide and a good smoke! Meet the Galaxians!
It's not just the worst thing I've read since I joined goodreads ... it's the worst thing I've read since my pubic hair showed up. And I'm old.
It's not just the worst thing I've read since I joined goodreads ... it's the worst thing I've read since my pubic hair showed up. And I'm old.
April 12, 2020
An interesting way of looking at the universe. Combining space travel with teleportation and mind reading. And to top it all off, the universe is one big living organism. Men in Black in Outer space.
A good old fashioned science fiction story. Sit back and see the world in a different light.
A good old fashioned science fiction story. Sit back and see the world in a different light.
August 26, 2018
Amazingly terrible book. Shocking that it was ever published.
February 17, 2020
Nice ending. From physics to politics to biochemistry to.........
September 23, 2020
Impossible read. The sexist bantering is just too much.
November 1, 2020
Read it again, loved it again.
Yes, it's rampantly sexist, and decidedly a product of its time. I loved it anyway.
Yes, it's rampantly sexist, and decidedly a product of its time. I loved it anyway.
April 9, 2023
A grand opera from an openly misogynistic era. Very much of its time but still a fun read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews