Venus Equilateral

by George O. Smith

Introduction by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke
QRM - Interplanetary (1942)
Calling the Empress (1943)
Recoil (1943)
Lost Art (1943)
Off the Beam (1944)
The Long Way (1944)
Beam Pirate (1944)
Firing Line (1944)
Special Delivery (1945)
Pandora's Millions (1945)
Mad Holiday (1947)

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

367 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1967

About the author

George Oliver Smith (April 9, 1911 - May 27, 1981) (also known as Wesley Long) was an American science fiction author. He is not to be confused with George H. Smith, another American science fiction author.

Smith was an active contributor to Astounding Science Fiction during the Golden Age of Science Fiction in the 1940s. His collaboration with the magazine's editor, John W. Campbell, Jr. was interrupted when Campbell's first wife, Doña, left him in 1949 and married Smith.

Smith continued regularly publishing science fiction novels and stories until 1960. His output greatly diminished in the 1960s and 1970s when he had a job that required his undivided attention. He was given the First Fandom Hall of Fame award in 1980.

He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers.

Smith wrote mainly about outer space, with such works as Operation Interstellar (1950), Lost in Space (1959), and Troubled Star (1957).

He is remembered chiefly for his Venus Equilateral series of short stories about a communications station in outer space. The stories were collected in Venus Equilateral (1947), which was later expanded as The Complete Venus Equilateral (1976).

His novel The Fourth "R" (1959) - re-published as The Brain Machine (1968) - was a digression from his focus on outer space, and provides one of the more interesting examinations of a child prodigy in science fiction.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Venus Equilateral is a Golden Age classic, a collection of short stories (or perhaps a loose fix-up novel) that feature engineers and scientists doing science in space in the future. They were written in the World War II era and so are now dated both socially and technologically, but they were among the best of their day and I think that the puzzles are still quite entertaining.

[Brian Greiner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff from a bygone era. Rousing adventures, with engineers and scientists as the heros. This would be classified as 'hard SF' these days, I suppose, although the tech is pretty dated (ie. tubes instead of sold-state devices). This isn't of the 'super science' and monsters genre that was all too common in those days, but rather it tries to show decent people fighting power-hungry corporations and individuals, while trying to good engineering work. The characters are pretty well written, and the plots are interesting. The 'bad guys' are sometimes nasty, and sometimes just self-serving, but pretty believable all-in-all. Best of all (at least for me), the stories follow an overall story-arc, and it all comes to a nice conclusion. There was a follow-up short story that was done some years later (maybe for a Campbell memorial collection?), but it was quite disappointing. Worth the time to read, especially for engineers and techies who will see that some organizational issues never change.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Venus Equilateral is a collection of short stories about a group of scientist that man a communications station.

Each story follows a similar format, there is some incident that requires the scientists to invent something to save the day. The technology in the stories is dated and when it get technical it is difficult to follow. I don't know if that is because of the dated technology or Smith was just making stuff up.

Overall the stories are too similar. In small doses they are entertaining, but a whole collection of them is repetitive.

[Andrew W. · Rating 5 out of 5]

good read from the golden age of SF

Now hopelessly outdated by later discoveries and scientific and engineering developments as well as changes in society norms, Venus Equilateral occupies an interesting niche between hard tech SF and Space Opera SF from the golden age of Science Fiction. Written before we knew the truth of actual conditions on the surfaces of both Mars and Venus, George O. Smith postulates more Earthlike climates for both colonized planets and ancient extinct civilizations which left behind cryptic technology which now is used to propel constantly accelerating spacecraft with no understanding of how it works. The physicists and engineers, by tinkering and wits, along with a willingness to take risks, delve into this unknown pseudoscience and create fascinating new applications all while fending off the machinations of an arch rival corporation and its legal assaults.

[David Szondy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as I remembered it – mind you, I was 14-years old at the time. This "novel" is actually a collection of short stories from the 1940s that are essentially an electrical engineer's daydreams about how great it would be if electrical engineers ran things. It started out as great fun seeing the problems of space communications as seen from the viewpoint of Second World War technology, but the book soon became repetitious with the same plot and gags over and over again as out heroes prevail again and again with depressing ease against villains who are staggeringly incompetent.