Tanias Science Fiction Reading in the Fifties: E E Doc Smith.
Explore Tania's 1950s science fiction reading list featuring E.E. Doc Smith's iconic works. Dive into classic space operas and golden-age sci-fi books that defined the era.
Book
Gray Lensman
by Edward Elmer Smith
The action in Gray Lensman picks up immediately where Galactic Patrol left off, in the middle of the battle to destroy Helmuth's Main Base and, it is hoped, fully end the threat of Boskone.
Book
Zorn
by Graham Worthington
In the year 2035 it's cool to be bisexual - or at least pretend to be - and cool to be young, but to be both and on holiday in France is the coolest of all. Zorn and family are at The Anders Hotel, in the little port of Roknor, whose main attraction in daytime is its crowded beach, and in the evening its many clubs. Rejoicing in recently turning sixteen, Zorn has ten days to find Holiday Love, and isn't helped by the presence of Kevin, a coarse and violent homophobe. But despite their differences, neither can escape life's challenges, and find to their dismay that our joys and sorrows come mixed and inseparable. The mid twenty-first century is a time of looking back, a time laden with much nostalgia for the past, but little money. The Great World Depression of the 2020s has seen to that. It is a time of thumbing through the music, films and fashions of the last century, a time of imitating the lost Golden Age of the 1900s. It is also the era of core language, the final perfection of politically correct speech avoiding the use of such hideously offensive words as "he" and "she," with all their built-in stereotypes, all their dangerous assumptions about gender roles and sexuality. Yet it is a time when, though all has changed, nothing has changed. The sea still surges to the distant horizon, the waves still crash to the beach, and on these daily washed sands new people act out the ancient dramas afresh. Zorn is a story of romance, adventure and coming of age in this post-apocalyptic society.
