- Alternate Character Interpretation: Are Seaton and company the incorruptible beacons of good and ideal specimens of humanity that the book portrays them as, or are they impetuous Man-Children who judge entire species based on first impressions and who accidentally stumbled upon something that the human race can by no means be trusted with, as shown by the fact that they have no qualms about killing their enemies to the last man, woman, and child, even when the latter try to retreat.
- Designated Hero: The Kondalians have practically no traits that would be considered sympathetic by modern readers. They have no concept of democracy, race-based slavery is unquestioned, they've been at war for 6000 years over ideology, are Social Darwinists who believe themselves a Superior Species, and admit to having no concept of mercy. All in all, they are no better than the Mardonalians; the only reason they are considered good is because they were nice to the heroes.
- Unlike the Mardonalians, and the villains generally in the series, the Kondalians are not Absolute Xenophobes, but willing to co-operate peacefully with other planets. That said, they are typically portrayed as a species of Proud Warrior Race Guys, with a strong whiff of Barsoom. They're very flawed good guys, and they do occasionally get called out on their warmongering by the human protagonists. In fact Dunark eventually decides not to share the knowledge Seaton gained from the Norlaminians with the rest of his species, since he knows that they can’t be trusted with it.
- In a way, the resolution of the the Kondalian-Urvanian conflict in Skylark Three is a callout of this too. While Seaton started out planning to aid the Kondalians to stop the Urvanians from destroying them, he finally ends the war by showing up with an overwhelmingly powerful spaceship and telling both sides that he is now "Overlord of the Green System" and that he will destroy whichever of the two species chooses to attack the other. Him threatening the Urvanians, who started the war, like this is par for the course in the Skylark series. What's remarkable is that he's threatening the same horrible retaliation on his friends, the Kondalians... because he's aware that they're violent jerks who might otherwise choose to restart the war and seek revenge if they thought they had an advantage.
- Evil Is Cool: DuQuesne. Come on, admit it.
- Fair for Its Day: The idea of an Asian manservant seems cliche and racist these days, but Seaton's "Jap" was actually pretty capable at hand-to-hand combat, gunplay, and security and repeatedly manages to fend off terrestrial bad guys. He actively defies their racist stereotype that he'll take a bribe, even when they offer him 50 grand (more than half a million in 2018 money).
- Harsher in Hindsight: The Federation’s war against the Fenachrone. The latter are a bunch of malignantly expansionist Rubber-Forehead Aliens planning to expand from their own single planet; Seaton and company object to their plans. So far, so good. Their reaction, however, is first to threaten and bully the Fenachrone with their own overwhelming might until they declare war on them in desperation, then — when as defenders, the Fenachrone hold the moral high ground — nuke their planet and launch a successful attempt to exterminate the refugees completely. While it’s clear the Fenachrone are aggressive militarists and potentially genocidal themselves, they also aren't really a threat to the vastly superior technology and numbers of the good guys at this point, and indeed have to display a fair amount of Villainous Valor merely in order to survive the attempted genocide, and they ultimately fail. Besides the questions of Disproportionate Retribution and general Values Dissonance, to modern audiences the whole affair also reads a lot like the Roosevelt administration’s historical carte-blanche persecution of American Japanaese citizens & civilians already victimized by Imperial Japan.
- On the other hand, the conflict started because a Fenachrone scout ship made an unprovoked attack on the Skylark, and when the Skylark successfully defended itself, the ship sent the Fenachrone rulers a recommendation that Earth be entirely destroyed to remove it as a threat. Clearly their own potential for genocide was more than a vague possibility.
- The Fenachrone start out with a major technological advantage in most areas. And they seem quite happy to exterminate other species that don't share that advantage. The core plot of the novel boils down to Seaton and friends searching for technology powerful enough to overcome the Fenachrone... and then using it to do to the Fenachrone what the Fenachrone would have done to them.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Nowadays, there is a real restaurant chain called Perkins. Considering how the character was portrayed in the book, it is potentially Fridge Horror.
- When the Norlaminians give Seaton knowledge of the inner workings of the universe, it includes the “fact” that subatomic particles are made up of smaller particles, which are made up of smaller particles, and so on ad infinitum. About six years later, the classic short story “He Who Shrank” would go the reductio ad absurdum route with the trope (which had already been disproved by science).
- One of the main characters is named Martin Crane.
- Older Than They Think: A “dark star”, essentially a black hole,note and mushroom clouds produced by the atomic/total conversion of explosive shells. Both in The Skylark of Space, published in 1928.
- Early drafts are said to go all the way back to 1916. That is sixty years before Star Wars.
- The fact that huge explosions could create mushroom clouds was already known before 1945, because of volcanic eruptions and occasional major accidents in which hundreds or thousands of tons of chemical explosives blew up.
- Paranoia Fuel:
- The Fenachrone have mapped out the entire galaxy in full video. Furthermore, they could invade a given planet at any time they want.
- By the end of Skylark Three, the heroes can project themselves anywhere, can destroy whole planets with ease, and can reconstruct a perfect record of what anyone did at any point in the past. Just imagine that kind of power in the hands of a totalitarian state.
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