History Literature / SkylarkSeries

** In sorting out the feud between the Osnomians and the Urvanians, Dick Seaton gives both sides the exact same knowledge of Fenachrone technology. Then he tells them to set aside their differences, promising to exterminate whichever race survives the war if they don't. Somewhat subverted in that he expects that if they do go to way the Osnomians will lose, and while he doesn't want to eradicate the Osnomians (currently allies and close friends), he would have no problem eradicating the Urvanians (who are complete strangers).

** Even if we assume that the ''Skylark'' really was accelerating at 75,000''g'', and that relativistic mass/time dilation doesn't happen, there's still the problem that the ship has far more kinetic energy than could possibly be supplied by the mass-to-energy conversion of a few pounds of copper. In a purely Newtonian universe where a space ship's kinetic energy is always 1/2 ''m'' ''v''[[superscript:2]] no matter its speed, at three times the speed of light the ship's kinetic energy would be equal to ''4.5 times its own mass'' multiplied by ''c'' squared. You'd have to convert 4.5 Skylark masses' worth of copper into energy, to accelerate to that speed. (To say nothing of the mass you'd have to convert to energy to slow back down--unless a "free" or "energy-recovering" form of space braking existed in the Skylark universe, which I wouldn't put past Doc Smith.)

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Besides the examples where ScienceMarchesOn, there are a few places where Smith violates even the physics what was well-established by the time the first book was written:

%%** Dorothy and Margaret develop into this.

* {{Chronoscope}}: Used to check whether any of the Fenachrone had escaped their planet before it was destroyed.

* {{Catch 22 Dilemma}}: The Norlaminians are stuck technologically because their planet utterly lacks metal X, which is essential to put their advanced theory into practice. They do have primitive rockets, but all expeditions to the nearest X-rich solar system have failed. Though they can project themselves to other planets of their solar system, they cannot travel between stars this way, since that requires metal X.

-->"[The creature] seems to [...] have within itself the possibilities of both bisexual and asexual reproduction."\\

* TheAlliance: Seaton and Crane create one of these to fight off the Fenachrone, by visiting all the inhabitable planets in Osnome's system, to convince the locals to join them in their cause. Most wind up hailing Seaton as their "Overlord".
* TheFatalist: Orlon's first reaction to hearing about the Fenachrone is that Norlamin will inevitably be conquered and that there is nothing that can be done, because his species would only put up passive resistance. Amusingly, when Seaton gets him to help anyway, he suddenly says that the Fenachrone are fated to fail.
* TheSociopath: Both [=DuQuesne=] and Perkins, but in different ways; the former is WickedCultured and the latter is TheBrute.
* TheStarscream: Ravindau, of the Fenachrone. After he uses science to deduce that [[spoiler:Seaton's threat is not a bluff, and they truly are capable of exterminating the Fenachrone]], he criticizes the Emperor, telling him that his arrogance and short-sightedness has doomed their race. But since the Emperor's mind is made up, [[spoiler:he commits regicide]] so that his own plan to save a remnant of their civilization will not be overruled.

Richard Seaton, a chemist, discovers that an unknown extraterrestrial metal ("X") reacts with copper to provide total matter-energy conversion. Seeing the possibilities of this, he and his rich friend Martin Crane (who provides the initial capital) use it to build power stations--and a spacecraft, the "Skylark". The evil Marc [=DuQuesne=], co-worker and collaborator with the highly pragmatic World Steel Corporation, wishes to steal it for himself, and descends to theft, threatening Seaton's new wife Dorothy. Everyone goes into space, looking for more metal "X" and other resources, and the story takes off from there.

* LensmanArmsRace: '''So much'''.[[note]]The Lensman series was, after all, written by the same author.[[/note]] From steel hulls to impenetrable armor made of the alien material "inoson"; from simple explosive projectiles to insanely powerful beam weapons (and various types of 'projectors', which are very versatile). From a ship 40 feet across to one a thousand miles in diameter. Whole ''galaxies'' are embroiled in battle eventually.

* HumanAliens: Many. In this series, humanlike intelligent species naturally develop on Earthlike planets. At least it's {{lampshaded}} that the heroes find this odd, and at one point Seaton does speculate that StarfishAliens exist, but on planets that are completely uninhabitable to humans.

* {{Gonk}}: Shiro is illustrated as having vastly disproportionate limbs. It is worth noting, however, that he is never described in that way in the text. There is only an illustration, and that is most likely misplaced in the text and actually shows Seaton dealing with a surviving Fenachrone he rescued from the wreck of his ship. The Fenachrone ''are'' described as having extremely short, stumpy legs, due to the high gravity on their world.

-->"[The creature] seems to [...] have within itself the possibilities of both bisexual and asexual reproduction."
-->"I wouldn't doubt it—it's a queer one, all right."

** Dorothy and Margaret develop into this.

* AsYouKnow: Dunark gives an InfoDump (which uses this very phrase) about his planet to Seaton, who has just received all knowledge of said planet via AppliedPhlebotinum and thus knows all of this anyway.
** Subverted in that the InfoDump is still necessary; Seaton's memory is still struggling to index the huge mass of material that just got shoved into it all at once, and having someone verbally walk him through an executive summary of it helps the process.
* TheAce: Richard "Dick" Seaton. This guy is a master marksman, tennis champion, hunter, trapper, intergalactic explorer, smiter of evil aliens, ''and'' a he's got a [=PhD=] in chemistry. He's not a bad engineer either. (And he's pretty good at sleight-of-hand...)
** [[EvilOverlord DuQuesne]]. Everything that Seaton is (except the tennis and legerdemain), but also WickedCultured and a decent military tactician. In the first book alone, he was steering a starship [[MadeOfIron at 20g acceleration]] and did it well, though he blacked out afterwards.

* DeadpanSnarker: [[IronicNickname "Baby Doll"]] Loring, [=DuQuesne=]'s second [[TheDragon Dragon]], after Perkins's death. After he and [=DuQuesne=] commandeer an alien ship which could vaporize their own craft in seconds, he says that their new vessel is [[SarcasmMode so delicate and harmless]] that they should name it the ''Violet''.

* EldritchAbomination. The Chlorans.

* EnergyBeings: The "pure intellectuals"--immortal creatures made of thought. Arguably [[Franchise/StarTrek the Q continuum]] by any other name, except Smith did it first.
** "Smith did it first" is a fairly safe bet in an awful lot of SF tropes, if Wells and Verne didn't get there before him. Arthur C. Clarke stated outright that "Smith holds all the original ''Star Wars'' patents", and he was sufficiently well informed about SF in general (as well as being personally acquainted with or a direct contemporary of many of its greats) that there seems little reason to doubt him.

* EveryoneIsArmed: by ''Skylark [=DuQuesne=]'', all the heroes are in the habit of going constantly armed... and need to. Even as early as ''Skylark Three'', they [[TwentyFourHourArmor wear armor whenever they are out in public]] in order to defend themselves against [=DuQuesne=]'s minions.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Even [=DuQuesne=] is disgusted by Perkins, [[PragmaticVillainy but that doesn't stop him from using Perkins in his plan]].

* ExpansionPackWorld: In ''Skylark Three'' we learn that Osnome is just one inhabited planet in a solar system[[note]]or more accurately, small stellar cluster[[/note]] containing literally hundreds of worlds, which have the same culture and ProudWarriorRace attitudes. Since the planets have some level of contact before the heroes arrive, this introduces some FridgeLogic into the Kondal-Mardonale feud. It is later explained that the reason why the Urvanians did not try to conquer Osnome while it was divided was because none of those planets have access to metal X, which allows space flight.

** Which is odd, because the conversion of mass into energy--the principle on which Metal X operates--is a direct consequence of Einsteinian relativity.

* FauxAffablyEvil: As badass and intelligent as [=DuQuesne=] is, and even though he is willing to enter an EnemyMine situation when he needs it, it doesn't change the fact that his goal is to ''kill'' Seaton [[EvilIsPetty in order to have a monopoly on metal X]].
* FishPeople: The Dasorians are a race of marine mammals which resemble porpoises. The Norlaminians once offered them the option of settling on their own planet, thinking it would solve their stagnation, only for them to refuse, because they cannot abide the land.
* GenerationShip: The Party of Postponement try to escape the Fenachrone's home world in one of these: they have enough supplies to last a century, and they intend to settle in as distant a galaxy as possible. [[MoralDissonance The heroes kill them all anyway.]]
* {{Gonk}}: Shiro is illustrated as having vastly disproportionate limbs.
** It is worth noting however, that he is never described in that way. There is only an illustration, and that is most likely misplaced in the text and actually shows Seaton dealing with a surviving Fenachrone he rescued from the wreck of his ship. The Fenachrone ''are'' described as having extremely short, stumpy legs.
* GoodIsNotNice: Played with. Seaton and his compatriots are [[IncorruptiblePurePureness utterly incorruptible and courteous to everyone]], but they also won't hesitate to [[FinalSolution systematically wipe out your species]] if you threaten Earth.

** In sorting out the feud between the Osnomians and the Urvanians, Dick Seaton gives both sides the exact same knowledge of Fenachrone technology. Then he tells them to set aside their differences, promising to exterminate whichever race survives the war if they don't. Somewhat subverted in that he expects that of they do go to way the Osnomians will lose, and while he doesn't want to eradicate the Osnomians (currently allies and close friends), he would have no problem eradicating the Urvanians (who are complete strangers).

* HowDoIShotWeb: Seaton has trouble using the projector at first--he would often be off his target by light-years.

* IgnoredExpert: After, [[spoiler: the heroes give their ultimatum to the Fenachrone]], their Emperor is furious, and refuses to give in to the demands. A Fenachrone scientist, Ravindau, tells him to his face that [[spoiler: he has doomed them all]], because Seaton has far more advanced technology than they. Predictably, the Emperor flies into a rage and accuses Ravindau of treason, and Ravindau only survives by [[spoiler: killing the Emperor before the latter can kill him]].

* LensmanArmsRace: '''So much'''. From steel hulls to impenetrable armor made of the alien material "inoson"; from simple explosive projectiles to insanely powerful beam weapons (and various types of 'projectors', which are very versatile). From a ship 40 feet across to one a thousand miles in diameter. Whole ''galaxies'' are embroiled in battle eventually.
** You meant to say [[spoiler:that entire galaxies are [[IncrediblyLamePun BROILED]] in battle. The Skylark of Valeron destroys two galaxies simultaneously while saving all the oxygen-breathing planets from both by moving them to the third galaxy.]]
* MagicCompass: It's possible to create an "object compass" which, once attuned to something, would always point towards it.

*** This is also ''demonstrated'' when they [[IDidWhatIHadToDo use it]] to interrogate the captain of a scout vessel from the [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Empire of Fenachrone]].

* MyBrainIsBig: The Norlaminians' brain is about three times the size of a human's.
* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: Played With. Ravindau is the only named Fenachrone who doesn't think that his species is invincible, but he is still just as warmongering and genocidal as all the others.

* PowerCopying: The Osnomian educator can give the heroes absolute knowledge of someone else's brain, allowing them to [[LensmanArmsRace pick up foreign technologies]] really quick.

* SpaceElves: The Norlaminians, and to a lesser extent, the Dasorians. Unlike the other species in their system, they are PerfectPacifistPeople who simply desire knowledge, and the only reason they have not spread throughout space is because they lack the reassures to build a spacecraft. The Norlaminians in particular are said to have millions of years of scientific knowledge ahead of humanity, and follow a mystical philosophy. Both species are immediately friendly to Seaton and crew, and the Norlaminians tried to help the Dasorians out in the past.

* EntertaininglyWrong: When [=DuQuesne=] returns to Osnome in secret in ''Skylark Three'' to steal a warship, he sees a battle on the planet, which he thinks is the Kondalians finishing the Mardonalians off. It's actually the beginning of the war against the Fenachrone, but he has no way of knowing that.

* BadAssBookworm: Richard "Dick" Seaton. This guy is a master marksman, tennis champion, hunter, trapper, intergalactic explorer, smiter of evil aliens, ''and'' a he's got a [=PhD=] in chemistry. He's not a bad engineer either. (And he's pretty good at sleight-of-hand...)
** [[EvilOverlord DuQuesne]]. Everything that Seaton is (except the tennis and legerdemain), but also WickedCultured and a decent military tactician. In the first book alone, he was steering a starship [[MadeOfIron at 20''g'' acceleration]] and did it well, though he blacked out afterwards.

* DistantFinale: Actually in ''Skylark Three'', even though it's only the second book of the series. The epilogue is set many thousands of years in the future, after TheAlliance has grown into a Galaxy-spanning civilization, [[GenerationXerox ruled by Seaton's distant descendant]]. Apparently they celebrate the anniversary of the Fenachrone's destruction with [[ShowWithinAShow a film recounting Seaton's exploits]]--[[UnreliableNarrator which actually justifies some of the story's]] MoralDissonance.
* EarthShatteringKaboom: [[spoiler:The home world of the Fenachrone is reduced to ashes]].

* ActionGirl: Dorothy and Margaret develop into this. Shiro's wife Lotus Blossom is introduced as being [[WaifFu the deadliest hand-to-hand fighter on Earth]]. [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe Sitar of Osnome]], Princess of a ProudWarriorRace, at one point complains at being only able to carry ''two'' guns instead of her usual arsenal. Kay-Lee from ''Skylark [=DuQuesne=]'' is also an example. In fact, most of this happened in that book.
* AlienInvasion: Lots and lots of them; though Earth doesn't get hit, all sorts of aliens plan to take over one planet or another, leading to a variety of interplanetary and interstellar wars.
** Earth ''does'' get conquered temporarily during ''Skylark of Valeron'', but it's by another human: [=DuQuesne=].

* {{Chronoscope}}: used to check whether any of the Fenachrone had escaped their planet before it was destroyed.

* AbsoluteXenophobe: the Fenachrone.

%%[[caption-width-right:300:some caption text]]

* GrayEyes: Seaton has them.

* PhysicsGoof: Besides the examples where ScienceMarchesOn, there are a few places where Smith violates even the physics what was well-established by the time the first book was written:

** You meant to say [[spoiler:that entire galaxies are [[IncrediblyLamePun BROILED]] in battle. The Skylark of Valeron [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome destroys two galaxies simultaneously while saving all the oxygen-breathing planets from both by moving them to the third galaxy.]]]]

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: The Mardonalians, the Fenachrone, the pure intellectuals, and the Chlorans. All are genocidal militarists, and any internal conflict is about how to most efficiently subjugate the rest of the universe, not whether to do so at all. The trope is also subverted by all the really militaristic aliens who undergo {{Heel-Face Turn}}s and join the heroes.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil

** In sorting out the feud between the Osnomians and the Urvanians, Dick Seaton gives both sides the exact same knowledge of Fenachrone technology. Then he tells them to set aside their differences, promising to exterminate whichever race survives the war if they don't. Somewhat subverted in that he expects that of they do go to way the Osnomians will loose, and while he doesn't want to eradicate the Osnomians (currently allies and close friends), he would have no problem eradicating the Urvanians (who are complete strangers).

* ActionGirl: Dorothy and Margaret develop into this. Shiro's wife Lotus Blossom is introduced as being [[WaifFu the deadliest hand-to-hand fighter on Earth]]. [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe Sitar of Osnome]], Princess of a ProudWarriorRace, at one point complains at being only able to carry ''two'' guns instead of her usual arsenal. Kay-Lee from ''Skylark [=DuQuesne=]'' is also an example.

* DirtyBusiness: The reaction most of the humans have to [[spoiler:completely exterminating the Fenachrone]]. However, despite Seaton saying he doesn't have the stomach for the act before doing so, and feeling bad about it after [[spoiler:blowing up their planet]], he is visibly angry when he finds out that he has to delay it for a short time.

* EarthShatteringKaboom: The home world of the Fenachrone [[spoiler:is reduced to ashes]].
* EasyEvangelism: Seaton is able to get [[spoiler:the Osnomians and the Urvanians]] to stop their war just by [[GunboatDiplomacy threatening to wipe them out]], but it's really the speed at which the ambassadors start to befriend one another that makes it this trope.

* EvilVersusEvil: [=DuQuesne=] versus the Fenachrone. His conversation with a Fenachrone soldier is just dripping with EvilerThanThou, with both intending to backstab the other the moment the opportunity presents itself. The only reason he doesn't kill the alien on sight is because he could potentially use him to kill Seaton. Note that his TheReasonYouSuckSpeech, in which he points out that the Fenachrone are basically a race of sociopaths, [[HypocriticalHumor applies just as much to DuQuesne himself]].

** You meant to say that entire galaxies are [[IncrediblyLamePun BROILED]] in battle. The Skylark of Valeron [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome destroys two galaxies simultaneously while saving all the oxygen-breathing planets from both by moving them to the third galaxy.]]

* EvolutionaryLevels: The Kondalians believe in this. No one calls them on it, so this belief may be intended as correct {{in-universe}}.

* ModernStasis: [[TheKingdom Kondal]] and [[TheEmpire Mardonale]] have been continuously at war for approximately ''six thousand years''--[[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale about as long as Earth civilization has existed]]--and there is no indication that their societies or cultures have changed at all during that time.

Richard Seaton, a chemist, discovers that an unknown extraterrestrial metal ("X") reacts with copper to provide total matter-energy conversion. Seeing the possibilities of this, he and his rich friend Martin Crane (who provides the initial capital) use it to build power stations -- and a spacecraft, the "Skylark". The evil Marc [=DuQuesne=], co-worker and collaborator with the highly pragmatic World Steel Corporation, wishes to steal it for himself, and descends to theft, threatening Seaton's new wife Dorothy. Everyone goes into space, looking for more metal "X" and other resources, and the story takes off from there.

!!The ''Skylark Series'' contains examples of:

*** Note: the acceleration ''felt by the protagonists'' is 12''g''. It's made very clear in the dialogue describing the ship that the actual accelerations are vastly higher, and special designs were made for the ship to allow people to survive the actual forces. Smith's description of the acceleration ("acceleration of several lights", in which he means "light-speeds") is mangled, but one can figure out what he meant by it, if one goes through the few numbers provided -- and it is in fact something monstrously high (over a hundred thousand ''g''s). Basically, Smith was describing InertialDampening before he came up with a much superior version, which he used in the Literature/{{Lensman}} series. See also note under Science Marches On.
** Even if we assume that the ''Skylark'' really was accelerating at 75,000''g'', and that relativistic mass/time dilation doesn't happen, there's still the problem that the ship has far more kinetic energy than could possibly be supplied by the mass-to-energy conversion of a few pounds of copper. In a purely Newtonian universe where a space ship's kinetic energy is always 1/2 ''m'' ''v''² no matter its speed, at three times the speed of light the ship's kinetic energy would be equal to ''4.5 times its own mass'' multiplied by ''c'' squared. You'd have to convert 4.5 Skylark masses' worth of copper into energy, to accelerate to that speed. (To say nothing of the mass you'd have to convert to energy to slow back down -- unless a "free" or "energy-recovering" form of space braking existed in the Skylark universe, which I wouldn't put past Doc Smith.)
** The only way to "make sense" of the acceleration figures is simply to invoke this trope and/or RuleOfCool and avoid analysing them; they are too inconsistent to withstand analysis -- not Smith's usual style, but then this was his first book. The measures taken to enable the crew to withstand the acceleration are purely mechanical shock-absorber type devices, which in reality would no more solve the problem than they would in the case of Verne's cannon. There is no mention of anything truly effective until the second book when they copy the Fenachrone drive system which applies its force to all parts of the ship equally (similar to gravity) instead of transmitting the force through the ship's structure. A further problem is that the ship simply does not carry enough energy to accelerate itself to such speeds. The Einsteinian rest mass energy equivalent of a given mass is equal to the Newtonian kinetic energy of that same mass travelling at c root 2; given that the ship has a much greater mass than the power bars it carries, it clearly doesn't have the wellie to attain more than a fraction of the speed of light, even in a purely Newtonian universe.

* DistantFinale: Actually in ''Skylark Three'', even though it's only the second book of the series. The epilogue is set many thousands of years in the future, after TheAlliance has grown into a Galaxy-spanning civilization, [[GenerationXerox ruled by Seaton's distant descendant]]. Apparently they celebrate the anniversary of the Fenachrone's destruction with [[ShowWithinAShow a film recounting Seaton's exploits]] -- [[UnreliableNarrator which actually justifies some of the story's]] MoralDissonance.

* EnergyBeings: The "pure intellectuals" -- immortal creatures made of thought. Arguably [[Franchise/StarTrek the Q continuum]] by any other name, except Smith did it first.

** Which is odd, because the conversion of mass into energy -- the principle on which Metal X operates -- is a direct consequence of Einsteinian relativity.

* HigherTechSpecies: [[UnbuiltTrope Smith actually put more thought into this than most later writers would]]-- the reason that the majority of alien species in the series are more advanced than humanity, but haven't spread out to conquer the whole Galaxy, even though FasterThanLightTravel is so easy in this setting that humans figure it out before rocketry, is because to do so is dependent on a material so rare that most star systems completely lack it. If Seaton had not stumbled upon metal X by chance, then humans would not have worked out CasualInterstellarTravel either. Without this, the Dasorians and Norlaminians advanced as far as they could before their civilizations' power requirements stagnated them.
* HowDoIShotWeb: Seaton has trouble using the projector at first -- he would often be off his target by light-years.

* ModernStasis: [[TheKingdom Kondal]] and [[TheEmpire Mardonale]] have been continuously at war for approximately ''six thousand years'' -- [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale about as long as Earth civilization has existed]] -- and there is no indication that their societies or cultures have changed at all during that time.

* ReactionlessDrive: When metal X is used to convert matter into energy, that energy can be released as explosive force (as in the case of the X-plosive bullets), or it can be used to drive a starship. When used for the latter, no exhaust is produced -- the released energy is "just added onto" the kinetic energy of the ship. (Actually, Smith wasn't even ''that'' specific. The ship just "goes.")

** The metal X is also a kind of Unobtainium, having the power to convert copper completely into energy -- without destroying any of the metal X in the process -- if it's subjected to X-rays.

* Chronoscope: used to check whether any of the Fenachrone had escaped their planet before it was destroyed.

* ThatsNoMoon: The ''Skylark of Valeron'' is a spaceship a thousand miles in diameter.

** In sorting out the feud between the Osnomians and the Urvanians, Dick Seaton gives both sides the exact same knowledge of Fenachrone technology. Then he tells them to set aside their differences, promising to exterminate whichever race survives the war if they don't.

* FauxAffablyEvil: As BadAss and intelligent as [=DuQuesne=] is, and even though he is willing to enter an EnemyMine situation when he needs it, it doesn't change the fact that his goal is to ''kill'' Seaton [[EvilIsPetty in order to have a monopoly on metal X]].