Question

[james_davis_nicoll]

Which is the correct order to read the Lensmen books in? The ones that were published first first, with the two prequels last, or in internal chronological order?

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The problem is, even the hardcovers (first book publication) give away the things that were surprises in the original publication order. So unless somebody intends to read them in magazine text, original reading order isn't too easy to achieve.

I've had people bounce hard off Triplanetary who might not have been hopeless if they had started elsewhere. The Atlantis story and the WWII story aren't very good, the Rome story is quirky (though I love it), and the long final story "Triplanetary" is also not very good, and not very tightly tied to the Lensman universe (originally published before the Lensman universe started).

There are reports of people starting any random place and becoming fans, but of course one success at a weird approach doesn't prove much; some people are just fated to love Doc Smith :-).

So, I would probably recommend starting with Galactic Patrol, which is the order I read it in (largely by coincidence).

I could see an argument for starting with First Lensman, but quite a lot of my fondness for that book comes from seeing Smith create backstories for lots of things we'd gotten used to in the other books, and I'm not confident it would work wonderfully as an introduction.

It's so long since I first read them....

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

The WWII story is supposed to be something that really happened to Doc.