Drawing on material first published in the 1930s, Triplanetary is the first (chronologically) in Smith's sequence of 'Lensmen' books, the one which establishes the back-story behind his epic saga of intergalactic warfare. Billions of years in the past, a struggle began between the malign, power-hungry Eddorians and the peaceful, benevolent Arisians. Life on Earth itself is a consequence of this confrontation, since the Arisians chose to seed those planets in the universe capable of sustaining life as part of their program to defeat the Eddorians, and the history of mankind, from the fall of Atlantis and the reign of the Roman Emperors to the 20th-century world wars and beyond, is deeply (although obliviously) implicated in the conflict between the two superior races. As Triplanetary unfolds, the action moves into the future and the new age when mankind has begun to reach out to the stars and to meet with alien races.

A food scientist who is reported to have been the inventor of the process for sticking powdered sugar to doughnuts, Smith began publishing his stories in the pulp magazines of the 1920s and he is usually considered the founding father of 'space opera'. By no standards known to man (or, in all probability, alien) can Smith be regarded as a subtle or sophisticated writer but the sheer, rollicking energy of his sagas and the inventiveness with which he peopled his millennia-spanning narratives are enormously engaging. The future technologies he creates are ingenious (indeed, in some instances, have proved surprisingly prescient) and his characters, pasteboard though they sometimes seem, are none the less remarkably memorable. His influence on SF in other media, from the Star Wars films to computer games, has been long-lasting and still continues. For all his limitations (he did not write what even the most generous critic could call great literature), Smith remains a major and unignorable figure in the history of the genre.

Free term papers are not written to satisfy your specific instructions. You can use our professional writing services to buy a custom written research paper, term paper, or essay on Custom Reports at affordable price. CustomTermPapers is the best solution for those who seek help in writing term papers, essays, and research papers related to Custom Reports and other relevant topics.