SMITH, George O(liver)

(1911-1981)

   US writer and electronics engineer, most active and prominent in the 1940s in ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION, for which he wrote his first story in 1942; "QRM - Interplanetary" began both his sf career and his most famous endeavour, the Venus Equilateral SERIES of stories (all in ASF) about a COMMUNICATIONS space station in the Trojan position (60degahead of the planet) of the orbit of VENUS, and the various crises that must be solved. These stories were assembled as Venus Equilateral (coll of linked stories 1947; with 3 stories added, exp in 2 vols 1975 UK; the UK version in 1 vol vt The Complete Venus Equilateral 1976 US). They exhibit GOS's main strength, a fascination with technical problems and theirdidactic explanation, after the fashion of Hugo GERNSBACK and the early AMZ, as well as his main weakness, an almost complete lack of interest incharacter or plot plausibility. However, though the technical presuppositions on which he based his communications station dated very swiftly, the sequence - featuring as it does a passel of cheerful wisecracking engineer/troubleshooters - vividly evokes a characteristic 1940s sf point of view about the future and the kinds of problems we mighthave to handle in space.GOS also wrote several SPACE OPERAS whose technical assumptions have likewise dated - perhaps because he was sufficiently numerate to make use of falsifiable speculations. The rocket gimmickry, the sense of space, and the kind of protagonists featured in his stories were - for instance - strongly reminiscent of but markedly less entrancing than the more expansive galactic venues of E.E. "Doc" SMITH's Lensmen series, the later vols of which were being serialized inASF at about the same time. The best of GOS's space operas, originally published under his occasional pseudonym Wesley Long, is Nomad (1944 ASF; 1950 as GOS). Like most of his space epics, the story concerns an alienINVASION of the Solar System, in this case by means of a wandering planet. Other similar novels are Pattern for Conquest (1946 ASF; 1949) and the inferior Hellflower (1953).Though GOS wrote several further novels before becoming relatively inactive in 1959, he published only one other memorable book, the vivid SUPERMAN story The Fourth "R" (1959; vt The Brain Machine 1968). Although the story - about an artificially createdHomo superior child who must fight to remain independent until adulthood - reflects earlier novels, such as Theodore STURGEON's The Dreaming Jewels (1950; vt The Synthetic Man 1957), The Fourth "R" so vividly enters intoits protagonist's young mind, and so intriguingly details his strategy for survival against a particularly unpleasant villain, that it has become a model for tales of this kind (see also INTELLIGENCE). Another novel that combines both invasion and superman themes is Highways in Hiding (1956; cut vt The Space Plague 1957).Never strongly original, GOS was nonetheless an effective expounder of ideas and an enjoyable sf novelist of the second rank. The autobiographical notes in The Worlds of George O. (coll 1982) warmly and modestly evoke his life in the 1940s as a colleague and friend of John W. CAMPBELL Jr, Robert A. HEINLEIN and others; the collection assembles the best of his short work.

   JC

   Other works: Operation Interstellar (1950); Troubled Star (1953 Startling Stories; 1957); Fire in the Heavens (1949 Startling Stories; 1958); Lost in Space (1954 Startling Stories as "Spacemen Lost"; 1959); The Path of Unreason (1947 StartlingStories as "Kingdom of the Blind"; rev 1958).

   See also: DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; ECONOMICS; ESP; HEROES; ILLUSTRATION; MATTER TRANSMISSION; MONEY; SCIENTISTS; SEX; SPACE HABITATS; SUN.