Edward Elmer Smith was born on May 2, 1890 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, USA.
Young E. E. Smith had different jobs before enrolling at the University of Idaho, where he initially studied to become a civil engineer. His limited availability of money forced him to continue working, but to escape a fire he broke his wrist. With the help of his siblings he resumed his studies but switched to the chemistry faculty, where he managed to graduate. At the university he had started a letter exchange with Jeanne Craig McDougall, his roommate’s sister, and after meeting her in person they decided to get engaged. The two of them married in 1915 and had a son and two daughters.
The first experience as a writer came for E. E. Smith in 1915 after exchanging opinions on interstellar travel with an old fellow student at the time of the University of Idaho and his wife Lee Hawkins Garby. He was suggested to write a story that would gather his ideas and speculations, but he believed that some romantic elements were also needed and Lee offered to help him. That’s how the first version of the novel that became “The Skylark of Space” was written. Initially, his name was indicated simply as Edward Elmer Smith.
In the meantime, Jeanne started working and E. E. Smith returned to university, this time at George Washington University, where he earned his master’s degree in 1917 and a Ph.D. in 1919, both in chemistry. At that point he found a good job in that field but he managed to finish his novel in 1920. Only after years he managed to sell it to the magazine “Amazing Stories”, where it was serialized during 1928 obtaining a considerable success.
E. E. Smith started writing a sequel, “Skylark Three” which was also serialized during 1931. This time he wrote it on his own because Lee Hawkins Garby wasn’t interested in continuing their collaboration. His name started being indicated as Edward Elmer Smith, Ph.D. and in later years other variants such as Edward E. Smith, Ph.D., or Doctor Edward E. Smith were used before E. E. “Doc” Smith, the moniker by which he was known for the rest of his career.
In subsequent years, EE Smith worked on other novels such as “Spacehounds of IPC”, first published in 1931. The director of “Astounding Stories” offered him more money for a novel to be published in his magazine and the author wrote “Triplanetary”, but due to financial problems the magazine couldn’t publish it and the novel appeared in “Amazing Stories” in 1934. It was Smith’s next novel, “Skylark of Valeron”, that got published in “Astounding Stories” between 1934 and 1935, greatly increasing the magazine’s success.
In the following years, E. E. Smith kept on writing the novels of what became the Lensmen saga. However, when the US entered World War II, he joined the army, where his skills as a chemist were used in the explosives field. After the end of the war, he continued to work as a civilian chemist and at the same time resumed his activity as a writer. He completed the Lensmen saga by revising “Triplanetary” to turn it into a prequel to the other novels, followed by “The First Lensman” (1950).
The name of E. E. Smith was linked more and more to the Skylark and Lensmen series. The author also wrote some other autonomous works, usually short fiction, such as the novellas “Tedric” (1953) and “Lord Tedric” (1954). However, they had limited feedback. He died on August 31, 1965 due to a heart attack. Some works were published posthumously and in the following years other authors resumed some of his series expanding them with new works.
E. E. Smith is considered one of the fathers of space opera and had a remarkable influence on the science fiction of the pulp magazine era. He often included really unlikely inventions in his works and today his plots may seem naive but he was important in spreading science fiction inspiring later generations of authors.
