Born on May 2, 1890 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin,
Edward Elmer Smith was studying food chemistry at
George Washington University in D.C., where he'd get his masters degree in 1917 & a PhD in 1918, and it was during his time at GWU that Smith would start writing his first serialized science fiction story. With the help of
Lee Hawkins Garby, the wife of an old University of Idaho classmate-turned-neighbor, Smith would write the majority of what would later be 1928's
The Skylark of Space, which is now often considered to be the very first space opera; Smith wrote the sci-fi adventure bits, while Garby handled the romance bits. Smith would write
two sequels to Skylark in the first half of the 1930s (& a fourth entry would be Smith's final work before his passing in the 60s), but in 1934 a story by Smith titled
Triplanetary was serialized in Amazing Stories magazine, the same place
Skylark had been serialized in. A few years later Smith would then serialize the story
Galactic Patrol in Astounding Stories in 1937, which would mark the start of the sci-fi series "E.E. 'Doc' Smith" would be most known for:
Lensman. Three sequels to
Galactic Patrol would get made between 1939 & 1948, followed by
Triplanetary being reworked to act as the official start of the
Lensman series in 1948, with
a straight-to-novel story written in 1950 that acted as the link between
Triplanetary &
Galactic Patrol, and the entire series (as well as Smith's catalog, in general) has been cited as major influences for everyone from "The Dean of Sci-Fi Writers" Robert A. Heinlein to George Lucas to J. Michael Straczynski. It's even the inspiration for two Boston-based sci-fi cons,
Boskone (which dates back to 1941) &
Arisia (which started in 1990).
After E.E. "Doc" Smith passed away on August 31, 1965, at the age of 75, his family & estate has continued to manage Smith's literary rights, and there have been numerous attempts to adapt Lensman into film, most recently one that died in 2014 (due to Universal Pictures balking at the costs) that Straczynski himself wrote a couple of script drafts for. One attempt got extremely close to truly happening in the 80s... only to be beaten to the punch by Japan.
As detailed in
a post from 2019 based on information sourced in large part by the late SF writer
Frederik Pohl, a close friend of the Smith family, after the success of
Star Wars in 1977 the Smith family was eventually able to make a deal with "a major studio" to produce a series of big-budget
Lensman films, and everything was seemingly ready to start entering pre-production... until a video tape showed up on the Smith family's doorstop. You see, back in the 60s publisher Kodansha got the rights to republish the
Lensman novels in Japan, having acquired those rights from the US publisher at the time, Berkley Publishing Corporation (now
Berkley Books), which was given permission by the Smith family to license out international rights on their behalf; everything checks out, so far. The people at Kodansha, in turn, were interested in producing an adaptation of
Lensman themselves, and according to how Japanese copyright & licensing worked at the time Kodansha felt that it had the right to make such an adaptation, at least as long as it stayed in Japan. Apparently, most non-Japanese companies didn't question this at the time, since such adaptations were Japan-only & wouldn't make their away abroad, similar to how
big name actors used to secretly take Japan-only commercial gigs. Now, to Kodansha's credit, they claimed to have informed Berkley about their intention to produce an adaptation... but apparently Berkley never bothered to let the Smith family know about this;
whoops! Therefore, right as everything was set to be signed for a big-budget "Hollywood" production of
Lensman to get started, the Smith family (allegedly) suddenly got a video tape showing early work that was being done for a feature-length anime film adaptation of
Lensman, which Kodansha had seemingly sent over as a courtesy; a similar thing allegedly happened with Alexander Key & the
Future Boy Conan anime back in the 70s.
Needless to say, according to this version of events, everything blew up in the Smith family's faces. The major studio immediately backed out of the deal, as it wanted full control over the
Lensman IP when it came to adaptations & felt that the anime film (which was looking very promising, visually) would be competition that it didn't want to deal with. While the Smith family was understandably furious about the loss of their big Hollywood deal, they tried to make lemons out of lemonade by at least giving the anime film their blessing & allowed it to see completion & release in Japan, with it premiering in theaters on July 7, 1984 (about six months after
Triplanetary's 50th Anniversary) as
SF Shin Seiki/
Sci-Fi New Century Lensman; they even allowed the production of a 25-episode TV anime reboot... but that's for next time. In the end, the Smith family was not really pleased with the end result, feeling that neither anime was accurate to the original stories at all, but had hoped that all of this would simply be an errant blip that'd stay in Japan, would never be seen again, and after a little bit they could try again for that Hollywood deal; an annoying rough patch, sure, but live & let learn. Unfortunately, it was now the mid-80s & the idea of recording to VHS had become ubiquitous, so copies of the
Lensman film & TV anime were starting to appear at American sci-fi conventions throughout the 80s (i.e. places were the earliest form of American anime fandom gathered), having made their way over from Japan, which in turn allowed word of its existence to spread. Not only that, but Kodansha (or possibly co-producer MK Company) would then later make a deal with
Harmony Gold to allow both the film & TV anime to see official English release outside of Japan, all seemingly done without the Smith family's knowledge or approval;
that's not good! Harmony Gold would produce an edited dub version of the film under the name
Lensman: Secret of the Lens, while some of the early episodes of the TV anime were edited together into a dubbed film titled
Lensman: Power of the Lens, & both seemingly only ever managed to see release via some TV broadcasts around 1988/1989, similar to the
Galaxy Express 999 TV special dubs HG produced in 1986.
