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Venus Equilateral #2
Venus Equilateral, Volume Two
UK Edition. Volume two of story cycle around the nerve center of the Solar System. Cool 1940's tropes.
- GenresScience Fiction
237 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
14 people want to read
About the author
George O. Smith
215 books11 followersGeorge Oliver Smith (April 9, 1911 - May 27, 1981) (also known as Wesley Long) was an American science fiction author. He is not to be confused with George H. Smith, another American science fiction author.
Smith was an active contributor to Astounding Science Fiction during the Golden Age of Science Fiction in the 1940s. His collaboration with the magazine's editor, John W. Campbell, Jr. was interrupted when Campbell's first wife, Doña, left him in 1949 and married Smith.
Smith continued regularly publishing science fiction novels and stories until 1960. His output greatly diminished in the 1960s and 1970s when he had a job that required his undivided attention. He was given the First Fandom Hall of Fame award in 1980.
He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers.
Smith wrote mainly about outer space, with such works as Operation Interstellar (1950), Lost in Space (1959), and Troubled Star (1957).
He is remembered chiefly for his Venus Equilateral series of short stories about a communications station in outer space. The stories were collected in Venus Equilateral (1947), which was later expanded as The Complete Venus Equilateral (1976).
His novel The Fourth "R" (1959) - re-published as The Brain Machine (1968) - was a digression from his focus on outer space, and provides one of the more interesting examinations of a child prodigy in science fiction.
Smith was an active contributor to Astounding Science Fiction during the Golden Age of Science Fiction in the 1940s. His collaboration with the magazine's editor, John W. Campbell, Jr. was interrupted when Campbell's first wife, Doña, left him in 1949 and married Smith.
Smith continued regularly publishing science fiction novels and stories until 1960. His output greatly diminished in the 1960s and 1970s when he had a job that required his undivided attention. He was given the First Fandom Hall of Fame award in 1980.
He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers.
Smith wrote mainly about outer space, with such works as Operation Interstellar (1950), Lost in Space (1959), and Troubled Star (1957).
He is remembered chiefly for his Venus Equilateral series of short stories about a communications station in outer space. The stories were collected in Venus Equilateral (1947), which was later expanded as The Complete Venus Equilateral (1976).
His novel The Fourth "R" (1959) - re-published as The Brain Machine (1968) - was a digression from his focus on outer space, and provides one of the more interesting examinations of a child prodigy in science fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 22, 2024
I enjoyed this fun collection of 1940's sci-fi short stories as a teenager, and I enjoyed it again now. They're firmly in the engineer-as-hero genre; almost every story is solved by our protagonists the engineers inventing some new electronic device, such as a way to talk to spaceships in flight (these were written before long-range radios), or an electric gun, or a matter duplicator.
The scope expands as the short stories go on and the matter duplicator changes life in the solar system. I enjoy how Smith wrote an overarching plot while keeping up the plot of each short story... at least in retrospect; the climax was actually writen for the first book collection, after the epilogue had already been published in "Astounding" magazine with the other stories. And, fittingly, in the overall series climax, our engineers break the villain's plot open by insisting on investigating a stray sensor reading.
The scope expands as the short stories go on and the matter duplicator changes life in the solar system. I enjoy how Smith wrote an overarching plot while keeping up the plot of each short story... at least in retrospect; the climax was actually writen for the first book collection, after the epilogue had already been published in "Astounding" magazine with the other stories. And, fittingly, in the overall series climax, our engineers break the villain's plot open by insisting on investigating a stray sensor reading.
May 10, 2019
I had previously read Venus Equilateral and assumed Volume Two would be more of the stories in the series and it was, but most of the stories had been in the earlier volume. Of the 2 that hadn't only one had the same characters as the previous stories and the other, although referencing some of the technology, was really unrelated.
So disappointing but otherwise okay, nothing more.
So disappointing but otherwise okay, nothing more.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews