Skylark of Valeron

I think the reason I like the Skylark series, despite the universe-saving, is that they get new gadgets and develop their brains but they don't become immortal/superpowerful in themselves. In this book, Seaton goes down to a planet and solves a lot of problems entirely by hands and mind and talking to people and personal combat - no waving his hand and solving everything. And then he builds some seriously incredible machinery to solve near-insoluble problems...nice blend.

Seaton suffers a reversal of fortune and DuQuesne capitalizes by dominating Earth, briefly, as a benevolent dictator--an iron fist in a velvet glove.

The Seaton/Crane contingent encounters a group of disembodied intelligences, itinerant souls, if you will, while on a voyage of exploration deep in intergalactic space. They had encountered one of these souls in [The Skylark of Space] and it was DuQuesne's study of Eastern religions which apparently had convinced that soul to let them live. This time they face eight such souls who unleash unlimited forces against them. The defenses of their spaceship start to fail, and they must resort to rotating themselves through the fourth dimension, to who knows where. In the fourth dimension they are show more captured by strange beings who employ a weapon which projects a stasis of time--no time elapses for those captured in their net. They manage their escape and continue their rotation back into normal space, but are completely and totally lost. They navigate to a nearby human planet, Valeron, which is being attacked by chlorine-breathing beings (Chlorans).

Seaton helps the Valerons defeat the Chlorans and the Valerons, in turn, help Seaton build the spaceship for their voyage home. Their new spaceship is the size of a planetoid built around a huge artificial brain that controls forces that operate at the level of thought. Seaton also develops the technology for creating a stasis in time, based on his experience in the fourth dimension.

Meanwhile DuQuesne takes advantage of Seaton's absence to travel to Norlamin and to wheedle Seaton's advanced technology from the unsuspecting Norlaminians. He then returns to Earth to set up a benevolent dictatorship through the tentacles of the World Steel Corporation. He fortifies Earth against the return of Seaton with every defense imaginable using all the force that can conceivably be deployed.

Seaton returns in his new spaceship and employing his new powers. He traps the itinerant souls in a zone of thought force, yanks DuQuesne from behind his protective defenses, and encases the souls and DuQuesne in a stasis of time. DuQuesne had no defenses against forces operating at the level of thought!
* * *
Seaton is still dominant over DuQuesne, who has not broken through to anything original. All his power is derivative of Seaton's and he never catches up. DuQuesne's domination of Earth eventually unravels, so that an initially accepting populace turns against him when his true interests are revealed. If Seaton had returned to an Earth still supporting DuQuesne, Seaton would have faced a moral dilemma in deposing him.

The itinerant souls introduce the weaponry of forces of thought to the saga, but otherwise are a failed byway of development. Their lack of material embodiment imposes a limit to their means of exploring the universes so that they have no counter to the stasis of time. They are not the immortal souls of mankind, there are only seven of them; they are, rather, the ultimate expression of the Norlaminianpath of development--all reason, all the time, unfettered by bodily needs.

Round three to Seaton, but DuQuesne had his brief moment and those Chlorans are a bit worrisome. show less

The start of the Skylark series. I didn't find this nearly as interesting as the Lensman series, or maybe it is just that after the Lensman series, I'd burnt out on 1940's space opera. Its not terrible, but I didn't read any of the other books in the series, it just wasn't interesting enough for me.

See Skylark of Space.