E.E. "Doc" Smith: TRIPLANETARY

This book is the first book of the Lensmen series and contains the prequel. After the Lensmen books became very popular, "Doc" Smith took a magazine series he had written14 years before and turned it into this exciting novel as a prequel explaining how the lensman came about. And exciting it is! He added six new chapters that explain the eons-long eugenics project of the super-intelligences of the Arisia. This alien race is breeding two genetic lines to become the ultimate weapon in Arisia's cosmic war with their arch enemy, the Eddore. The initial chapters cover the Kinnison genetic line during the fall of Atlantis and Nero's (Gharlane of Eddore) reign in Rome. These tales were inserted into the novel following the serialized release, along with chapters covering members of the Kinnison line in World Wars One, Two and Three. The final chapter of Triplanetary tells of the discovery of the inertialess drive that allows faster than light travel. Patrolman Conway Costigan and his friends engage in a space battle with Gray Roger the pirate gangster. This conflict is complicated by the arrival of the technologically superior, extra-Solar, amphibian-like Nevians, resulting in the first interstellar war involving humans. In this story Virgil Samms and Roderick Kinnison, two very important members of the eugenics project, are introduced. They will play the leading roles in the next story, First Lensman.