If you love good old-fashioned space opera stories where scientifically ridiculous space ships engage in ray-gun-powered dogfights in interstellar space, today is a good day to celebrate. On the other hand, if you’re a casual home baker who enjoys creating cakes and pies, but uses packaged mixes because they’re so convenient, today is a good day for you to celebrate too. Why? Because both of those, space operas and cake mixes, are the work of the same person: Edward Elmer (E.E.) Smith, who was born May 2, 1890.
Smith was born in Wisconsin, in the US, and the family moved to Idaho when he was about 12 years old. His family owned a farm, and Smith did manual labor on their farm and neighboring ones, but enrolled in the University of Idaho after being injured when he was 19. He did pretty well there, and was the president of the Chemistry Club. He graduated with two degrees in chemical engineering, and promptly married his roommate’s sister.
When World War I arrived, Smith wanted to become a fighter pilot, but was exempted from military service because of the importance of his work as a chemist. He was working for the National Bureau of Standards at the time. He volunteered for the Commission for Relief in Belgium, though, where he helped arrange for food shipments to German-occupied areas of Europe.
Then one evening in 1915 the Smiths were visiting with former classmates, Carl and Lee Garby, and the two started a long discussion about space travel. Somehow the idea of Smith writing a story about interstellar travel arose, and Lee Garby offered to take care of any romantic dialog, which Smith felt uncomfortable with. They worked together on The Skylark of Space, but gave up after finishing about a third of it. For one thing, Smith didn’t really have the time for writing; he had enrolled in a PhD program in chemistry, and earned his degree in 1918, with a specialty in food engineering.
Armed with his PhD, Smith got a job as chief chemist for one of the biggest flour mills in the country. He worked primarily on doughnut mixes. It was 1919, and the Smiths had a new baby. One night his wife attended a movie with friends and Smith was babysitting — and took out the old, unfinished manuscript of The Skylark of Space. He got back in touch with Lee Garby, and they finished it a few months later. Smith started submitting it to book and magazine publishers. Nobody was interested in publishing it. As one editor put it, “he liked the novel personally, but it was too far out for readers.” Smith kept trying for years, and it was finally accepted by Amazing Stories magazine in 1927. It was a huge success, and Amazing Stories paid Smith an extra $50 (raising his earnings from The Skylark of Space to an astronomical $125 — which was less than he’d already spent in postage trying to get it published). They also requested that Smith write at least one sequel.
Luckily, Smith had kept writing while trying to get his book published, and Skylark 2 was already written. According to the magazine’s editor, Smith said he was already working on Skylark 3. By then Lee Garby wasn’t interested in writing any more, so Smith kept at it alone. Skylark 3 was another big success, and earned Smith three-quarters of a cent per word — fifty percent more than the previous maximum paid by Amazing Stories.
Smith’s career in food engineering continued progressing too, and he became the production manager at the Dawn Donut Company in Michigan in 1936. He was already a well-established science fiction author by then, and in addition may have invented the first process for making powdered sugar stick to doughnuts. He earned a salary plus profit sharing at his day job, which was still his main source of income — science fiction was still a fairly small niche genre at the time. He was well recognized in that niche, though, and was the guest of honor at the second “World Science Fiction Convention” in 1940.
Then the US entered World War II, and the Dawn Donut Company closed — the raw materials they needed were rationed. Smith tried to enlist in the army, but was too old. So he got a job as chief chemical engineer at an ammunition factory. That job ended in 1944, and Smith worked for a while at mechanical engineering, then went back to the food industry. He kept writing the whole time, and incorporated his personal experiences (especially at the ammunition factory) into his Lensman series of books.
Smith retired from engineering in 1957, but kept writing for the next ten years or so. He’s regarded as the creator of the “space opera” genre, and was honored as a “nova” of early science fiction. He passed away in 1965, and a compendium of his work was published posthumously in 1975. He’s also been credited as the creator of themes, characters, and plots that all reappeared years later in Star Wars.
