Story Setting
Smith is a spaceship pilot and smuggler who lives in an undisclosed future time when humanity has colonized the solar system.
The stories are set in a milieu common to science fiction stories of the pulp era. All of the planets of the system are able to support life and have their own civilizations. Many of the intelligent races living on the planets have comparatively primitive cultures. The relationship of the "planetary primitives" to the earth colonists is analogous to the situation of Native Americans, Africans and other indigenous people facing colonialism. Exceptions to this rule are the planets Mars and Venus which Moore depicts as having ancient and decadent cultures (which might stand for China and other ancient Asian cultures, as they seemed to Westerners at the time). This general milieu was shared by a number of other writers, including Moore's friends Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett.
Read more about this topic: Northwest Smith
Famous quotes containing the words story and/or setting:
“I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“May we two stand,
When we are dead, beyond the setting suns,
A little from other shades apart,
With mingling hair, and play upon one lute.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)