Derivative Works and Influence On Popular Culture
- Randall Garrett wrote a parody entitled Backstage Lensman which Dr. Smith reportedly enjoyed. Harry Harrison also parodied Smith's work in the novel, Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers.
- Garrett also included a reference to Dr. Smith in his Lord Darcy novels; the badge of the Royal Messengers resembles the Lens, and the spell to activate one was devised by a wizard named Dr Edward Elmer.
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke's space battle in Earthlight was based on the attack on the Mardonalian fortress in chapter seven of Skylark Three.
- Steve 'Slug' Russell wrote one of the first computer games, Spacewar!, with inspiration from the space battles from the Lensman series.
- The GURPS role-playing game includes a worldbook based on the Lensman series.
- There is a Japanese Lensman anime, but it is more an imitation of Star Wars than a translation of the Lensman novels. Efforts to print translations of the associated manga in the United States in the early 1990s without payment of royalties to the Smith family were successfully blocked in court by Verna Smith Trestrail with the help of several California science fiction authors and fans.
- In his biography, George Lucas reveals that the Lensman novels were a major influence on his youth. J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the science fiction television series Babylon 5, also has acknowledged the influence of the Lensman books.
- Superman-creator Jerry Siegel was impressed, at an early age, with the optimistic vision of the future presented in Skylark of Space.
- Two members of the Green Lantern Corps are named Arisia and Eddore.
- Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment and Universal Studios are in negotiation with the Smith estate for an 18-month film rights option on the series.
Read more about this topic: E. E. Smith
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, derivative, works, influence, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“When we say “science” we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect: or we can mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“I lay my eternal curse on whomsoever shall now or at any time hereafter make schoolbooks of my works and make me hated as Shakespeare is hated. My plays were not designed as instruments of torture. All the schools that lust after them get this answer, and will never get any other.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Women stand related to beautiful nature around us, and the enamoured youth mixes their form with moon and stars, with woods and waters, and the pomp of summer. They heal us of awkwardness by their words and looks. We observe their intellectual influence on the most serious student. They refine and clear his mind: teach him to put a pleasing method into what is dry and difficult.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)