Heralded by many to be one of the founding series of modern science fiction, this is the first book of the Lensmen series.  It has been made into games, TV shows, etc, none of which I am familiar with.  So, I thought I'd better get with it and do so.  I picked up an old dime-store copy and got reading.

Triplanetary seems to be a collection of early stories and a novella that sets the stage for the series to come.  The first few stories tell of the fall of Atlantis, the burning of Rome, WWI and WWII, etc.; important events in human history.  They expose an galactic plot between two superpowers at war with one another, although one doesn't know of the others existence, in which Earth and its inhabitants are unknowing pawns.  The final novella is about 3 Terrans captured by space pirates, escape, then by a vastly advance fish alien civilization, which, of course, are able to escape from again.  Fortunately, Terran military scientists are able to quickly reverse engineer the fish alien's vastly superior technology in only a few weeks (days?), and built a super-battleship capable of defeating the aliens very civilization.

Yes, this is early sci-fi.  Pulp fiction, et al.  And I probably would offend the leet geeks, but I thought this book was terrible.  Maybe this was a fan-service book to set the series, but I felt the characters were flat and trite; I didn't care what happened to them at all.  The swooning girl, the incredibly capable hero with a tender spot for our frail damsel, the military leaders with single-minded faith in our hero to the point of having no contingencies, all make for great plot indeed.  Maybe I have been led to expect too much, but Burroughs, Howard, Asimov, Clarke and the others have done so, and in surrounding time frames.  So, I won't find out if the rest of the series is any good.  I just don't care.  Indeed, I can't even be bothered to find cover art for this post.