Scheherazade

Odysseus, the great teller of tales, launched out on his story:

“Alcinous, majesty, shining among your island people,

what a fine thing it is to listen to such a bard

as we have here – the man sings like a god. …

But now you’re set on probing the bitter pains I’ve borne, …

Now let me begin by telling you my name … I am Odysseus.”

                                                           (The Odyssey, Book 9, extracted from Lines 1-21)

Scheherazade

     The literary device of the Frame Story is as old as storytelling itself. Sometimes referred to as “a story within a story”, familiar examples include The One Thousand and One Nights, The Canterbury Tales, and The Odyssey itself, where the reader (or listener) is treated to a series of narratives in the midst of a larger, framing narrative. So we get the various and varied tales of the pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral, the bedtime stories of Scheherazade, or the tale of Odysseus’s wanderings in the court of King Alcinous.

     In E.E. Smith’s Skylark Three, we have what amounts to a framing story within a framing story. The novel opens with Seaton’s enemy Marc DuQuesne, whose ambitions have by now grown from a straightforward monopoly over the Earth’s power companies to complete and absolute mastery of the entire planet. To this end, he sets out on a voyage to the Green System, scene of so much action in The Skylark of Space, on a quest for knowledge sufficient to give him a decisive edge in his next test of strength against Seaton and Crane. Not long afterward, Seaton and company set out for the same destination, in response to an urgent appeal for help from his friend Dunark of Kondal, and only incidentally in pursuit of DuQuesne.

     But along the way, they have a chance encounter (don’t you just love these totally improbable coincidences?) with an alien warship, an advance scout of the Fenachrone, an evil race at the furthest edge of the galaxy, intent on a conquest of the entire universe. Badly outmatched and barely able to avoid destruction in the ensuing space battle, Seaton learns from the wreckage of the enemy battleship of the danger to the galaxy, and decides that everything else must be put on hold in order to meet this all-too-imminent threat.

     These two plotlines form the backdrop for Skylark Three’s true narrative – Dick Seaton’s quest (a mirror image of Duquesne’s) for the one piece of knowledge he requires to face the Fenachrone in open combat with an assurance of victory. Like The Odyssey, in which the wanderings and adventures of Odysseus take up a relatively small fraction of the epic (Books 9 through 12 out of a total of 24), Seaton’s quest occupies only 4 chapters (8 through 11) out of 15 in all – but those 4 chapters are the heart of the story, and the chief reason why the novel is worth reading at all. It is these chapters to which I intend to devote the remainder of what I have to say in the days to follow concerning the second book of the Skylark trilogy.