Pan Star Wars all you want, but the original movie is both derived from the old Flash Gordon serials and a reworking of the trappings in a beautiful and brilliant "new" (again, speaking relatively of time) packaging. Maybe seeing Flash Gordon reruns at about the same time that Star Wars came out back in the '70s caused a rift in my mind, a gaping gulf between "then" and "now" (or what was "now" at the time). I wasn't a child when Doc Smith's first works came out, so I don't have that glittering/blinding cloud of nostalgia around his work, like the one that engulfs me when I read Hardy Boys. But I read those as a child, so there's a bit of nostalgia that goes with my reading of the Hardy Boys. Then again, the Hardy Boys haven't aged well, and I still (guilty pleasure alert) like some of the series.
It's been pointed out by others that this book hasn't aged well, and maybe that's my problem with it. This may be true, but I'm thinking that just because it was influential, doesn't mean I have to like it.
I've heard people rave about how Doc Smith's work was one of the early space operas and that it influenced many later science fiction masterpieces.
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