Triplanetary

Triplanetary is a science fiction novel and space opera by the American writer E. E. Smith, first serialised in the magazine Amazing Stories in 1934 and published in book form in 1948.

The book's quarrel belongs to two ancient species: the Arisians, who are breeding human lines to produce an eventual weapon against their enemies, and the Eddorians, who have been working on human affairs for purposes of their own. Smith tells the early part of the story through episodes from human history, among them the collapse of Atlantis and the Rome of Nero, and follows the families whose descendants will matter later. The novel was written as a serial before the four main books of the Lensman series appeared and then reworked into a prequel that supplies the background of that conflict; a second prequel, First Lensman, followed in 1950. It is a fix-up, assembled from that serial together with new chapters, which is part of the reason the novel ranges over such distant periods.

Smith wrote some of the earliest and most extravagant space opera, and the Lensman stories are among the books that set the scale for the form.