Happy Birthday: Edward Elmer Smith (May 2, 1890 – August 31, 1965) was an American food engineer (specializing in doughnut and pastry mixes) and science-fiction author, best known for the Lensman and Skylark series. He is sometimes called the father of space opera.

Smith's novels are generally considered to be classic space operas, and he is sometimes called the first of the three "novas" of 20th-century science fiction (with Stanley G. Weinbaum and Robert A. Heinlein as the second and third novas).

Heinlein credited him for being his main influence:

"I have learned from many writers—from Verne and Wells and Campbell and Sinclair Lewis, et al.—but I have learned more from you than from any of the others and perhaps more than for all the others put together ..."

Smith expressed a preference for inventing fictional technologies that were not strictly impossible (so far as the science of the day was aware) but highly unlikely: "the more highly improbable a concept is—short of being contrary to mathematics whose fundamental operations involve no neglect of infinitesimals—the better I like it" was his phrase.

Lensman was one of five finalists when the 1966 World Science Fiction Convention judged Isaac Asimov's Foundation the Best All-Time Series.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Smith in 2004.

[This guy was THE person who got me into reading back in my early teens. A copy of his novel Triplanetary was literally dropped into my lap by a friend of my brothers who thought I looked bored. It BLEW MY MIND and I have never looked back. I became obsessed with Sci-Fi from that point but soon(ish) started widening my reading to where it is today - but he started the fire that has never gone out. I'll see if I can re-read Triplanetary this year. It'll be interesting - if I don't quickly DNF it! - to see what I think of it 50 years later...]