Click "View Sample" to read the whole book. No need to purchase. Triplanetary is a science fiction novel and space opera by American writer E. E. Smith. It was first serialized in the magazine Amazing Stories in 1934. After the original four novels of the Lensman series were published, Smith expanded and reworked Triplanetary into the first of two prequels for the series. The fix-up novel Triplanetary was published in book form in 1948 by Fantasy Press. The second prequel, First Lensman, was a new original novel published in 1950 by Fantasy Press. As the story begins, interplanetary commerce is plagued by pirates. The fleet of these pirates is led by Gray Roger, a surviving Adept of North Polar Jupiter. Unbeknownst to the Patrol, Gray Roger is actually Gharlane of Eddore. The pirate fleet and the Triplanetary Patrol are in the midst of a large-scale engagement when an alien race known as the Nevians show up. The Nevians are the dominant, amphibious race of the planet Nevia, located many light years distant from the Sun. Their planet is in a galactic region that has very little iron, which they use as an energy source, so they set out with a spaceship to try to obtain more. The Nevians decide that humans are inferior beings, and carve up both fleets using a ray that extracts every atom of free or combined iron in both sides' ships and personnel into a red, liquid "allotropic iron". The iron is used in this form by the Nevians to power their interstellar ships and their power plants at home. The use of this ray means the death of nearly every person in both fleets. Roger survives the battle and flees to start a new operation on a distant world.