Spacehounds of IPC
Dust-jacket from the first edition
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| Author | Edward E. Smith, Ph.D. |
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| Illustrator | A. J. Donnell |
| Cover artist | A. J. Donnell |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Fantasy Press |
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Publication date
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1947 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 257 |
| OCLC | 1234601 |
Spacehounds of IPC is a science fiction novel by author E. E. Smith. It was first published in book form in 1947 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 2,008 copies. It was the first book published by Fantasy Press. The novel was originally serialized in the August, September and October issues of the magazine Amazing Stories in 1931. Smith became disenchanted when he saw that editor T. O'Conor Sloane had made some unauthorized changes in the story, most likely to give each of the three parts it had been split into equal length. Earlier "Doc" Smith had written the first great novels of interstellar exploration, the Skylark series, and later he created another sweeping multi-volume series about the Galactic Patrol in the Lensman series. But this story, Spacehounds of IPC, stands alone. Although it has many similarities to the Lensmen series, the technology and the lifeforms in the story cannot be reconciled with the universe of the Lensmen. It is possible that Smith may have been planning this story as the beginning of a new series, but he was never to return to this setting (mainly Jupiter and its moons) or to the characters in this story. The story was the first to use the term "tractor beam", a name and concept that has been adopted by many subsequent literary works of fiction and other media until the present day.
When the Inter-Planetary Corporation's (IPC) crack liner, "IPV Arcturus", took off on a routine flight to Mars, it turned out to be the beginning of an unexpected and long voyage. There had been too many reports of errors in ship's flight positions from the Check Stations and brilliant physicist Dr. Percival (“Steve”) Stevens is aboard the Arcturus on a fact-finding mission to find out what's really happening. He hopes to save the honor of the brave pilots of the space-liner Arcturus, and refute the implications of imprecision made by desk-jockeys in the Check Stations - "imprecision" being the nastiest insult one could cast at a ship's pilot. He and the pilots are right, it was the Check Stations that were out of position, not the ships.
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