As far as I can tell, Robert Smith (1914-1988) had a two-part Hollywood career. He began in the mid-1940s as a screenwriter, sharing his first credit with Ayn Rand in 1945 and working steadily until 1960. By that time had switched most of his attention to art direction, working first for television and then for the movies. Riders to the Stars was his only novel -- and it wasn’t entirely his, since he “novelized” a screenplay by Curt Siodmak rather than starting from scratch. Only attentive readers will find his name in the book.
Riders to the Stars by Robert Smith. Ballantine Books (1953), 166 pp.
At a desert army base east of Los Angeles, Don Stanton leads the team taking the next step in America’s space program. Assisting him are second-in-command Paul Dryden, psychologist Keith Delmar, and space medicine researcher Jane Flynn. Their problem is discovering why meteors survive entry into the lower atmosphere but rockets burn up. Their proposed solution involves selecting pilots well qualified to fly a mission in thermosphere, 400 miles above the earth’s surface. A dozen men are asked to volunteer for the assignment. Among them are bored mathematician Jerry Lockwood, high-strung physicist Walter Gordon, and metallurgist Richard Stanton, son of the project leader.
The story reads like an amalgamation of Winged Victory, a play and movie about pilot training during World War II, and the real-life process of selecting and readying Mercury astronauts, which was still five years away when the book was published. The author operates on the realistic fringe of science fiction. The overall project may be a bit far-fetched and the time frame way too short, but the setting, testing procedures, and technological details seem plausible. And the characters have personality traits that could have been convincingly fleshed out if the novel had gone on longer. As it is, the book is a quick read that might find an appreciative modern audience. Incidentally, folks interested in gender representation could be in for a treat. All the men in the story have Ph.D.s and are usually called “Doctor.” The only woman has an M.D. but is routinely referred to as “Miss Flynn.”