Management of Exponential Narratives in John Campbell’s and E. E. Smith’s Space Operas

Exponential narratives are a type of plot often encountered in speculative fiction. The hallmark of such narratives are a progressive and often radical increase in the protagonist’s abilities over the course of a story. The challenge of such narratives is that an exponential growth in ability changes the protagonist’s behaviors and their relationships to other characters and to the story’s settings. These changes can disrupt the readers’ experience and reduce the value of the work. We investigate the use of exponential narratives in the three multivolume space operas one by John Campbell and two by E.E. Smith. We identified the methods the authors used to keep the relationship between the reader and the protagonist intact. The level of effort varied across the authors. Smith’s later series was found to be the most successful of the three works in keeping the protagonist believable.