Children of the Lens

The last official book of the Lensman series (again, nicely lent by the lovely choo) is Children of the Lens (serialized in 1947/48, published in hardcover in 1954). In this book, the long work of the Arisian master race is finally realized with the off-spring of Kim and Clarissa Kinnison. Their son, Kit, and two sets of twin daughters (who of course all have red hair), are the world's only third-stage lensman, and with their combined powers have minds even stronger than those of their mentors.

As the novel opens, the fight between good and evil has really heated up the universe, and only the combined strength of the first, second, and third stage lensmen can save it, mostly through a series of interconnecting adventures. In one such quest, Kim Kinnison takes on the persona of Sybly Whyte, a hacky (but popular) author of space-opera novels and schlocky journalism. The section Smith gives us of one of Whyte's books is some of the best science-fiction satire ever:

Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmex-like snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactile tongue crunched out, crashed down, rasped across. Slurp! Slurp! At each abrasive stroke the groove in the tranship's plating deepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely. Fools! Did they think that the airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? And the stowaway, that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall...

Children of the Lens is a little more disjointed than its predecessors, mostly because we are following the adventures and quests of five children, two parents, and three other second-stage lensmen, instead of focusing most of our attention on Kim Kinnison and his work. Spreading the adventure out among a larger cast of characters does nothing to lessen the excitement, however. Children of the Lens provides a satisfying and fun to read conclusion to the Lensman saga.

And there is still Masters of the Vortex, a seventh novel by Smith that takes place in the Lensman universe, but isn't part of the story arc explored in these first six books. And of course I'm going to read it.

Go Lensmen!

[Oooh, and you have to check out this fold-out ad for a science fiction bookclub that was tipped in to the middle of the book. My favorite part is the fold-together envelope that you use to send in your dime for your trial membership.]

Second Stage Lensmen

I love the lensman books. Love love love them. And I extra- special loved Second Stage Lensmen (1953), the fifth book in the series.

This book starts one second after the last book leaves off, with our hero Kim Kinnison and his lovely lady-friend, the brave and smart and beautiful Clarissa MacDougal basking in the glow of finally deciding to get married. Since Kim just saved the universe, it shouldn't be a problem, right?

Wrong.

Kim gets a mind-beam from his Mentor on Arisia telling him to think a little harder about his plan to get all the bad guys. It turns out they go much higher up than Kim had originally thought, and if he were to abandon his post and get married now, they would most certainly attack and destroy the earth.

So: Kim gets back to business. Clues first lead him to an Earth-like planet in an unexplored section of the universe. He gets ready to make a landing when he realizes that the entire planet is filled with women -- tall, beautiful, strong women, who don't wear any clothes, measure everything by its efficiency, have bred their men into a short animalistic subspecies that they use only for breeding, and have really bad haircuts:

But she wore no jewelry, no bracelets, no ribbons; no decoration of any sort of kind. No paint, no powder, no touch of perfume. Her heavy, bushy eyebrows had never been plucked or clipped. Some of her teeth had been expertly filled, and she had a two-tooth bridge that would have done credit to any Tellurian dentist -- but her hair! It, too, was painfully clean, as was the white scalp beneath it, but aesthetically it was a mess. Some of it reached almost to her shoulders, but it was very evident that whenever a lock grew long enough to be a bother, she was wont to grab it and hew it off, as close to the skull as possible with whatever knife, shears, or other implement came readiest to hand.

[This reminds me that I need a haircut.]

In order to obtain information about how this key planet fit into the schemes of the bad guys, Clarissa is made into the very first female Lensman. So at least the two of them can lens each other and have telepathic conversations across the depths of space, even if they can't get married....

All kinds of exciting things happen, and eventually Kim decides to go undercover and infiltrate the upper levels of the Boskonian bad-guy leadership. To do this he takes on the identity of a soldier that matches his body type. After some painstaking work to change the archival record (which is later tested for forgery by the head of the bad guys), plus some magic mind work on anyone who ever knew the ex-soldier, Kim takes his place, rises through the ranks, and does just about as well as you might expect the hero of a space opera to do.

Galactic Patrol

Haven't you been wondering what's been going on in the world of the Lensmen? Thanks to the lovely choo, I've just finished the the third book in the series by E. E. "Doc" Smith, Galactic Patrol (1937). This was originally the first book in the series, so it makes sense that things really start getting interesting here. And yes, the cover can be believed, there are a lot of spaceships and not a few space pirates.

Here we follow the swift career rise of Kim Kinnison from his graduation at the top of his class for the Galactic Patrol and the receipt of his Lens, to his captaining of a cutting edge ship that leads to the the capture of pirate/bad guy plans, to his promotion to "Gray Lensman" -- a coveted classification giving him a blank check to do what he thinks needs to be done to fight the bad guys and promote the cause of Civilization.

Kinnison's main foe in Galactic Patrol is the unidentified "Boskone," head of the space pirates that are terrorizing inter-galactic space commerce and civilized planets everywhere. The novel takes our hero through a series of exciting quests and adventures that culminate in a battle with the big guy himself. And just guess which side wins.

As in the other books, Smith is at his best when describing strange new worlds and the beings that inhabit them. The guy can also write a very engaging space battle, and the action sequences are top-notch. We don't get any romantic interest until about halfway through the book when, laid up with a battle injury, Kinnison meets a firey, sexy, smart, red-headed and brave nurse named Clarissa MacDougall. Naturally they hate each other at first...

But just tell that to the doctor and Kinnison's commander, who, in a really odd scene, play matchmaker based on the quality of the couple's skeletons:

"First, just notice that skeleton. It is really remarkable. Slightly out of true here and there right now, of course, but I believe it's going to turn out to be the first absolutely perfect male skeleton I have ever seen. That young man will go far..."

"...I want the files on his nurses, particularly the red-headed one."

"I suspected you would, so I had them sent down... Here are her pictures, conventional and x-ray. Man, look at that skeleton! Beautiful! The only really perfect skeleton I ever saw in a woman..."

Do I hear wedding bells?

[Back cover on my copy is available here. Other nice covers are here.]