Children of the Lens

Children of the Lens
© 1954 by E. E. “Doc” Smith


Ah, yet another book I was frothing at the bit to read, felt immediate disillusionment, and struggled (through over 250 pages) to find out how the author wrote the predictable ending.

The book is the fourth or fifth in a string of novels E. E. “Doc” Smith wrote in the late 40s and early 50s. The Golden Age of science fiction. It shows. Self-assured he-men, their flirtatious but sassy women, aliens in all shapes and sizes, rocket ships jetting back and forth between star systems in days, and those darn teenage kids and everybody smoking up a storm!

Sure, it’s dated, it’s hokey, but there’s that elusive charm about it, that confidence, that joy-of-living, that’s missing from so much of the novels put out today. You knew the good guys would win, and the enemies of Civilization would be dashed underfoot. The only question was how they would do it. Yeah, there was the threat that Kimball Kinnison, patriarch of a family of Lens-wearing superhumans, might meet his demise in the next-to-last chapter, but damn it! his wife, the red-headed Clarrissa, knew – just knew! – that he was still alive. A search commenced, and mom, with the kids united in a super-mind-meld thingie, found dad, and all was well after a round of hugs.

It’s not without its thought-provoking charm. I kind of like the idea of traveling to another planet as easy as hopping in the family Packard and motoring out to Coney Island for the day. The origin of the Lensmen, considered the inspirational superheroes of the Galactic Patrol, and especially their powers, is quite unexpected and interesting. Smith populates his universe with a slew of alien races, from dragons to beings that live in temperatures a notch above absolute zero, to asteroid miners to matriarchal societies whose members refer to each other as “it” (the pronoun “he” being unspoken, ergo no need for “she”). Vast space wars are fought by hurling rogue planets through hyperspace tubes. New metals have been invented, new weapons to mercilessly slay enemies in a most un-PC way, and mental tricks abound in a universe where thoughts and psionic powers effectively determine the action.

Though it occasionally reads like a century-old history book, the plot is simple enough to follow, once you’re a few chapters in. A great war covering two galaxies and millions of planets between good Civilization and the evil Boskonian Empire. Each are respectively coached and guided by two ancient alien races, the Arisians and the Eddorians. The Arisians have been selectively breeding and improving humanity, the apex of which is aforementioned Kinnison. They award the tops in humanity devices called lenses which enhance the wearer’s mental and psychic abilities; Kinnison is known as the Gray Lensman, and is the most powerful. But as the tale unfolds and clues are unraveled to find the homeworld of the Boskonians and subsequently annihilate it, we discover that the Gray Lensman’s children possess even more potent abilities that their dad, and the power of love, combined with a group merging of the minds, saves the day for Good.

A quick grade? Coming at it from an early 21st-century viewpoint, C+, purely because of the sometimes stodgy, hard-to-follow prose. A modern brush-up could entice me to raise it to a B+ …