In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
Today, we look at Gray Lensman, the next installment of the continuing adventures of Kimball Kinnison, star-traveling lawman extraordinaire. In the last installment, Galactic Patrol, immediately upon being commissioned as a Lensman, Kinnison rocketed up through the ranks, helped in the development of new weapons system, discovered powers that no other Lensman had yet unlocked, and single-handedly killed Helmuth, the leader of the evil Boskonian space pirates. There were secret missions and space battles galore. But if you think Doc Smith had written himself into a corner, you’ve got another think coming: Even bigger and more exciting adventures are ahead for our plucky adventurer.
The cover I’ve included above, an illustration created by Hubert Rogers for the October 1939 issue of Astounding and the first installment of Grey (sic) Lensman, is not only one of the most iconic illustrations created for the series but, in my opinion, is one of the most iconic illustrations of a science fiction story ever. Kimball Kinnison is described by Smith as a model of human perfection, and the picture delivers that: a man who is tall, handsome, and determined. It gives the gray leather outfit described in the text a silvery science-fictional finish, and you can see circular emanations from the Lens on his wrist. His trusty DeLameter blasters hang from each side of his belt. The only anachronisms are the jodhpurs and riding boots, which were commonly used in the day to suggest that a hero was a man of action, even when there was nary a horse to be seen. The round doorway, metal stair treads, and switches in the background evoke the future as envisioned in the Art Deco-influenced 1930s.
Gray Lensman is the fourth book of the Lensman series. I’ve already reviewed Triplanetary, First Lensman, and Galactic Patrol, which covered the founding of the Lensmen and Galactic Patrol and the aforementioned meteoric rise of young Kimball Kinnison to the highest ranks of that organization. And in coming months, I will be reviewing the rest of the books in the series: Second Stage Lensmen, Children of the Lens, and The Vortex Blasters. I’d missed reading these books in my youth, so this is my first visit to the exuberant adventures of the Lensmen.
I must again thank Julie from my local comic shop, Fantasy Zone Comics and Used Books, who found copies of the Lensman books for me, making this review series possible. Your local independent book and comic stores have suffered mightily during recent months, and I urge you to go out and support them as they begin to reopen.
About the Author
Edward Elmer Smith (1890-1965), often referred to as the “Father of Space Opera,” wrote under the pen name E. E. “Doc” Smith. I included a complete biography in my review of Triplanetary.
As with many authors who were writing in the early 20th century, a number of works by Smith can be found on Project Gutenberg (which unfortunately does not include a version of Gray Lensman).
Scientific Speculation Run Amok
From the very beginning, the Lensman series had scientific speculation at its core, and while that focus on technology often goes off in improbable directions, it is based in the actual science of Doc Smith’s time. While I first went to sea in the 1970s, it was aboard a World War II-era Coast Guard cutter, and we had many items of original equipment, like the radiotelegraphs we used to communicate while at sea. So I am very familiar with the level of technology Doc Smith used as the baseline for his speculation. And I find it amusing when someone in the book pulls out a slide rule, or uses electrical or communications technology from my younger days, back before printed circuits, microchips and computers. (As an aside, if anyone could shed light on the use of the abbreviation or prosign “QX,” I would appreciate it. In the Lensman series, it is used as kind of a synonym for “OK.” While I remember a series of “Q” codes, they were three-digit codes, and I have not been able to find anything on the internet that would explain the origin of “QX.”)
Buy the Book
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
In Triplanetary, the search for an identification badge that cannot be counterfeited foreshadows the use of the Lens for that purpose. The military forces utilize ray beams, “dirigible” torpedoes, and defensive screens. They use three-dimensional formations with lurid names like the Cylinder of Annihilation and the Cone of Battle. They encounter aliens, the Nevians, who can destroy anything made of iron, and who have developed a way to draw atomic power from that element. The military (on the fly) develops countermeasures, which are quickly installed on ships of their fleet as it goes to war against the aliens. And they finally perfect the inertialess faster-than-light space drive, first developed by scientists Lyman Cleveland and Frederick Rodebush, through the addition of a generator developed by Dr. Nels Bergenholm—or rather provided by the Arisians, who sometimes used Dr. Bergenholm as an avatar to give aid to the humans. In the remainder of the series, the credit goes to the latter scientist, as the inertialess generators are thereafter known as “Bergenholms.” These advances allow a human super-ship, Boise, to take the fight to the Nevians. Doc Smith describes these scientific and engineering efforts with just as much, if not more, enthusiasm as he uses for his battle scenes.
In First Lensman, we find the Triplanetary Service building their headquarters under the Rocky Mountains, predicting the creation of the USAF command center at Cheyenne Mountain. The humans are given “Lenses” by the mysterious Arisians that serve as foolproof identification for Lensmen, and also as devices that unlock mental powers of mind-reading, translation, long-range communication, and persuasion. Military spacecraft capabilities grow by leaps and bounds. The mountain above the headquarters is burned to slag during a luridly described space battle using duodec, a substance that can convert its mass directly into energy (basically, an atomic bomb). We find the evil Boskonians are working to undermine humanity by trading in the ultimate narcotic, a substance known as “thionite.”
In Galactic Patrol, the Boskonians have developed a new, faster space drive that sets the Patrol back on its heels. So they develop Britannia, an experimental ship with a new weapon system (tractor beams that hold the enemy close, and a “Q Gun” that fires duodec to disable their craft). Their aim is to defeat and capture an enemy ship in order to examine the drive system. And they discover the Boskonians have developed a new type of space drive that draws power from cosmic radiation, so they immediately begin to refit their entire fleet using this technology. Having had a little experience with shipyards, I find the speed at which the Patrol adopts technology both mind-boggling and exhilarating. But the Boskonians are also willing to invest in technological jumps, and each time the opponents meet, the battles are different, bigger, and more intense.
If a technology is described in a Lensman book, the reader should take note. Before long, it will be perfected, fielded, and in many cases, weaponized. As I have read each book of the series in turn, I found myself looking forward to those technological leaps. So as I opened the pages of Gray Lensman, I did so with great anticipation, and found myself richly rewarded.
Gray Lensman
Having broken the military might of Boskone in our “First Galaxy,” Kimball Kinnison returns home to Tellus (or as we call it, Earth) to participate in a celebratory formal dance. Dances with women ignorant of space give him a chance to offer them (and the readers) some exposition about the technology of space travel. But one of the major purposes of the dance is the opportunity for Kimball’s superiors (the Patrol’s Port Admiral and Chief Surgeon) to throw him together again with the lovely and capable red-haired nurse Clarissa MacDougall. His superiors’ (somewhat creepy) plan, blessed by the mysterious beings of Arisia, is to breed the two as part of a program to create the ultimate Lensman. And we get some romantic drama that would not be out of place in the lurid romance comic books stores used to carry beside the superhero books, with corny dialog from Clarissa like, “A…Gray…Lensman. He can’t love anybody as long as he’s carrying that load. They can’t let themselves be human…quite…perhaps loving him will be enough…”
Then the Patrol sends Kinnison aboard a new ship, Dauntless, to explore the nearby “Second Galaxy,” still dominated by Boskone. They have theorized that the density of matter will thin between galaxies, allowing even faster travel, and that proves correct. Of course, a page or so later, they also find that energy is being converted into matter between galaxies, a cornerstone of the steady-state model of the universe in vogue at the time (but generally abandoned by the 1960s). How the thinning of matter that allows rapid travel squares with that creation of matter is never reconciled.
Dauntless and her crew find a friendly planet under attack and come to its aid. They discover the inhabitants have developed an incredibly powerful advanced version of the inertialess drive that can move their entire planet, and accompany it back to the First Galaxy (the reader should remember that planet-moving trick). And yet again, with this new technology, the Patrol is soon refitting its warships (I pity their poor overworked yardbirds). While Boskone is on the retreat, they’ve redoubled their efforts to disrupt society through their drug operations, so Kinnison uses a couple of aliases to go undercover to track the “zwilniks,” or drug runners. These interludes are a bit clichéd, but one of the personas, “Wild Bill Williams, Meteor Miner,” is entertaining, and Smith describes asteroid mining operations as being something akin to the California Gold Rush of the 19th century. Kinnison finds his burgeoning mental abilities allow him to imbibe drugs and alcohol as part of his “Wild Bill” cover without suffering addiction or other ill effects.
At the same time, the Patrol is making advances in helping people regrow limbs and organs that have been damaged (another technology that will become important later). Kinnison also requests construction of a non-ferrous and non-reflective stealthy spaceship that can be used to infiltrate behind enemy lines. Also, following a hunch, he has the Patrol gather a group of the greatest geniuses from across the galaxy. They develop something they call a “negasphere,” which sounds a bit like a cross between a black hole (something not even guessed at in Smith’s era) and anti-matter. And like antimatter, it will annihilate anything it encounters.
Kinnison and his dragon-like fellow Lensman, Worsel, use that new stealthy spaceship to infiltrate a zwilnik headquarters, but Kinnison is cruelly tortured and left an invalid. Fortunately, that new medical technology has come along at just the right time…and so has Kinnison’s girlfriend, nurse Clarissa MacDougall, who by unhappy coincidence is called upon to help him at his worst, and aid him in healing his shattered body (refreshingly for the era, it is the woman gets to rescue the man). This time, while they still shy away from commitment, they at least profess their love to one another.
Kinnison heals in time for one more assignment, another “final” battle with the forces of Boskone. He is assigned to Directrix, a battleship built around a gigantic operations center so complex that only the intellect of the most powerful of Lensmen can comprehend it (a development that sounds a lot like the naval combat information centers perfected during the Second World War). The time has again come for new battle formations and new superweapons, as each side throws everything they have against the other. If Kinnison is to survive to rejoin his beloved Clarissa, the Patrol will have to triumph in the most colossal battle of the series so far.
I won’t tell you how it ends, but somehow, no matter how massive the battle is, I have a feeling Doc Smith will again find a way to top himself in the next installment.
Final Thoughts
Gray Lensman is yet another exciting installment in the series, full of the over-the-top action, outrageously exaggerated scientific developments, and rapid pace that keeps the reader turning pages. Plus, I was able to finish the book in my sunny backyard, a perfect venue for a good adventure book. I look forward to reading the sequels as the summer progresses.
And now, it’s time for me to finish my comments and for you to start yours. What are your favorite aspects of the Lensman series? Is it the action or the super-science that brings you back for more? And what other science fiction works do you see as being inspired by the Lensman stories?
Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.
The use of slide rules was still being taught into the late 1970’s.
“three-dimensional formations with lurid names like the Cylinder of Annihilation and the Cone of Battle” Today we have the “fire-sack”.
On the Combat Information Center, “according to Rear Admiral Cal Laning, the idea for a command information center was taken “specifically, consciously, and directly” from the spaceship Directrix in the Lensman novels of E. E. Smith, Ph.D.,[3] and influenced by the works of his friend and collaborator Robert Heinlein, a retired American naval officer.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_information_center#Development
I was taught how to use a slide rule in the 1970s, but our maths teacher did recognise that although the (UK O-level) exams allowed their use, no-one actually would. He considered them a useful way to illustrate the principle of logarithms, and that the need to work out approximate orders of magnitude which was necessary to use one was a useful skill by itself.
(We also learnt how to use books of logarithm tables, which was more definitely a waste of time.)
Thionite, not thionate – which is an actual thing in chemistry, so it may be getting autoincorrected.
I have actually been assembling a small collection of slipsticks in recent months. Not as practical as my HP 48SX, but still an elegant tool for a romanticized age.
As an engineer in a region used to hurricanes (the Gulf Coast of Texas in the USA), I have to say that all of the best engineers I have met- including former President Obama- know how to use a slide rule, and use their logs and sine functions, and maintain that capability when the power goes out due to storm, or in the country away from a grid. They are not dependent upon power for cell phone ir calculator use. Even today, the slide rule is not obsolete for those who maintain the capability to actually use one. Math and the capability of the individual to estimate range output at a high level of exactitude without external power does not go obsolete. Just my 2 cents about what still works when your power grid fails. Nice article!
@@.-@: Fixed, thanks!
I thoroughly enjoy the way the Lensmen have to take actions that are darker, nastier, and crueler than their enemy does, yet the Lensment still embody the ideals of Civilization. The Lensmen are still held up as the highest ideal, no matter what they do to advance their cause. Talk about doing what you’ve got to do to get the job done…
Again, thanks for this. I have loved Lensman since the early 1970’s when I discovered them in a used book store in Golden, Colorado and DEVOURED them.
Favorite things:
Perhaps the way the Arisians can lie their nonexistent butts off without actually lying. And telling everyone that “no one can lie when communicating mind-to-mind. And you can believe this because we’re telling you mind-to-mind.”
The sheer earnestness of our stalwart heroes. No tortured anti-heroes. It was a simpler time.
And I appreciate the comments above about slide rules. I tell my technology-dependent younger colleagues who panic when the server crashes that like a slide rule, pen and paper ALWAYS work.
Full disclosure: in 1974 in high-school I won a state-wide competition in slide-rule use; I had to use my blazing Delameter brand straight slide rule, as I was not allowed to use my circular slide rule (can’t quite make a negasphere joke with that). Man, I haven’t bragged about that in 46 years…
You forgot that perfect curl over his right eyebrow!
I remember slide rules quite well, as my dad taught me when I was in elementary school. I remember doing math homework with it, and then trying to get the teacher to accept slipstick error in some of my answers. She made me go back and redo my calculations the hard way.
@5: On the other hand, I have a solar powered calculator I used back in the early 1980’s. It still works fine. I think they are pretty common these days, whereas if you want to buy a new slide rule I think you’d have to make your own :-)
In recent years I realised that the negasphere’s chalactaristics match what is now called exotic matter, mater with negative mass.
@2 I had read somewhere that the influence of the Lensman series on CIC development had been exaggerated by John Campbell to promote Analog. I wish I could remember where…
@9 It is a rather handsome curl, isn’t it? ;-)
but Kinnison is cruelly tortured and left an invalid. Fortunately, that new medical technology has come along at just the right time…and so has Kinnison’s girlfriend, nurse Clarissa MacDougall, who by unhappy coincidence is called upon to help him at his worst, and aid him in healing his shattered body (refreshingly for the era, it is the woman gets to rescue the man)
I’m getting the Six Million dollar Man earworm- We can rebuild him!
@14
LOL! No, actually, it’s more of a we aren’t doing the bionic people any more; now, we’re injecting everyone with Wolverine/Deadpool regeneration abilities. The GF is the chief nurse on the medical ship, and she insists on being in or the surgery. THEN she goes back to her room and falls apart. Then fighting over food, and a whole bunch of other really… mundane things happen on the way to the regeneration. Emphasis on Space Opera Hospital Scenes here.
@15
All I want is beefsteak. I am the big cosmic hero and I kick evil behind but if you don’t bring me beefsteak I will cry like a Zabriskan fontema…
@14 As noted, the Phillips treatment lets them leave behind the bionics, but this sequence does give us the only real evidence that they had such things in the first place–when Haynes serves as the test subject before Kim, he has to have all his prosthetics removed once he begins regenerating, and given that we (and Clarissa) weren’t aware of how much damage he’d taken, it suggests the quality of those was at least up to full replacement.
Re “QX,” I seem to remember reading somewhere that a lot of the slang and acronyms were based on ham radio jargon of the 1930’s. While the online ham radio glossaries I’ve looked at don’t have “QX” listed, there is a “QRX” which is supposed to signify “Standing by,” which would make sense in the novel’s context.
“ Triplanetary” is on Project Gutenberg as of 06/05/20
@18 That sounds plausible. Thanks.
Tiny nitpicks. It’s The Vortex Blasters, plural. Also, you wrote, “… which unfortunately does not including a version of Gray Lensman).” Does not including?
@21. Guilty as charged.
I always assumed QX was intended to be meaningless to 20th century readers, as OK would be to readers in the 15th century.
I think this is my favourite of the Lensman novels… It’s part of what I think of as the classic trilogy. We’ve gotten past the introductions in Galactic Patrol and ramped up some of the technology. It follows Kinnison mostly and has fewer asides. There’s no need to keep track of the assorted Kinnison siblings. And I really enjoyed Kinnison and Worsel’s raid on the Delgonians.
Regarding Kinnison’s time undercover; I was under the impression that although the Lens kept his mind clear, it didn’t help with the physical addiction of the various substances he imbibed. I seem to remember that Kinnison still had to exercise willpower to kick his various habits?
Love the jodhpurs.
In the UK, at least, the original 4 books – Galactic Patrol, Gray Lensman, Second Stage Lensmen, and Children of the Lens – are back in print in the Gollancz Golden Age Masterworks series, so no having to ferret around second-hand stores. Rather annoyingly, Gollancz only commissioned one introduction – it’s the same for each book. And I preferred the Chris Foss covers in the 70s. But nice to see them back on the shelves.
When I reread Gray Lensman, I was surprised to rediscover one element. To quote an old review of mine:
When I was a youngster I wrote a cheerful song about the nuclear annihilation of the world. As one does.
I called the planet Tellus, rather than Tara. That word choice was entirely Doc Smith’s fault.
@2 According to Norman Friedman (in Fighters over the Fleet, if memory serves), the USN’s CIC was directly inspired by, and evolved in parallel with, the RN’s Action Information Organisation, the primary difference being that the CIC was more centralised. The AIO developed from the RN’s pre-war habit of maintaining a plot of nearby ships and aircraft, extrapolated from from recent reports. This was a floating version of the Admiraly’s own operations room in London. Since they already had a system for collating and processing information, no inspiration from pulp science fiction authors, however insightful, was needed. Just as well, as Grey Lensman had its first instalment published in October 1939.
Possibly Smith was extrapolating from what little was publicly known about the RN’s command arrangements in WW1. Or he independently invented the idea. Either way, I am impressed. According to Friedman, no other Navy in that era had an equivalent to the CIC or AIO.
I must admit, even as a kid I really liked to idea of the Z9M9Z. I’m happy we have caught up with it.
@27: Tiny correction: it’s not Lacy who serves as a test subject along with Haynes, it’s von Hohendorff (previously seen as the Commandant who hands out the lenses at the beginning of Galactic Patrol).
@18
I think the answer is far simpler. Look at the shape of the letters–QX. Then look at OK. QX, OK. That’s the way I always parsed it, at least.