Lensman

The Lensman series is a serial science fiction space opera by E. E. Smith. The series is significant because it was the first set of science fiction novels conceived as a series.

Plot synopsis

The series opens in Triplanetary. The elder race of our galaxy, the Arisians, using advanced mental science, foresee the invasion of our universe by the evil Eddorians. The Arisians begin a breeding program on every world that can produce intelligent life. The goal is to produce super-warriors who can repel the Eddorians. Triplanetary is the early history of that breeding program on Earth, illustrated with the lives of several warriors and soldiers. It ends with the discovery of the interstellar space drive, formation of the Galactic Patrol, and the first Lens, given to the first Lensman on Earth.

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The Lens is a material creation of Arisia's advanced mental sciences. It gives its wearer mind-reading and telepathic abilities, as long as it is connected by an electrically conductive wire or band to the skin of its user. In particular, it is impossible to lie to a Lensman, and Lensmen communicate perfectly in any language to any ethnic group.

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A Lens is an ellipsoidal assembly of small cloudy jewels, imbued with a shifting polychromatic light. It is "fitted" on Arisia, and cannot be worn by anyone other than its owner. Shortly after the owner's death, the lens crumbles into dust.

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The Arisians fit Lenses only to intelligent beings that are incorruptible, with a high drive to succeed, the highest drive to fight evil, and high intelligence. Evil beings who try to obtain lenses simply never return from Arisia. The Galactic Patrol maintains a service academy. It accepts only the top few percent of applicants. Of those applicants, only twenty or so at the top of the graduating class are ever sent to Arisia. Of those twenty, half are returned unharmed, but without a lens. Perhaps one or two are not returned, and the rest receive a lens.

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The first woman sent to Arisia is returned unharmed with the message that no more women are to be sent. She says that "only one woman will ever receive a lens". A significant subplot is usurpation of normal political processes by Lensmen. Given the nature of the Lens and the Lensmen, dishonest politicians hate and fear them.

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The rest of the series is a series of revelations. The interstellar pirates and criminals selling drugs and weapons prove to be agents of the Eddorians. A continuing multigenerational war is required to trace the criminals and subject races back to the Eddorians themselves.

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The series contains some of the largest-scale space war ever written. Star systems are destroyed with antimatter planets. Huge fleets of spaceships fight bloody wars of attrition. Alien races sort themselves into "Lensbearing" (Allied) and enemy races.

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As the breeding program reaches its ultimate conclusion, Kimball Kinnison, the brown-haired, gray-eyed second-stage lensman, with advanced mental powers, finally marries the most advanced product of the complementary breeding program, Clarissa MacDougal, a beautiful, curvaceous red-haired nurse, who eventually receives her own lens.

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Their children grow up to be the Children of the Lens, a young man and his sisters. They become a single hive-mind, able to create lenses themselves, and destroy the telepathic, powerful Eddorians with their thoughts alone. In the final book, they attack and destroy the Eddorians' base world, and drive the Eddorians from our universe.

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An unresolved plot element at the end of the series concerns the marriages of the children of the Lens, as the young man and his sisters have not found anyone interesting.

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A bit of text at the end of Children of the Lens points out, however, that one man does exist who is equal to the daughters of the lens.

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Some readers have inferred the possibility of an incestuous group-marriage between the young man and his four sisters, citing some of the interactions between them as presenting circumstantial evidence of such an eventuality.

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In addition, Smith is reported to have told Robert Heinlein at a science fiction convention that there were sufficient unresolved conflicts to write a seventh book, but that he did not think it could be published in the moral climate of the times. Despite strenuous searches of his effects, no trace of a seventh manuscript has been found, so a definitive answer may never be known.

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