Tag Archives: e.e. “doc” smith

Book Review of “Children of the Lens” by E.E. “Doc” Smith

children

Cover art for “Children of the Lens” by E.E. “Doc” Smith

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Yesterday, I finished Children of the Lens (1954), the last in E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen series.

By rights, it’s a book I should have started and finished over fifty years ago. The works of Smith as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs and others were hugely popular in paperback in the late 1960s. All of my male friends in Junior High were devouring them.

But when everyone else was reading the Lensmen, I was reading The Skylark series, so I missed my opportunity the first time around.

Today, if I have anything to complain about the Lensmen series (or Skylark for that matter), it’s that they’ve aged. With each passing novel, the powers, technology, and scope of the books became larger and grander. I can’t read these stories without also imagining them taking place between the 1930s and 1950s.

Even back in the day, “Children” was criticized for two-dimensional characters and juvenile storyline, but at the same time, it was highly popular with young (and not so young) men and boys as a source of adventures and heroics.

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Book Review of “Second Stage Lensman,” Book Five in the Lensman Series

Cover art for “Second Stage Lensman” by E.E. “Doc” Smith

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It has been almost a year-and-a-half since I reviewed E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Gray Lensman the fourth book in the “Lensman series” following Triplanetary, First Lensman, and Galactic Patrol.

Today, I’m reviewing Second Stage Lensman. While the Lensman series of books was first published in mass market paperback in the mid to late 1960s when I was in Junior High (and when every boy I knew was reading them), as a hardback book, it first came out in 1953. It had been published serially in “Astounding Science Fiction” from Nov 1941-to-Feb 1942.

Keep that in mind for the entire series since it is not only absolute classic science fiction and the emergence of the “space opera” but it really old.

That part is important, especially if you are used to more contemporary works “updated for modern audiences.” The 21st century progressive SciFi industry has little tolerance for it’s own past.

In this case, as with the others in the series, I can sort of see it, at least a bit.

For instance, slang. After all, from the 1940’s perspective, this is the future, but how would “future people” express themselves, especially when excited and agitated? How about:

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Book Review of E.E. “Doc” Smith’s “Gray Lensman”

gray lensman

Mass market paperback cover for “Gray Lensman”

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Gray Lensman by E.E. “Doc” Smith (I bought the cheap kindle version) is the fourth book in the Lensman series following Triplanetary, First Lensman, and Galactic Patrol.

After my binge read of James S.A. Corey’s nine-book The Expanse saga, I realized I hadn’t read a Lensman book in over a year. Part of the reason was that they’re hard for me to read. They’re really old fashioned, to the point of being almost farcical.

But they are also an important part of science fiction history and the development of the classic space opera.

This particular book was originally published in serial form in Astounding (later Analog) magazine in 1939. It made it to book form in 1951 and to the paperbacks I became familiar with in the 1960s.

As I’ve mentioned before, in the mid to late 1960s, while all the other guys were reading the Tarzan and Lensman books, I was absorbed in the Barsoom and Skylark books, by Edgar Rice Burroughs and E.E. “Doc” Smith respectively.

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Book Review of Galactic Patrol

Image captured from Amazon

In some ways, E.E. “Doc” Smith’s third Lensman novel Galactic Patrol feels like the first “real” Lensman novel. I suppose that’s largely due to the character Kimball Kinnison having a central role in the book. He is the Lensman hero I think all of my friends looked up to when these books were popular when I was in Junior High in the late ’60s. Of course I also think these novels were better consumed over 50 years in the past by boys between the ages of 12 and 14 than they are by a fellow in his late 60s today.

It also hung together a bit better than the previous two (“Triplanetary” and “First Lensman”). That said, most of the book felt incredibly episodic. It was like a television show where the season hadn’t been plotted out cohesively from start to finish. A great deal of the action bounced all over the place, introducing seemingly random characters, planets, and events throughout the first two-thirds of the story.

Eventually, Smith was able to tie (most) things together showing relationships in the last third, but even that seemed rushed.

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Book Review of “First Lensman”

first

Cover art for the 1968 edition of “First Lensman”

I’ve been reading the legendary E.E. “Doc” Smith‘s Lensman series recently. After Triplanetary (1948 – originally published as a serial in 1934), which really wasn’t about the Lensmen, but did introduce a few key characters, came First Lensman (1950) which still gave off more of a 1930s flavor.

While readers get their first real glimpse into the lives and power of the Lensmen, the tale reveals itself as terribly dated. The “good guys” are very “North American” centric, women don’t have minds compatible with interacting with the lens, and our guys are scrupulously honest and forthright.

As with “Triplanetary,” I sometimes found it difficult to keep track of scene changes and figure out where I was in the story from one point to the next.

Along with the purely space opera aspects, there were heavy political overtones, no doubt reflecting Smith’s actual viewpoints.

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Book Review of “Triplanetary,” the Beginning of the “Lensmen” Series

Image captured from Amazon

Over 50 years ago, when all the other guys in Junior High were reading E.E. “Doc” Smith‘s Lensmen series, I was reading his Skylark series, and loving it. I tried re-reading Skylark of Space, the first novel in the series, several years ago, going so far as to buy a paperback copy. It was tough to swallow because it was originally written in the 1930s (the stories were originally serialized in the ’30s and then published in novel form in the 1940s – they had a resurgence in the 1960s and became incredibly popular with teenage males), and comes across as extremely dated. I didn’t notice it when I first read the book, but then I was only 14 at the time.

I’ve owned a copy of Triplanetary, the first in the “Lensmen” series, for years, but every time I tried to read it, I never got past the first few pages. I think it was our hero and heroine enjoying a ballroom dance aboard a spaceliner that put me off. Very 1930s.

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