Lensman: Difference between revisions

{{quote| ''"Holy Klono's tungsten teeth and curving carballoy claws!"''}}

 

 

The series, assembled from initially-unconnected short stories in ''Astounding Stories'' magazine from 1937 onwards, details an epic battle between [[Balance Between Good and Evil|Good and Evil]] as personified by Civilization (and their sponsors, Arisia) and Boskone (and ''their'' sponsors, Eddore). Each faction is, in fact, the pawn of a different race of [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] who each have a [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|grand plan]] for the sentient beings of the universe.

* [[Always Chaotic Evil]] - Nearly all of Boskone is so evil that virtually no prisoners are ever taken. On ''both'' sides of the war. Several entire Boskonian planets (all of them effectively planet-sized fortresses) are destroyed with no survivors over the course of the series.

** On at least one occasion, Kinnison notes that the previous life on that planet had been exterminated to make way for the base; this is hinted at as being standard Boskonian technique.

* [[Amulet of Concentrated Awesome]] - Played straight by having the Lensmen's lenses amplify their [[Psychic Powers]]. {{spoiler|For the Second-Stage Lensmen they turned out just to be [[Magic Feather|magic feathers]], as Second-Stage Lensmen are advanced enough to use mind powers on their own.}}

** The Lens amplifies psi power in humans, it does other things for other species (some of whom are already naturally powerful psionically).

** Where's it say that latter bit? The setting has independently working robots elsewhere – Whole space fleets crewed by them towards the end of the series!

* [[Deflector Shields]] - Usually referred to as "ether-walls" or "screens." Unlike their ''Star Trek'' successors, for ships these are almost always multi-layered (two or three layers is typical) and there's a final layer ("wall-shield") that's almost integral with the outer skin of the ship. When the wall-shield fails, that's it.

* [[Disintegrator Ray]] - Without the later trappings of safety and convenience. The beams used really ''do'' vaporize their targets, with all the attendant thermodynamics, so best wear a shielded suit when firing unless you want your front half to be blackened cajun-style.

** Depends on the weapon. Kim Kinnison fires his DeLameters while unarmoured on several occasions, and it's hinted that its ancestor, the Lewiston, can also be fired by an unprotected user. The Semi-portable projectors, on the other hand...

* [[Equal Opportunity Evil]]: Boskone dosn't really care what planet its mooks come from, as long as they don't screw up. On the other hand, the Eddorians ''are'' looking for the perfect race to be their front; and because of the very nature of the Eddorians, the more sexless, the better.

** The Kalonians got the job initially because the only function of their women is the production of men. The Lyranians, on the other hand, are a Matriarchal society to the same degree. Give them a few years and a little bit of help... {{spoiler|Helen of Lyrane and Clarissa Kinnison put a firm stop to that.}}

** The Patrol focuses it's efforts on thionite, which is really nasty stuff (and more importantly, whose dealers are part of the Boskonian food chain). Bentlam weed, on the other hand, seems to be the equivalent of marijuana - the Patrol doesn't even bother mentioning it.

* [[Everybody Smokes]]: [[Double Standard|Even the women]]. Tobacco is never once maligned in the series. Fine brand cigarettes are imported to Tellus all the way from Alsakan, all the way across the galaxy.

* [[Mad Mathematician]] -- Sir Austin Cardynge. (Not actually insane, just... focused. Or perhaps Heinlein would call him ''un''sane.)

* [[The Man Behind the Man]] - the Arisians, the Eddorians (and the Ploorans, and so on down the Boskone hierarchy), Prime Minister Fossten.

* [[Mental Fusion]]

* [[Mind Rape]]: Used heavily by the villains. Also [[What the Hell, Hero?|occasionally by the heroes]]. Particularly [[Magnificent Bastard|Nadreck of Palain]], although his entire race's moral philosophy differs radically from that of humans.

* [[Minovsky Physics]] - Ultra-waves, ether, {{spoiler|thought-waves}}

* [[Never Found the Body]] - The nature of high-energy space warfare means you usually don't have a body to find, which Grey Roger uses –''twice''– to his benefit.

* [[No Conservation of Energy]]: Averted [[Shown Their Work|hard]]; whether it's ray guns ''[[Disintegrator Ray|actually]]'' [[Family-Unfriendly Death|vaporizing people]] or [[Deflector Shields]] reradiating energy to their surroundings and setting them on fire, Smith is one rare sci-fi author who understands that not only does energy have to be generated, it also has to ''go somewhere''.

** Metal objects don't simply disappear - they glow, melt, and even evaporate if the beam is powerful enough.

* [[Outside Context Villain]]: The Nevians in ''Triplanetary'' - when they first show up wreck both the patrol and the pirate fleets. Once the ''Boise'' gets the proper upgrades, however...

* [[Pardon My Klingon]] - The Lenses assign random words to alien concepts with no direct human equivalent, and all the lenses use the same word afterwards.

* [[Power of Love]]: This is what enables Clarissa to {{spoiler|find and bring back Kinnison after he went through the [[Hyperspace Is a Scary Place|Hell Hole]] and was trapped in a far off dimension that not even Mentor and the children could find.}} The chapter's even ''called'' "The Power of Love".

** Given the early publication date, would that make this the [[Trope Namer]]?

* [[Science Marches On]] - spaceships developed on slide rule, with fantastic beam weapons that use vacuum tubes! Given that every spaceship which flew in Smith's lifetime (d.1965) was probably drafted on slide rule, he wasn't doing too badly.

** The [[GURPS]] RPG supplement [[Justifying Edit|threw in the explanation]] that the Arisians deliberately [[Fake Difficulty|prevented anyone]] in Civilization from inventing the transistor or modern computing theory, because the entire point of the Arisian breeding program was to improve the powers of the mind. Allowing the existence of surrogate minds (i.e., computers) would have interfered with that development, by removing most of the need for heightened intellectual capacity beyond the current human average. Some canonical support for this theory exists – when the Arisian breeding program finally reached its end (i.e., when the Children of the Lens were finally born), Civilization ''did'' immediately start to develop advanced computing technology, as seen in both ''Children of the Lens'' and ''Masters of the Vortex''.

** The early version of the Nebular Hypothesis that dominated the books' ideas of stellar and planetary formation, and the pre-DNA eugenics and [[Evolutionary Levels]] concepts used in the Lensman breeding programs.

** The inertialess drive was theoretically possible when the books were written, but advancements in relativity and quantum mechanics have both made hash of it.

{{quote| '''Kinnison:''' "With around a million fleets to handle we can't spend spend much time on any one."}}

** The starships of the Galactic Patrol use total conversion of matter to energy for their engines. At first, the power was conducted in meters-thick, liquid-helium-cooled silver busbars, because nothing less could handle it. It's specifically noted that to utilize their extreme power sources [[Beyond the Impossible|to their fullest]], they needed to go a step further than that and discover [[Unobtainium|room-temperature superconductors]].

* [[Screw This, I'm Outta Here]]: After {{spoiler|Ploor}} is destroyed, the remnants of the Boskonian fleet flee back to their respective planets. The Patrol, thoroughly sick of killing mooks like shooting fish in barrels, lets them go.

* [[Show, Don't Tell]]: Smith's character descriptions tend to be "This is what you should think about this character."

* [[Shown Their Work]]: For such a dated series, Lensman can be surprisingly hard science-fiction at times.

* [[Space Battle]]: While most of the action centered on the larger-than-life heroes as individuals, occasionally the emphasis shifted to the larger-than-life fleets of space battleships they commanded.

* [[Space Is Cold]]: During Virgil Samms's visit to a sub-zero planet, Smith takes pains to explain that vacuum is a very poor conductor. Heat loss to the metallic ground is a much bigger danger, on the other hand.

* [[Space Friction]] - When you're totally inertialess, running into a hydrogen atom in the almost-perfect vacuum of space actually ''does'' qualify as friction.

* [[Space Pirates]]

* [[State Sec]]: The Galactic Patrol in ''First Lensman'' is a heroic example. They function as [[Secret Police]] and spy on Boskone's organization, but also quickly absorb the Triplanetary Service (a regular military outfit) and other military forces of Civilization, as well as building their own military fleet. By the time of ''Galactic Patrol'', they have completely subsumed Civilization's government.

* [[Starfish Aliens]] - The Nevians, Palainians and Rigellians, among many others. Thoroughly inhuman and occasionally monstrous aliens who (at least insofar as the named examples are concerned) are either humanity's allies from the start or become so.

* [[Super Prototype]] - numerous [[Cool Ship|Cool Ships]], from the ''Brittania'' to the ''Chicago''

* [[Reverse Mole]] - one of Kinnison's usual tactics, successful to the point that he eventually ends up running the Evil Empire in time for their (at that stage in the story) climactic battle with Civilization.

* [[Telepathic Spacemen]] - The point of the story.

* [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]]: Helmuth receives one when he tries to visit Arisia:

** His race regards cowardice as a ''virtue''. At one point, he's acutely embarrassed by the fact that he personally faced and defeated three enemies in single combat, instead of manipulating them into killing each other.

** Eventually, the human penultimate, Kimball Kinnison, reluctantly comes to the conclusion that Nadreck is right about this, and that he has to adopt the same sort of ruthless, coldly pragmatic thinking to succeed.

* [[Tractor Beam]]

* [[Translator Microbes]] - the Lens of Civilization.

* [[Evil Is Visceral]]: Boskone ships are purple organic-looking blobs, in contrast with the silver geometric shapes of Galactic Patrol ships.

* [[Recycled Soundtrack]]: The Harmony Gold dub used part of the score for the unreleased ''[[Robotech]] II: The Sentinels''.

* [[Take Up My Sword]]: Kim is given his lens by a dying Lensman he finds when he saves the ''Britannia'' from crashing. (Of course, Lenses ''just don't work that way'' in the original series.)

** The anomaly is immediately [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in the film.