Oh yeah? Take off that Lens and say that, buddy
The essence of classic space opera, GRAY LENSMAN appeared in serial form beginning in the November 1939 issue of ASTOUNDING. E.E. "Doc" Smith's writing style and plotting had developed and refined quite a bit since GALACTIC PATROL just two years earlier. It still is packed with hyperbole and superlatives, but there aren't quite as many words in italics or all capitals, and the gardens of exclamation points have been reduced to a heavy sprinkling. Everything in Smith's universe is cranked up a few notches above normal reality. It reminds me of the curious intensity things seems to have when you're running a fever, and colors burn your eyes. Or (ahem, I'm told) the effect of watching a movie under psychedelic influences.
Just to give a hint of what this story is like, here's our hero making an offer to the inhabitants of a planet in another galaxy. "We come from a neighboring galaxy. You are fairly close to the edge of this one. Why not move over to ours?" Simple enough. Soon there is a planet zipping along at faster than light speed to the Milky Way. And this is a minor event in the great saga. In fact, I don't recall whatever happened to that planet and if it showed up later.
GRAY LENSMAN continues to relate the deadly struggle between the worlds forming Civilization and the menacing conspiracy called Boskone. At the end of the earlier book, it sure seemed like our hero Kimball Kinnison had obliterated the leader of the Boskone and ended the threat of those space pirates. No such luck. As will be the norm for the Lensman books, each seeming victory will be followed by the discovery that the defeated enemy had something even bigger and more dangerous behind it, and the battle starts all over for even higher stakes. In this case, even though Kinnison and the Patrol have pretty much broken the organization of the Boskone, it turns out that those fiends originate (and control) the neighboring galaxy. And they're not just human crooks but non-human monsters called the Eich. (ick.) So it's back to the trenches.
What most fans seem to remember best about the Lensmen books (and Smith's works in general) is the extravagant scenes of cosmic mayhem. To destroy a planetary base of the enemy, you naturally squash it between two other planets that you send flying like missiles. To remove another heavily defended villainous stronghold, what better way than to create a "Negasphere" of negative matter that neatly and serenely absorbs everything in its path. (It sure seems at first like Smith is describing what amounts to an artificially created black hole, but it has no overwhelming gravitational pull - it's just an area of non-existence, which drives you insane if you look at it too long). The battles between fleets of spaceships are lengthy orgies of destruction, where the weapons and the defenses keep escalating in potency until every possible adjective has been used several times. It's all great fun in its over the top way.
What surprised (and pleased) me most, though, was not these apocalyptic visions. It was the way Kinnison spends most of the story going undercover to get information before the big battles. He carefully creates cover identities to penetrate the drug rings of the enemy, working his way up to the big bosses, and his risky infiltrations have more suspense than the epic battles themselves.Smith's details of the seedy Miner's Rest asteroid (like an Old West gold rush town) are well worked out and convincing.
The Lensmen have highly developed telepathic abilities through the Lens device they wear, but by now Kinnison has further developed his skills under Mentor of Arisia to the point where he can function without the little jewel-like gizmo. He has become a Gray Lensman, that is, he answers to no authority other than his own judgement; Gray Lensmen can requisition any amount of supplies or manpower they see fit for any reason. He's essentially a secret agent and supreme commander of the armed forces at the same time.
(Frankly, combining unlimited military authority and superhuman powers in a rather young man seems like a sure recipe for disaster to me. But within the continuity, these Lensman are literally incorruptible. The wise minds of the Arisians guarantee it. You just have to accept that as a starting rule of the game.)
Kinnison is a superman in any number of ways. He can read and control other minds (at one point, he even drafts a spider to help him out), and he has a "sense of perception" which amounts to a combination of clairvoyance and X-Ray vision.
Physically, he's a big tough galoot working on a Doc Savage level, although Kinnison has no moral problem with killing Civilization's enemies when it seems appropriate. But as undeniably superhuman as he is, the Lensman is neither infallible nor omnipotent. He has doubts and makes mistakes like the rest of us. Technological mind-screens can block his telepathy, and other alien races have minds as potent as his.
He can also be injured or killed like anyone else. In a raygun shootout with two space miners, he has his hands full ("But fast as he was, he was almost too late. Four bolts of lightning flashed, almost as one. The two desperadoes dropped cold; the Lensman felt a stab of agony sear through his shoulder and the breath whistled out of his mouth and noise as his space-suit collapsed.").
As in GALACTIC PATROL, the Gray Lensman suffers an awful lot of physical damage in this book. Captured by the sadistic monsters called the Overlords of Delgon (amazingly creepy reptilian torturers), what's left of him is hauled back to Tellus in pulverized condition. Along with mutilations like blinding him and breaking most of his bones, they have infected him with an elephantiasis-like parasite that leaves no chance but a quadruple amputation. So, it's not like he sails laughing through the book without getting a scratch. He certainly earns his medals.
The other characters in the book are inevitably overshadowed by Kinnison, although I have a fondness for the thirty-foot dragon Lensman called Worsel, what with his grotesque assortment of stalked eyes, wings and scales and things. Clarrissa (Chris) MacDougall is not quite the co-star of the series yet, but she will be. I don't feel the redheaded spitfire quite come to life on the page for me. Maybe in the next two books, she develops further. Her gushy, over-emotional dialogue is not so much specifically feminine as it is the way all of Smith's characters carry on. There's nothing deadpan about any of them.
(Whether it was the pulps' editorial strictness or Smith's whimsey, I have to smile at Chris' excited suggestion to Kinnison. They have just admitted their love, become engaged and been given a huge wedding dowry. Her reaction is, "Let's go and hike about ten miles, shall we, Kim? I've got to do SOMETHING or I'll explode!" (Yeah, right, hike ten miles with your new fiancee. Sublimate much?)
Oh, and Smith tosses little references to other writers of his genre. Kinnison quotes from "immortal Merritt" and mentions "crackpot science-fiction writers like Wacky Williamson." Some of the futuristic slang gets on my nerves. "QX" for "Okay", "clog my jets" for "get in my way' and "clear ether" for "smooth sailing" are repeated so often they point out how archaic the rest of the language is. And maybe the phrase has changed its meaning in 1939, but at one point, Kinnison is trying to pick a fight with a tough asteroid miner. "The fellow wasn't very suspicious, certainly, or he would have 'made a pass at him' before this." Eh? What kind of bar are you in, Kinnison?