I first discovered E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman books at the age of 14, on holiday in the Cumbrian fells in the early 1970s; in fact, my first copy of Grey Lensman came from the station bookstall on Carlisle Citadel station. I was first drawn in by the Chris Foss cover art, possibly the first UK paperback to show his work (though he had made professional sales already). Over the years, I read and re-read everything of Smith's that was published in the UK, but the Lensman novels remained my go-to for sf adventure, even though I quickly realised that they occupied a particular historical niche in the evolution of the genre. And then, as I matured, I turned away from these books as other people I knew and whose opinions I respected pointed out Smith's many flaws.

But with time came a different perspective. I kept reading histories of the genre that put Smith in context; and I read other so-called "Golden Age" sf that stacked up badly against Smith. Well, as Theodore Sturgeon said, "90% of everything is crap". So in the end, I decided that I should attempt a re-read, after something like fifty years. I knew what I was going to find; my question was going to be, "Just how bad is this?"

Then just a few days before I embarked on this task, I read a 1993 issue of the journal of the UK's academic Science Fiction Foundation, Foundation 59. Apart from finding some remarkably apposite comments in reviews of books set in the impossibly distant future year of 2021, I came across the following quote in an article by Czech fan/academic Cyril Simsa on the probably little-remembered US author Henry Slesar, and it put me in an interesting frame of mind for the upcoming re-read:

"A lot of [Slesar's] stories are perfectly respectable examples of the way sf was written in the '50s, and may even have seemed well above average for their day. But so much has changed in the genre in the interim: plot-lines which may once have seemed agreeably adventurous now seem trite and melodramatic, ideas which were part of sf's stock-in-trade are now unbearable clichés, the little philosophical homilies with which so many '50s sf writers liked to finish off their stories (the "moral", if you like) seem dated and prevent the story reaching a proper conclusion. In a world where fascism and civil war have come back to the streets of Europe, where naked manipulation of the political process by the mass media has become the norm, where rival drug gangs regularly shoot at one another with Uzi machine-pistols in the ruins of Los Angeles and computer networks will soon be offering us sex in cyberspace for real, it's difficult to read a story about a mad scientist with a beautiful blond daughter, or a solitary genius who invents a new variety of domestic robot, or indeed any story in which the moral turns out to be (in the words of the '50s B-feature) that "there are things man isn't meant to know", without disguising a smirk behind the palm of one's hand. (Then again, in fairness to Slesar, one has to ask whether the second-generation cyberpunks like Walter Jon Williams will seem any less ridiculous in 2022, and whether we won't perhaps be just as incapable of taking seriously anything with voguish references to "ice", "jacks", designer drugs, artificial intelligence, multinational corporations, computer voodoo, banghramuffin orbital rave platforms, elephants in mirrorshades and so on, in an age no doubt as unimaginably different from where we are now, as the '80s were to the writers of the '50s.)"

So, armed with that thought, I tackled, not Grey Lensman but the book immediately before it in the sequence, Galactic Patrol, on the grounds that it was written first and forms the basis of the whole series. I quickly found the authorial style familiar, because Smith adopted a slightly portentous fake archaic style for the text, which immediately put me in mind of William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land, though nowhere near as extreme as Hodgson. I suspect Smith used that style to try to lend some sort of maturity and gravitas to the text, possibly to make his 14-year-old readership feel that they were in the presence of an adult.

We are pitched into the story of the Galactic Patrol, who provide law and justice throughout the galaxy (does this sound familiar yet?). At the apex of the Patrol are the Lensmen (and they are all men), who wear the Lens, a piece of bio-engineered super-science from the mysterious Arisians that confers various telepathic powers on the wearer. We are then shown the conflict between the Patrol and the pirates of Boskone who are preying on the space shipping lanes. Again, this feels very familiar territory; the theme of an eons-long conflict between two ancient and powerful races, played out through proxies, was the background for Joe Straczynski's 1990s television series Babylon 5, although in the case of that series, the motives of the two races were less clear-cut. In Smith's case, the Arisians are Good and Boskone is Evil.

Smith describes Boskone in terms that immediately made me think of the idea that the modern corporation is a dysfunctional organisation, where the ends justify the means, and progress up the corporate ladder is achieved through back-stabbing, lies, deceit and trampling on those who are not strong enough to stand up against such naked ambition. We now recognise this as typical of Type A personalities and organisations which show a tendency towards the psychopathic; the worrying thing is that having set up the Patrol in general and the Lensmen in particular as the Good Guys, Smith then allows his elite, the Grey Lensmen, full freedom of thought and action. They can determine truth through the use of the Lens, and so can act as judge, jury and executioner because they are all so incorruptible that their word of law is incontrovertible. And they can employ any means to achieve their end - just the trait that Smith originally laid at the feet of Boskone. But there is no room in Smith's universe for ambiguity (it was just this ambiguity and the conflict it gives rise to in the real world that made Babylon 5 such an engaging piece of sf drama).

The dialogue in the novel is excruciating 1930s slang, extrapolated forward. I skimmed as much of the dialogue as I could. Interestingly, the minions of Boskone have dialogue that is far less purple, in line with the depiction of the organisation as cold, ruthless and efficient. I found myself taking to them, though some of the lesser Boskonians sound like 1940s RAF pilots.

Modern commentators brand Smith's work as sexist and racist. Sexist it certainly is: there are no female Lensmen, and the one female character, though feisty, is as stereotypical as a 1940s pin-up poster (and not Rosie the Riveter, either). On the racism, though, things are not quite so clear-cut. True, there do not seem to be any black Lensmen; but Smith introduces a variety of alien races who have unpleasant or strange appearances but who have many good qualities - intelligence, nobility, and honour - and who are put into the classification of "Good Guys". This was perhaps Smith's contribution to the genre; he depicted aliens who were not just nasty monsters who abducted the girl in the brass bikini, to be blasted into oblivion because they were obscene to our eyes, but who were worthy to be called Civilised. Smith wasn't the first to do this - Stanley Weinbaum usually takes that honour with the Martian Tweel in A Martian Odyssey - but within the context of blood-and-thunder space opera, his depiction of the good alien was out of the ordinary. Even the villains of Boskone were given the credit for having intelligence and morals, even if they were the wrong sort of morals.

After all this, if you can cope with the outdated slang, the purple prose and the propensity of the heroes to pull new advances in super-science out of thin air with each new chapter, the story itself holds up reasonably well, only really lapsing when Kimball Kinnison, the Grey Lensman, subverts an entire base of Boskone through mental manipulation, and allows many of their personnel to live - and indeed, receive a pardon for any crimes - because they are all basically Good People Who Have Gone Wrong. Amongst all the action, such an act that is almost out of Gilbert and Sullivan feels out of place. After all, the villains of Boskone are usually gunned or hacked down to a man, without quarter.

In the end, I emerged from the (rather abrupt) end of the novel intact. I read little that makes me want to re-read more, especially as the later Lensman novels keep upping the stakes in the evil-doing of the villains and the goodness and ingenuity of the good guys; whilst the prequels (Triplanetary and First Lensman) did a lot of plot gymnastics to arrive at the universe of Galactic Patrol. I feel myself more likely to go back to Dave Langford's Doc Smith pastiche Sex Pirates of the Blood Asteroid. But at least I have had my re-read, and I can put that particular demon to rest. ( )

The audio book has an intro. At first, it's a little interesting - talking about the historic environment in which this novel was written, and discussing this series relative to several of Smith's contemporary authors. Then it gushed about the story in a way that made me begin to get cross, OK, yes, on with the story then, please! And then it began to tell me what happens in the story. I shouted "WHAT?!" and turned it off. On inspection, there's not a chapter break that will let me skip the introduction and go straight to the book in the audio version, so I guess I'll be waiting to read this book when the voter's packet comes out. SO annoying. If I need to be told what happens in the story for me to be able to understand the story, then it's not a very good story. If I don't need to be told what happens in the story, then let me enjoy the story and learn about all of this for myself in the way the author intended, please! Thank you!

Some spoilery thoughts here:
http://ciaracatscifi.blogspot.com/2014/07/galactic-patrol-by-e-e-smith.html ( )

Wow, I have really mixed emotions about this one...

On the one hand, I really enjoyed it. I mean, as epic space opera goes, it's right up there. I was attached to Kim as a character (eventually), and was rooting for him to defeat Helmuth.

On the other hand, sexist much? Yeah, yeah, I know, when this was written things were just that way. Uh, this took it a step beyond in places. There were literally NO female characters until the end of the book when Mac is finally introduced and is treated and even talked about by everyone but Kim as simply good breeding stock. She is a fairly strong character, not your wilting violet. I'll give him that, but it isn't much compared to the author's treatment of her. The rest of the women are just faceless nameless nurses. Here is a prime example of what I'm talking about:

"Therefore she passed along her illogical but cheering thought, and the nurses, being also women, accepted it without question as the actual and accomplished fact." Chapter 20

Uh...what?

You don't even want me to quote the Dr. & Haynes discussing her for a breeder with Kim...

My last issue, the reason this is a 3 star rather than 4 or 5 (aside from the above) is that there is a decided lack of wit. Where's my witty banter? I'm thinking Han Solo style? There was none of that. I can take my testosterone overload a lot better with some humor, clever, sassy, humor. One liners needed, stat!

So, action, cleverness of the sci-fi, great hero/villain, all there. I was totally on board. But, it fell a little short for me in areas. ( )

(Original Review, 1980-08-08)

I also picked up a couple of the Lensmen books after reading about them here in the SF-Lovers newsletter. Umm, as one of those narrow-minded types who happens to think the Golden Age of Science Fiction is right now, I recommend that anyone else who is tempted to do so scour your local used book stores before laying out real cash money for them.

The Lensmen books have all those neat features that gave SF its good name among middle-aged High School English teachers. All the problems that arise in the book (in this case, Galactic Patrol) threaten to End Civilization before the end of this chapter, if not by the next page. Oh My! But not to worry, our heroically heroic heroes (HHH's) have foreseen this very circumstance, allowing them to deus-ex-machinate a solution in the next paragraph. Whew. [2018 EDIT: Even in 1980 I already thought this was crap...]

The dialogue is, well, juvenile (oh but the descriptions are vivid, the valiant war-machine turned suddenly, thrusters blazing. Suddenly from all gun-ports a brilliant cone of orange destruction spewed forth, sundering the armored hull of the startled pirate ship.) Ships are boarded with grappling hook and sword, and space battles are concluded by hand to hand combat, in a fine swashbuckling tradition, though accompanied by the complication of taking place in free fall (this, incidentally, is not a problem for our HHH's, due to their swift reflexes and superior strength).

Well, it was okay when I was ten years old, but I only got halfway through the book before my strength gave out.

Actually, I think the Golden Age of S.F. is actually the extended present -- including all the good stuff from years gone by (Stanley G. Weinbaum, Cordwainer Smith, etc.). Not including Doc Smith, however.

[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in retrospect a “BBS language”.] ( )

The third novel in the Lensman series but the first written as a novel. Describes the recruitment of members of non-human species from star systems throughout the galaxy to form the Galactic Patrol. ( )