Customer Reviews

Second Stage Lensmen (The Lensman Series, Book 5)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Finally the book I have been waiting for since 1982. I first read this book in the 1970's, and read it at least 50-60 times. However, it was lost while moving in 1982 and I have been searching avidly for it ever since. In this book, Kimball Kinnison does some of his best work as a lensman. However then best part about this book is we get to see the work of other lensman, as well as of the galactic patrol itself. In this we see that much of what makes people great are the people they associate with; a lesson of great value today. This is perhaps the inspiration for many of today's ensemble cast shows. An excellent read by one of the worlds greatest storytellers.

Possibly the best in the Series, though anyone would tell you, that is a difficult determination to make. The 5 most powerful "Second Stage" Lensmen do detective, spy and combat duty to ferret out and destroy the denizens of Boskone. The beams are hotter, the technology heavier, the battles bigger and the mental powers greater than ever before. See the sunbeam roast planets! This book is loaded with everything good about the Lensmen series. My favorite chapter is "Nadreck at Work", about a non oxygen breathing, Second Stage Lensman with a decidedly, uh, er, different moral outlook on things. Clarissa Kinnison, Kim's wife, comes into her own as a woman hero to make this series accessible to women also.

If you ever wonder how much American society has changed since the early '50's, just a little of Smith's dialogue will set you up with everything you need to know.

"'Listen, angel-face!' the man commanded. 'You're as mad as a radeligian cateagle - you're as cockeyed as Trenco's ether. Get this, and get it straight. To any really intelligent being of any one of forty million planets, your whole Lyranian race would be a total loss with no insurance. You're a God-forsaken, spiritually and emotionally starved, barren, mentally ossified, and completely monstrous mess. If I, personally, never see either you or your planet again, that will be exactly twenty seven minutes too soon. If anybody else ever hears of Lyrane and thinks he wants to visit it, I'll take him out of - I'll knock a hip down on him if I have to, to keep him away from here. Do I make myself clear?'"

And that's the ur-goodguy addressing the head of state of a neutral planet. Golly.

The science is ludicrous, the politics militaristic and jingoistic in the extreme. I never can keep all the trenchant, searing, biting space battles of brain-straining refractoriness straight. The dialogue often makes me laugh out loud, and the gender and (to the extent they appear at all) race relations make me squirm in my chair. So why is all this still so readable?

I guess it's for the same reason the old Conan stories by Robert E. Howard (a much inferior writer to Smith) are still among my favorites: STORY. Once you get past all the back-story in Triplanetary, the narrative just grabs you by the collar and doesn't let you go until Kit Kinnison sends out his message in a bottle in the epilogue of the final volume. If I had back all the hours of sleep I've traded for late night sessions with "Doc" Smith, I wouldn't wake up for months.

And by the nine purple hells of Palain, isn't that what escapist reading is for?

If you ever wonder how much American society has changed since the early '50's, just a little of Smith's dialogue will set you up with everything you need to know.

"'Listen, angel-face!' the man commanded. 'You're as mad as a radeligian cateagle - you're as cockeyed as Trenco's ether. Get this, and get it straight. To any really intelligent being of any one of forty million planets, your whole Lyranian race would be a total loss with no insurance. You're a God-forsaken, spiritually and emotionally starved, barren, mentally ossified, and completely monstrous mess. If I, personaly, never see either you or your planet again, that will be exactly twenty seven minutes too soon. If anybody else ever hears of Lyrane and thinks he wants to visit it, I'll take him out of - I'll knock a hip down on him if I have to, to keep him away from here. Do I make myself clear?'"

And that's the ur-goodguy addressing the head of state of a neutral planet. Golly.

The science is ludicrous, the politics militaristic and jingoistic in the extreme. I never can keep all the trenchant, searing, biting space battles of brain-straining refractoriness straight. The dialogue often makes me laugh out loud, and the gender and (to the extent they appear at all) race relations make me squirm in my chair. So why is all this still so readable?

I guess it's for the same reason the old Conan stories by Robert E. Howard (a much inferior writer to Smith) are still among my favorites: STORY. Once you get past all the back-story in Triplanetary, the narrative just grabs you by the collar and doesn't let you go until Kit Kinnison sends out his message in a bottle in the epilogue of the final volume. If I had back all the hours of sleep I've traded for late night sessions with "Doc" Smith, I wouldn't wake up for months.

And by the nine purple hells of Palain, isn't that what escapist reading is for?

Perhaps the best of the Lensman series, with Doc's best alien, Nadreck of Palain VII.

If you've read this far you know the formula by now . . . having defeated Boskone, Our Heroes discover that a bigger and more shadowy Boskone exists and now they have to go to great lengths to stop it. They win in the end, of course, because they are Heroes. After spending now nearly four books with Kim Kinnison, it's clear that while he's not the deepest character in the world when it comes to development and pretty much everything in the world comes easily to him (which it kinds of needs to, with the perils that he faces), it's also evident that he's a lot of fun, stalwart and brutal in equal measure. He even gets to fall in love here finally, to his perfect match, the equally feisty Nurse MacDougall.

So on one hand this volume winds up being more of the same, and yet not. It doesn't quite reach the dizzying heights of insanity that the last volume managed but Smith is so good at keeping the plot moving and throwing out newly inventive planets and dangers for the heroes to best that it seems scarily effective. What makes this volume fascinating is the cast of characters that Kinnison has to work with and winds up encountering, from the planet made entirely of women and the other Lensmen such as Nadreck, who does manage to seem utterly alien and eerily effective in his cowardice.

The wide variety helps offset the often, shall we say, old fashioned tone of things, and there's a certain swaggering sense of confidence to this, with Kinnison managing to make seemingly impossible tasks like infiltrating societies as a fence and climbing his way up the crooked ladder of criminal organization seem both easy and something only he could do. Reading this, it's impressive how many concepts were later picked up, not only by other Space Opera writers but SF writers in general. The Lensmen, in their alien varieties, are almost direct forerunners of DC Comics' Green Lantern Corps and Nadreck seems like the ancestor of Larry Niven's Puppeteer race of aliens in the Ringworld novels.

It's hard to convey in mere words how fast the story moves once it gets going and unless you're totally allergic to Golden Age SF, can be read as a breakneck adventure novel. Smith's prose, while not fancy, has an exuberance that suggests every sentence should come with an exclamation point and the can-do attitude coupled with a realistic sense of the stakes involved helps the affair feel grounded even when you're talking to weird tentacled people on mobile planets. He even manages to make an outer space battle feel exciting on paper when described from the outside, something that wouldn't happen on a visual level until something called Star Wars came along.

Sure, there's quibbles. Mentor of the Arisians can't seem to decide whether he wants to be involved in saving the universe or not and basically just shows up when people are stuck to get them through, a deus ex machina if I've ever seen one. Boskone doesn't seem quite as clever this time out, coming to the wrong conclusion several times, making Kinnison's ultimate victory seem that much more ordained.

But the mixture of humans and aliens working together, the sense of making aliens feel alien without going all Stanislaw Lem on us, the widescreen action in a constantly churning plot, where even the detours have a sense of urgency to them, is matched by little else in SF before or since. There may be more sophisticated works in this vein, more inventive, and more action-packed, but very few are so consistently entertaining as this.

In a review of _Gray Lensman_ (1951), I suggested that part of the appeal of E.E. Smith's Lensman novels was his feel for a Gargantuan but organized universe. As John Clute (1984) neatly put it, "[Smith] gave us size" (130). I would now like to examine a related source of appeal in _Second Stage Lensmen_ (_Astounding_, 1941-42; 1953). Early in the novel, we are told that the Galactic Patrol has developed a new ship called the "super mauler," bigger than the original mauler:

It was like the special defense cruisers of the Patrol, except that its screens were vastly heavier. It was like a regular mauler except that it had only one weapon. All of its incomprehensible mass was devoted to one thing-- _power_! (28)

Ah, yes. _Power_. Clute shrewdly notes that many of Smith's novels are power fantasies. It's a bit like Tom Swift, Jr. Remember? When you were a kid, you could imagine youself in charge of Swift Enterprises, a multimillion dollar operation with hundreds of laboratories, air fields, spaceports, and submarine pens. And then there were the inventions: the flying lab, the jetmarine, the giant robot, the diving seacopter, the spectomarine selector, the repelatron spaceships, the cosmic kites. And the places you could go: the jungles of Borneo, the caves of nuclear fire, the depths of the sea, the Phantom Satellite, and even the Moon. To be sure, you had to deal with those pesky Brungarian saboteurs from time to time. But for the most part, your resources were unlimited. And it went without saying that you used those resources only for good. Remember?

Doc Smith's power fantasy isn't exactly like that. It is much more violent and militaristic. It involves colossal deep space battles and bloody planetary mop-ups. There are some undercover cop operations and several political backstabbing projects. There are also several duels (including one with sabers and one psionic bout). There are encounters with naked Amazon feminists (you didn't see _them_ in the Tom Swift, Jr. books!) and various exotic aliens, both hostile and friendly. But _Second Stage Lensmen_ has the same kind of appeal. You imagine that you are part of Something Big, with vast powers and resources. Aside from the military resources, Clarissa MacDougal gets an unlimited expense account at the close of the novel. Now, _that's_ power! Furthermore, you know that you are on the side of Good. You are confident that in the end, you will emerge triumphant. Even some hardcore Boskonian leaders convert to your cause.

Like the other books in the Lensman sequence, _Second Stage Lensmen_ is not really very well written, but it is passable fun.

"Second Stage Lensmen" is a terrific read!

Mind, you will learn some things about the attitudes and the language of the 1940's. Do not let those things boggle your mind. That is just how our culture was. Let your mind focus on the story, only. And, your seat belt had better be stout. You are in for an amazing ride!

I think I may have made it to college before I managed to find this book in the lensman series. I loved it! This is space opera and space adventure at its best.

Do note the size of Kim's new lens. Do note that there are other second stage lensmen. Do note the use of a truely high powered laser! Do note the other truely incredible weapons. Do note that the most essential ingredient to all of this is one human being with the right stuff. Have fun!

I recommend this book.

The incredibly over the top and amazing space warfare continues.

There are a handful of Second Stage Lensman, those good enough at their craft to go beyond the Gray, and receive further treatment and training from the Arisians.

Kimball Kinnison is one of them, and he and his fellows, some of the best aliens you will meet in SF books, go out to do further battle. That is not all though, as Second Stage Lensmen abilities are ideally suited to spying and information gathering. The Second Stage powers include the 'sense of perception', an ability to sense what is going on around you, which basically gives you x-ray vision and the ability to see in the dark, among other things. Mind control is another.

The time spent with Nadreck, Worsel and Tregonsee, the other Second Stage Lensmen, is quite enjoyable.

I (and many others) believe the best place to start with Doc Smith's "Lensman" series is Galactic Patrol; and as I've said why, at length, in my review of that opus, I won't repeat it here.

Furthermore, if you've already read "Patrol" and Gray Lensman with enjoyment, you'll hardly need my urging to continue.

This is nonetheless probably the weakest of the four main Lensman novels, mainly because of Smith's often-noted discomfort with female characters. It is a curious reflection on his powers as a writer that he can make a thoroughly convincing -- even likeable! -- character of a thirty-foot, crocodile-headed, winged python with eyes that come out on stalks, but can't manage the matriarch of a tribe of human Amazons (from the planet Lyrane II).

We cannot, to be sure, be surprised that Kinnison's skills at handling females are so deficient: after all, he's spent his formative years galumphing around the Galaxy in search of the arch-villain Helmuth, not hanging out like a normal teenager. Military genius he may be, but socially he's still an adolescent.

(Although... perhaps he's not *quite* as inexperienced as all that? Exactly what *were* his experiences as a Cadet with that "bedroom-eyed Aldebaranian hell-cat", the stunningly beautiful Dessa Desplaines? Whatever they were, they obviously left quite an impression: Kinnison -- normally unflappable even by outré developments like hyperspatial tubes materialising in the same room with him -- is reduced to a jelly at the mere thought of meeting her again.)

Still, be all that as it may, "Second Stage" has many compensating pleasures, not least the exploits of Nadreck, the cowardly four-dimensional Palainian lensman.

And it leads into one of the strongest finishes of any science fiction series, as Kim and Clarissa's offspring carry the struggle to its climax in Children of the Lens.