- Smith, Edward E.
Second Stage Lensmen.
Baltimore: Old Earth Books, [1941–1942, 1953] 1998.
ISBN 1-882968-13-1.
-
This is the fifth installment of the
Lensman
series, following
Triplanetary
(June 2004),
First Lensman
(February 2005),
Galactic Patrol
(March 2005),
and
Gray Lensman
(August 2005).
Second Stage Lensmen ran in serial form in Astounding
Science Fiction from November 1941 through February 1942. This
book is a facsimile of the illustrated 1953 Fantasy Press edition,
which was revised from the original magazine serial.
The only thing I found disappointing when rereading this book
in my fourth lifetime expedition through the Lensman
saga is knowing there's only one volume of the main
story remaining—but what a yarn that is.
In Second Stage Lensmen, Doc Smith more overtly
adopts the voice of “historian of civilisation” and
from time to time departs from straight story-telling to describe
off-stage action, discuss his “source material”, and
grouse about Galactic Patrol secrecy depriving him of important
documents. Still, there's enough rays and shields space opera action
for three or four normal novels, although the focus increasingly
shifts from super-weapons and shoot-em-ups to mental combat,
indirection, and espionage.
It's here we first meet Nadreck, one of the most fascinating of Doc
Smith's creations: a poison-breathing cryogenic being who extends into
the fourth dimension and considers cowardice and sloth among his
greatest virtues. His mind, however, like Kinnison's, honed to second
stage Lensman capability by Mentor of Arisia, is both powerful and
subtle, and Nadreck a master of boring within without the villains
even suspecting his presence. He gets the job done, despite never
being satisfied with his “pitifully imperfect”
performance. I've known programmers like that.
Some mystery and thriller writers complain of how difficult
the invention of mobile phones has made their craft. While it
used to be easy for characters to be out of touch and operating with
incomplete and conflicting information, now the reader immediately
asks, “Why didn't she just pick up the phone and
ask?” But in the Lensman universe, both the
good guys and (to a lesser extent) the blackguards have
instantaneous, mind-to-mind high bandwidth communication
on an intergalactic scale, and such is Doc Smith's mastery of
his craft that it neither reduces the suspense nor strains the
plot, and he makes it look almost effortless.
Writing in an age where realistic women of any kind were rare in
science fiction, Smith was known for his strong female
characters—on p. 151 he observes, “Indeed, it has
been argued that sexual equality is the most important criterion of
that which we know as Civilization”—no postmodern
multi-culti crapola here! Some critics carped that his women
characters were so strong and resourceful they were just male
heroes without the square jaws and broad shoulders. So here, probably
in part just to show he can do it, we have Illona of Lonabar, a
five-sigma airhead bimbo (albeit with black hair, not blonde), and the
mind-murdering matriarchy of Lyrane, who have selectively bred their
males to be sub-sentient dwarves with no function other than
reproduction.
The author's inexhaustible imagination manages to keep these stories up
to date, even more than half a century on. While the earlier
volumes stressed what would decades later be called low-observable or
stealth technology, in this outing he anticipates today's hot Pentagon
buzzword, “network-centric warfare”: the grand battles
here are won not by better weapons or numbers, but by the unique and
top secret information technology of the Z9M9Z
Directrix command vessel. The bizarre excursion into
“Nth-space” may have seemed over the top to readers in the
1940s, but today it's reminiscent of another valley in the
cosmic
landscape of string theory.
Although there is a fifteen page foreword by the author which
recaps the story to date, you don't really want to start with
this volume: there's just too much background and context you'll
have missed. It's best either to start at the beginning with
Triplanetary or, if you'd rather defer the two slower-paced
“prequels”, with Volume 3,
Galactic Patrol, which was the first written and
can stand alone.
April 2006 