Second Stage Lensman [Mass Market Paperback]

The story opens just as the predecessor in this series (Gray Lensman) closes. Our Hero and His Girl are walking off together, eager to get their marital relations off to a screaming start. All of a sudden, "Stop, Youth!" It's Arisia, the planet of secretive mental masters, dropping the other shoe. There's more to do before Kim Kinnison and Clarissa MacDougall can get down to baby-making.

So they go jetting off to do it. There's Lyrane, the matriarchal planet, with a few squabbling males for DNA donors. Of course, anything with women in charge must be comical and grotesque (this was written in 1953, remember) so we get a few good yuks out of that. Then there are various bad guys to demolish, in an inflationary arms race to see who can string the most superlatives together in describing their way-cool weaponry. It's improbable daring-do, hither and thither across intergalactic space. When it comes down to it, though, even the grandest space-battle of all time ends up in hand-to-hand, man-to-man combat.

The ending dangles obvious sequel-bait in front of the reader. After the biggest, gaudiest wedding in the history of the universe, the Gray Lensman and Red Lensman (not Lensgirl - phew) take off for the nearest room with a door that locks. But, even though Kinnison knows all that we know at this point, he's making kissy-face while the baddest bad guys in two galaxies are still at large. Huh?

Well, there's another book in the series, coming soon. In the mean time, this book provides plenty of entertainment in at least two ways. First, the swashbuckling and steady stream of victories make me wish for a rainy Saturday and a bucket of popcorn. Second, this artifact from the dawn of the Eisenhower doldrums captures the neolithic relations between men and women in those days, along with blind optimism in technology, democracy, and trickle-down economics. We now know better on all counts, so what was once the norm, then anti-feminist propaganda, can now be seen as quaintly comical.

-- wiredweird

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.

BTW, the correct title is "Second Stage LensMEN" — and has been ever since 1941!

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.