This Is The First Non-Five Star Review Listed For This Novel, If You Can Believe It

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	• Children of the lens; ([His "The Lensman" series, 6]) E. E Smith Fantasy Press, 1954 - 292 pages average customer review:based on 13 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Super Reader

The Children of the Lens are the culmination of the Arisian breeding program, and are to be their weapons in the final assault on Eddore.

Kimball Kinnison and Clarissa MacDougall have had four children. Born with the abilities Kim possesses, these kids will become the 'third stage' with an ability to join their minds in an all-powerful gestalt.

They are talented enough that they can shadow the Second Stage Lensmen without them knowing, and help them out. Each of the four has a favorite among the Second Stage Lensmen, even if they won't admit it.

This book has a different feel, in that it is a tiny bit focused on family, and the mental war part of it means the insane space battles are a much smaller part of the whole thing.

The end is the final battle between the Arisians and the Eddorians, with the third-stage Kinnison gestalt as an important part of the assault.

Afterwards, what the Arisians tells the Children comes as a bit of a surprise.

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Wow Wow Wow

All six books went fast and furious...but what reading!!! Terrific stuff! Smith definitely had the jets to tell one of the best yarns in all of science fiction. All the other reviewers citing how later movies, series, and stories were influenced by these books...WERE RIGHT!!! One of the best science fiction series you will ever read. Period.

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This is the best there is

I have read this series at least 4 times. If you like SCIFI, you will cherish these books and buy the whole collection (as I did).

Classic SF - mind powers, heroes larger than life.

Galaxies wide adventure. This is the last book of the Lensman series. While the book can stand alone, the earlier Lensman books lead up to this conclusion where the combined mind powers of the Lensman children, together with super science manage to defeat the super villains for the victory of good over evil.
E.E. Smith wrote these books around the middle of the century, and some of the writing style appears less sophisticated than current authors. However, I enjoyed the extremely positive depiction of the human nature and future - similarly to what the author did this in the Skylark series. Highly recommended..

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This Is The First Non-Five Star Review Listed For This Novel, If You Can Believe It

Having started the six book series with Triplanetary and ending here, I thought the series started to trail off after Galactic Patrol. Triplanetary has been heavily criticized as giving away too much of the series and of the pro- and antagonists too soon. However when the Eddorians are finally confronted here I didn't feel as much as a build up to their powers as Triplanetary instilled. In Triplanetary you really felt that the Eddorians were almost omnipotent beings and the task before the Arisians in seeding planets, including Earth, preparing for the eventual confrontation to save Civilization. Galactic Patrol really carried on the beginning of the series with Kimball Kinnison, but I thought the quality dwindled starting with Gray Lensman and the dated 50's slang really picked up then. It's not just because it's written in the 50's, I've recently read several works by Alfred Bester, Arthur C. Clarke, and others written in the 50's and they have no where near this level of 50's slang.

Another thing I started to find unappealing is Smith's heavy regard for the `wide girth' of Kinnison and of his space-ax swinging cohorts. In reality, strong ambition comes often from those that have not been so physically gifted in life and so have to fight their entire lives against people's initial reactions to their appearance. Lois McMaster Bujold's Mountains of Mourning of a diminutive protagonist's personal battle against his grandfather's attitude, and possible disgust, of his physical stature comes to mind. So it is with irony that I can picture some skinny kid sitting outside in the 50's reading this book and `barrel-shaped chests" as the big neighbor kids come up to him and say `hey poindexter, whatcha reading...' or something.

However, the originality, and impact this series had upon science fiction cannot be understated and is why I am giving it a respectable four stars. Several reviewers have mentioned that they can see scenes from Star Wars lifted from this series. What I see even more so is what Star Trek lifted from this series. Even down to small details such as a ship having to lower shields in order to fire a weapon against an enemy. And many other movies, tv shows, and books influenced comes to mind including Alien, The 5th Element, Heinlein, certainly the original Star Trek as well as the Next Generation and Deep
Space 9, Wing Commander and others.

255 Pages, Publ 1954.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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