Lensman Series - Plot

Plot

The series opens in Triplanetary, two billion years before the present time. The universe has few life-forms, aside from the elder race of our galaxy, the Arisians and few planets besides their native world (see below). The Arisians, a peaceful race native to this universe, are already ancient at this time and have forgone physical needs in preference for contemplative mental power which they have developed and refined to an exceedingly high degree. The underlying assumption, and a key plot point, (based on then-accepted theories of stellar evolution) is that planet formation in the Lensman "Cosmic All" (not just this universe, but all known universes) is relatively rare, making the so-called First and Second Galaxies, with their many billions of planets, relatively unique across all known creation.

Into this universe, from an alien space-time continuum, the Eddorians come, a dictatorial, power-hungry race. They have been attracted to this universe by the observation that our galaxy and a sister galaxy (later to be named Lundmark's Nebula, still later called the Second Galaxy) are passing through each other. According to an astronomical theory current at the time of writing Triplanetary called the tidal theory (the primary theory prior to the rehabilitation of the nebular hypothesis), this will result in a unique galactic formation of billions of planets and thus the development of life upon them. Dominance over these life forms would offer the Eddorians an opportunity to satisfy their lust for power and control.

Although the Eddorians have developed mental powers almost equal to those of the Arisians, they rely instead for the most part on physical power, exercised on their behalf by a hierarchy of underling races. They see the many races in the universe, with which the Arisians were intending to build a peaceful civilization, as fodder for their power-drive.

The Arisians, detecting the invasion of our universe by the Eddorians, recognize their rapacious, intractable nature. Recognizing that they would be stymied, then eventually defeated in a direct confrontation, they hide their existence from the Eddorians and then begin a covert breeding program on every world that can produce intelligent life, with the aim of producing a means to eventually destroy the Eddorian race. This they grasp that they cannot do by mental power alone, and they decide that much time is needed (during which Eddore must be kept ignorant of their plans) and new races must be developed which will better be able to breach the Eddorians' tool-enhanced mental powers than they themselves are. The new races, having done so, will naturally be better guardians of civilization than the Arisians can be, and so the Arisians' role in the universe will be ended.

Triplanetary incorporates the early history of that breeding program on Earth, illustrated with the lives of several warriors and soldiers, from ancient times to the discovery of the first interstellar space drive. It adds an additional short novel (originally published with the Triplanetary name) which is transitional to the novel First Lensman. It specifically details some of the interactions and natures of two distinct earthly breeding lines, one always bearing some variant of the name "Kinnison" and always carried forth by a male, and another line which might survive through either female or male heirs but distinguished by possessing "red-bronze-auburn hair and gold-flecked, tawny eyes". Moreover, the two lines have a certain inherent "mutual repulsion", not that they don't respect and appreciate each other, but they simply know inherently that they just aren't meant to be attracted to one another. This is an Arisian compulsion inserted to prevent commingling of the two breeding lines as they coalesce to their penultimate forms.

The second book, First Lensman, concerns the early formation of the Galactic Patrol and the first Lens, given to First Lensman Virgil Samms of "Tellus" (Earth). Samms is one side of the vast Arisian breeding program which will produce Clarissa MacDougal, the female half of the penultimate result of their breeding program. Moreover, along with Roderick Kinnison (a member of the other side, which will produce the male half), they are natural leaders as they are supremely intelligent, forceful, and capable. The Arisians, through the scientist Bergenholm (actually an Arisian entity appearing as a human, and who "invented" the interstellar drive), make it known that if Samms, the head of the Triplanetary Service which administers law enforcement to Tellus, Mars and Venus, visits the Arisian planetary system—and only if he visits the Arisian system—he will be given the tool he needs to build the Patrol he dreams of. That tool is the Lens. The Arisians further promise him that no entity unworthy of the Lens will ever be permitted to wear it, but that he and his successors will have to discover for themselves most of its abilities. They otherwise maintain a highly distant profile and refuse to talk to other beings, stating that they have given civilization the tool it needs to bring about a good future and that people should otherwise not have reason to contact them.

The Lens is a form of "pseudo-life," created by the Arisians who understand life and life-force in a way no other race does. It gives its wearer a variety of mental capabilities, including those needed to enforce the law on alien planets and to bridge the communication gap between different life-forms. Thus, it can provide mind-reading and telepathic abilities while connected directly or indirectly to the skin of its user. It cannot be worn by anyone other than its owner, will kill any other wearer (in fact, it is fatal to even touch if not in contact with its owner), and "disappears" shortly after the owner's death, by some means which is not explained but is described as "more like evaporation or sublimation, except that there was no gradual diminution in volume, and there was no detectable residue, either solid, liquid, or gaseous". Virgilia Samms, Virgil Samms's daughter, is sent to Arisia and is told when there that there is an inherent gender mismatch that renders the Lens largely incompatible with the nature of female minds and that only one woman will ever become a Lensman.

Using the Lens as a means to test mental qualities and identify the very few exceptional individuals able to help him, Virgil Samms visits races in other star systems, recruiting the best of them and forming the nucleus of a Galactic Patrol of exceptional individuals from a wide range of species. Their opponents in turn are discovered to be a widespread civilization based around dominance hierarchies and organized crime. The leaders of this civilization are the Eddorians, but only the Children of the Lens, who must ultimately defeat them, ever truly learn of their existence.

The series contains some of the largest-scale space battles ever written. Entire worlds are almost casually destroyed (see "Super-Science Weapons" below), while some weapons are powerful enough to warp space itself. Huge fleets of spaceships fight bloody wars of attrition. Alien races of two galaxies sort themselves into the allied, Lens-bearing adherents of "Civilization" and the enemy races of "Boskone".

Centuries pass and eventually the final generations of the breeding program are born. On each of the four "best" planets, a single individual is born who realizes the limits of his initial training and perceives the need to return to Arisia to seek "second stage" training, which it is later shown to include: the ability to slay by mental force alone; a "sense of perception" which allows seeing by direct awareness without the use of the visual sense; the ability to control minds undetectably, including the ability to alter memories untraceably and imperceptibly; the ability to perfectly split attention in order to perform multiple tasks with simultaneous focus on each; and to better integrate their minds for superior thinking.

As the breeding program reaches its ultimate conclusion, humans are selected as the best choice, and at the same time, the breeding programs of the other three planets—Rigel IV (Tregonsee), Velantia III (Worsel), and Palain VII (Nadreck) are terminated, and the three penultimates never meet their mating pairs. Kimball Kinnison, the brown-haired, gray-eyed second-stage Lensman of Earth, finally meets and marries the most advanced product of the complimentary human breeding program, Clarissa MacDougall. She is a beautiful, curvaceous, red-haired nurse, who eventually becomes the first human female to receive her own Lens. Their children, a boy and two pairs of fraternal twin sisters, grow up to be the five Children of the Lens. In their breeding, "almost every strain of weakness in humanity is finally removed." They are born already possessing the powers taught to second-stage Lensmen, with mental abilities from birth that are difficult to imagine. They are the only beings of Civilization ever to see Arisia as it truly is and the only individuals developed over all the existence of billions of years able finally to penetrate the Eddorians' defense screens.

Undergoing advanced training, they are described as "third-stage" Lensmen, transcending humanity with mental scope and perceptions impossible for any normal person to comprehend. Although newly adult, they are now expected to be more competent than the Arisians and to develop their own techniques and abilities "about which we know nothing."

The key discovery comes when they try mind-merging, which they have not tried since before their various third-stage trainings, and discover that this is completely changed. No longer are they simply five beings in mental contact as before. Now they discover they can merge their minds into a hive-mind, to effectively form one mental entity, a being with incalculable abilities called the Unit. The Arisians call this the "most nearly perfect creation the universe has ever seen" and state that they, who created it, are themselves almost entirely ignorant of almost all its higher powers. It is also revealed around this point that Mentor is himself a group mind consisting of four minds, operating in sufficiently perfect unison that no one prior to the Children, as The Unit, ever realized it.

The Children of the Lens, together with the mental power of unknown millions of Lensmen of the Galactic Patrol, constitute the Arisians' intended means to destroy Eddore and make the universe safe for their progeny species. The Galactic Patrol, summoned to work together in this way for the first time in its existence, contains billions of beings who in total can generate immense mental force. The Children of the Lens add their own tremendous mental force to this. As the Unit gather, they focus all power onto one tiny point of the Eddorians' shields. Thus attacked with this incalculable strength and precision, the Eddorians' strongest shields finally, after billions of years, are destroyed and the Eddorian High Council protected by them. It is stated that this one last thing was the only thing the Arisians could not have accomplished themselves, but without its accomplishment the Eddorians would have eventually turned the tide and beaten the Arisians.

The Arisians, with their child races successful and safe, remove themselves from the Cosmos in order to leave the Children of the Lens uninhibited in their future as the new guardians of Civilization.