This is spilling out of a discussion over on File 770 (item 4 on the scroll), which in turn derived partly from Charles Stross’s “We’re Sorry we Created the Torment Nexus”. It also ties in, of course, to the ongoing “was John W. Campbell a fascist?” non-debate (because people who say no are not changing their minds, ever.)

“Fascist”, of course, is one of those terms linguisticians call “snarl words”, where the negative connotations have pretty much obscured the original usage. In the literal sense, Campbell was never a member of Mussolini’s Partito Nazionale Fascista, so, no, he was not literally a Fascist. But by that definition, neither was Adolf Hitler, so that’s not really getting us anywhere. Fascism, as a political philosophy, is a bastard child of the aristocratic principle; its thesis is that we are all in the service of the State, and that within the State there are elites who have a natural right to rule, and those who are not of the elite should just accept the orders of their betters. Non-elites who go around questioning the elite, or doing things like suggesting alternative ways of living, are clearly subversives bent on undermining the proper order, and must be neutralized in the interests of the public good. It doesn’t take long to notice that this belief rather lends itself to concepts like racism (because obviously the elites will have consistent characteristics, such as skin colour), totalitarianism (for the public good, the non-elite masses must be strictly controlled) and the summary elimination of subversives (the preservation of the public good is more important than trivia such as human rights or due process.)

This sort of political philosophy breaks out in a number of different ways. In Germany in the 1930s, of course, it expressed itself in National Socialism under Hitler. More interestingly, from the Golden Age SF reader’s point of view, it expressed itself in the USA as the Technocracy Movement, which held that politicians and businessmen were no good at running the state, and public policy should be set by panels of scientific experts instead. This was a movement just like the other authoritarian parties of the time; it had a Leader (Howard Scott), it had its own colour of shirts, it had a logo adopted from Asian mythology. You could envisage an alternate history in which the Weimar Republic got a Franklin D. Roosevelt analogue who got its economy back on track, the USA didn’t, the resulting social unrest threw up a charismatic Technocrat leader (which wouldn’t have been Howard Scott, who was a terrible public speaker)… and World War II started round about on schedule, when the USA came into direct conflict with the British Empire as the Technocrats attempted their Anschluß with Canada. And there would quite definitely have been a Molotov-Hull pact, pitting the USA and the USSR against the old colonial empires – at least until the Americans launched Operation Redbeard, attacking Russia through Alaska, leading to meat-grinder urban warfare around Vladivostok (subsequently renamed Stalingrad), and the collapse of the US economy… and there would be ample room to blame “financiers” and “rootless cosmopolitans” for the failures of the technocrats… and, today, the yin-yang mandala would arouse the same feelings that the swastika does in our world, and solemn-faced visitors would look up at the “Work Will Set You Free” motto on the iron gates of the death camp at Austin, TX. But I digress.

The idea that the state should be run by the people best qualified to do it… seems like the sort of truism you couldn’t dream of contradicting, until you start asking awkward questions like “who decides who’s best qualified?” It is worth noting that the UK, since 2010, has been run by the “right sort of people”, who came from the right sort of background, went to the right sort of school (Eton, Winchester) and/or the right university (Oxford) and were therefore presumed to have the right sort of qualifications for government. It is safe to say, what with the collapse in public services, the decline in the UK’s wealth and influence due to the self-inflicted wound of Brexit, the tens of thousands of homeless people, the millions sunk into destitution, the fall of average living standards to parity with Eastern Slovenia (and dropping), the thousands of avoidable Covid deaths, the tens of billions of public money lost to fraud and corruption, the highest tax burden since the Second World War, the tripling of national debt… yes, it is safe to say that their track record has been less than stellar. (Feel free to add in anything I’ve missed out. I know there’s a lot more.)

But were Golden Age SF writers in general, and John W. Campbell Jr. in particular, happy with elitism? Oh, you bet they were. The Gernsbackian ideal, as exemplified in Gernsback’s own ridiculous novel Ralph 124C41+, was a homogeneous, rationally-planned society in which government, if it existed at all, was strictly subordinated to the scientific elite – in the eponymous Ralph’s case, the “plus men”, entitled to that + sign on their names, whose unfettered experimentation led to an endless round of fresh discoveries and scientific benefits for the general populace. And you can’t throw a brick in Campbell-era SF without hitting an omni-competent super-science hero with world-transforming insights and the steely determination to push aside bureaucratic meddling and Get Things Done. Campbell himself regarded Astounding as not just a science fiction magazine, but a proving ground for the ideas that would shape the world of tomorrow. And he had plenty of sympathy from SF fans, who were happy to believe that their time would come, and they would be in the vanguard of the new elite. Granted, not many fans took it as far as the rather alarming Claude Degler, but if you said “fans are slans” at any fannish gathering of the times, you would see more than one head nodding in approval.

(A horrible thought occurred to me, in relation to the alternative history scenario above. Howard Scott was a lousy public speaker, but John Campbell was much more articulate… and generally in sympathy with the Technocrat ideals. John Campbell as the American Führer is an upsetting enough thought, but… what if it turned out to be one of Campbell’s stable of writers, instead? Specifically, a certain writer with a talent for plausible balderdash, one who had the highest possible opinion of his own abilities, one who saw the advantages inherent in being the unquestioned leader of a movement? ”Heil Hitler!” is already a phrase to chill the blood, but I have a feeling “Hail Hubbard!” would have been much, much worse.)

But anyway. Golden Age SF loves its super-scientists, super-cops, and super-soldiers, and more often than not it emphasizes their points of view – these guys tend to be the sympathetic protagonists in their stories. Partly, this is down to the “SF as a fantasy of political agency” thing which I talked about here at wearisome length (and without crediting C.J. Cherryh, who actually coined the phrase); partly it’s simple narrative convenience, in that it’s easier to write stories about the movers and the shakers, rather than the moved and the shaken. This does, however, rather have the problem of reducing most of humanity to lay figures standing in the background, applauding Our Heroes on cue and otherwise staying out of things. (Of course, by Campbell’s own literary theory, this is actually a good thing.) We get to see a lot of Ralph 124C41+, as he goes about being brilliant and extolling the virtues of super-science; we don’t get the viewpoints of the ordinary people of Ralph’s world, who seem to exist only to cheer on the efforts of Ralph and his fellow “plus” men. You have to wonder whether such uniform adulation is entirely realistic. Are there no people in this world who would rather take a bike to work, instead of zipping around on electric roller skates? No people who would rather eat solid food than suck pre-masticated slurry from a hose? No residents of New York who get slightly peeved when one of Ralph’s brilliant experiments overloads the power grid and plunges the whole city into darkness?

Well, if there are, they’re likely to keep their opinions to themselves. Because speaking up is likely to be… problematic. People are going to say things like “How dare you criticize the ‘plus’ men? Don’t you realize that their super-science is devoted to improving our lives? Ingrate. Weirdo. Deviant. Subversive.”

Neither fascism nor Golden Age SF are big on alternatives. The non-elite masses, after all, cannot be expected to cope with the difficulty of choosing between two or more acceptable alternatives. Moreover, if you have a number of choices open, you allow for the possibility that the ruling elite might make the wrong choice, which clearly cannot be allowed to happen. As part of my great Unknown reviewing project, I covered John W. Campbell’s only fiction contribution to his own magazine, here – this rather exemplifies the problem, because the “Invisible Ones” who are its designated villains don’t actually do anything villainous… except for presenting alternatives of which John W. Campbell does not approve.

(A side note: Mark Clifton and Frank Riley’s They’d Rather Be Right is widely regarded as the worst novel ever to win the Hugo Award, at least by people who haven’t read The Wanderer. But, in among the cardboard characters and lacklustre prose, there is at least the germ of a decent idea. Given access to a piece of super-science that greatly boosts your intellect, restores your body to youth and perfect fitness, and makes sexy redheads forget to put any clothes on… some people are still going to stick with the old-fashioned way of doing things, because that’s more comfortable than the personal transformation this gadget involves. By the standards of the Golden Age, this is pretty insightful stuff.)

Presenting alternatives is not a wise choice in an authoritarian elitist state. Even if you, yourself, are a member of the elite, deviating too much or too often from the general consensus is not likely to win you any brownie points with your peers – more likely, the consequences will feature phrases like “mandatory leave of absence”, “rest cure”, “re-education”, “public renunciation” and “icepick through the skull.” If you are not a member of the elite, then criticizing your betters (even by implication)… isn’t going to end well. And, if you happen to be, as it were, intrinsically alternative – by virtue of skin colour, or sexuality, or the configuration of your genitals, or whatever – well, the best thing to do, in this case, is keep your head well down, say nothing, and pray that the elite doesn’t notice you.

And Golden Age SF does, very much, give you the viewpoint of the elite, not the masses. We are introduced to these super-science, super-heroic protagonists, we explore the world through their POV, and, by and large, we sympathise with them. By and large. Sometimes they are just too unpleasant to be sympathetic; I found the Designated Heroes in Clifford Simak’s deservedly neglected early novel Empire to be absolutely appalling, and the justly famous Cora Buhlert is prone to referring to the protagonist of “Doc” Smith’s Skylark series as “the war criminal Richard Seaton”, which isn’t unfair, given the number of genocides Seaton perpetrates in that series.

Speaking of E.E. “Doc” Smith… I’ve had enough of picking on Ralph 124C41+, it feels too much like kicking a cripple (and I say that as a cripple). So, let’s look at a Golden Age touchstone of arguably higher quality, shall we? Let’s find out what it looks like from the proles’ point of view.

This rugged and manly fellow is Kimball “Kim” Kinnison, the eponymous Grey Lensman of the title, and the hero for most of Smith’s Lensman series. This series comprised four novels (Galactic Patrol, Grey Lensman, Second Stage Lensmen and Children of the Lens) serialized in Astounding between 1937 and 1948; it would subsequently spawn two prequels (Triplanetary and First Lensman) and a sort of set-in-the-same-universe spin-off (The Vortex Blasters, also known as Masters of the Vortex, at least when expanded to novel length.) Kim Kinnison starts out as the hero for the first three books, and is still in Children of the Lens, though rather pushed aside by his brood of Third Stage Lensman kids.

For those of you blessedly unfamiliar with the whole Lensman saga – well, the Lensmen are the top echelon of the Galactic Patrol, a cross between the space police and the military. That thing on Kim’s wrist that looks like a radioactive Rolex is his Lens, a telepathic jewel made by the mysterious inhabitants of the planet Arisia, which gives him all sorts of handy psychic abilities, and also serves as an infallible means of identification – a Lens is bonded to one Lensman only; if he takes it off (Lensmen are always “he”, with only one exception), it loses its glow, and is rapidly fatal to anyone else who touches it.

By the start of Grey Lensman, Kim is already a Grey Lensman, also known as an Unattached Lensman. This does not mean he’s single (sorry, ladies!), he’s in a will-they-won’t-they romance with the gorgeous Clarrissa MacDougall, more of her anon. What it does mean is that he is detached from the regular duties and the command structure of the Galactic Patrol; he is free to investigate whatever he pleases, and to command whatever resources he needs to get things done. He is also already a Second Stage Lensman, one of exactly four individuals in two galaxies who have been allowed a second trip to Arisia to take a course in advanced Lensing. His psychic “sense of perception” allows him to see in total darkness and through solid objects, and his powers of mind control can make a helpless puppet of virtually anyone. He can revise or erase memories, can generate psychic illusions, and can even kill with the force of his mind alone. All these things come with his Second Stage training; he has a lot of other resources besides, we wouldn’t want to stint the lad, after all.

Some people might worry about a superman super-cop who’s accountable to no one and can demand anything he wants. Might he not be tempted to abuse the position? Fortunately, the mystic Arisians, masters of the mental arts, do not bestow the Lens on anyone who shows even the potential for this sort of thing. The Lens is an absolute guarantee that its wearer is 100% sea-green incorruptible. So that’s all right, then!

To be honest, I’ve always rather liked Kim Kinnison. He’s got a sort of gung-ho charm going for him, and his “aw-shucks-I-ain’t-nothin’-special” demeanour manages to offset his gigantic stack of superpowers, somewhat. And, despite all those powers, he doesn’t entirely get things his own way – he meets the lovely Clarrissa when she’s nursing him through an extended hospital stay, and it’s not the only one he gets. He is easy to sympathize with, especially when you’re about thirteen. You can happily cheer him on as he sets out to rid the galaxy (and, later, another galaxy) of space pirates, crime bosses, sinister drug cartels, and alien tyrants.

I would say he’s “making the galaxy safe for democracy”, but….

We actually don’t learn much about the governmental structure of Smith’s setting. Politicians are strictly limited in scope; there doesn’t seem to be an elected president or a house of representatives in Smith’s Civilization. (The opposition, the dastardly Boskonians, we do see something of – basically, it’s the Mafia.) At the end of Second Stage Lensmen, when the final head of the Boskonians has been unmasked and destroyed (or so they think, there’s another book to go yet), Kim is made Director of the Second Galaxy, as in, yes, ruler of an entire galaxy full of inhabited planets (some of them, at this point, a lot less inhabited than they used to be.) There’s no public consultation involved; Kim’s simply handed the job by Port Admiral Haynes, the head honcho of the Galactic Patrol… who, come to think of it, is similarly unencumbered by accountability. The system appears to work well enough, at least economically – Haynes, in an infodump early in the series, explains how the rate of income tax is steadily being reduced, to prevent too much money, as he puts it, accumulating in the coffers of the Galactic Patrol. Which does rather imply that the Patrol both sets and collects the tax – and also that Civilization is doing pretty good in a strictly material sense, since all the Patrol’s superdreadnoughts, planetary fortresses, dirigible planets, planet-sized masses of antimatter, and exotic high-tech weapons of mass destruction can’t come cheap.

(The prequel First Lensman expands the setting a little bit…. Virgil Samms, the First Lensman of the title, established the Solarian Patrol, which would later become the Galactic Patrol, along with a separate Solarian Council, which one might think expanded its role in the same way. We don’t get to see anything much of the Council in action, but we do know one thing about it – its members wield huge authority, so they’d better be 100% guaranteed incorruptible, right? And how can we guarantee that? That’s right, to be a Council member, you have to be a Lensman.)

In fact, it appears throughout the series that the Patrol does pretty much whatever it bloody likes. If the Patrol wants to co-opt the entire output of the sun into a single beam of total destruction, they just go ahead and do it. If Port Admiral Haynes decides a department store building is actually a Boskonian spaceship in disguise, he can just send in a task force to take it out. Nearby residents can only comply with the evacuation orders, and wonder gloomily whether their home or business insurance covers volatilization in coruscating beams of incandescent destruction or comminution by the almost inconceivable force of explosive duodecaplylatomate. (No, no, “Doc” Smith doesn’t really write like that! – I’m toning it down quite a bit.)

Now, we, sitting in our ringside seats right next to the narrative, know that the department store is a Boskonian spaceship… but the same insight is not afforded to the people queuing wearily for the evacuation buses. Are any of them possibly unhappy at the thought of leaving their homes and their livelihoods, to face the very likely prospect of returning to find nothing but a red-hot hole in the ground? Well, if they are, they’d do well to keep it to themselves. I mean, who would object to the destruction of a Boskonian spaceship, except… another Boskonian? After all, the criminal tendrils of Boskone reach into everywhere. Anyone you meet, anyone you see, even your nearest and dearest may be secretly in the pay of the enemies of Civilization! Well, except Lensmen, of course. You can trust Lensmen, you know you can, because, well, they’ve got a Lens.

The Lens isn’t just a badge of office, though. It also gives even its less qualified wearers telepathic powers, good enough to read your mind and probe your memories. Is there any regulation of this ability? Not that we see in the books. So, Joe Q. Citizen of Civilization must live with the knowledge that his private thoughts are not private at all. Also, while Kim Kinnison gets his “sense of perception” from his Second Stage training, there are plenty of non-human Lensmen who are born with this ability. Privacy is pretty much dead in this setting. Nothing is secret from the Galactic Patrol, at least. (OK, the setting does feature artificial thought screens that can block telepathy. Kim Kinnison is seen several times circumventing those in clever ways. Besides, you know who uses thought screen technology? Boskonians, that’s who.)

We don’t get to see much of Civilization’s judicial process. Grey Lensmen like Kim can circumvent it all anyway – one of his first tests of his Second Stage powers involves him reading the minds of two men, to determine which one is guilty of a horrible crime. Kim not only identifies the culprit, but conjures up a psychic illusion, visible only to the culprit, which causes him to expire on the spot. (Did counsel for the defence not lodge an objection, you ask? To which the answer is: counsel for the what?) One gets the impression that the normal procedure isn’t all that much different. Boskonian “pirates” always fight to the last man, because they know surrender means “death in the lethal chambers of the Patrol.” This policy of executing all Boskonians does have a couple of exceptions; Dessa desPlaines gets off with having her memory erased and her personality reconstructed by Kim, and Ilona Potter is let off entirely. It is just a coincidence that they are both ladies with nice legs, I guess. And, at the end of Second Stage Lensmen, the whole world of Thrale is excused the death penalty as a gesture of goodwill (except for the rather substantial number of military personnel and politicians who’ve already been killed.) The Thralians are humanoid, naturally. Their sister planet and partner in crime, Onlo, is not earthlike and is inhabited by strange alien creatures that do not have nice legs. Correction: was inhabited.

One final detail, a small one but a telling one. In that cover illustration, Kim is wearing the uniform of a Grey Lensman, which is, naturally enough, grey. What do ordinary Lensmen’s uniforms look like? Well, they wear the “space-black and silver” uniform of the Galactic Patrol. In fact, the series starts out with Kim and the rest of his graduating class marching off, in their space-black and silver uniforms, to the final Lens-giving ceremony. This scene was published in 1937. Where else, in 1937, could you find stern-faced and zealous young men marching in black uniforms with silver trim? Much is made of the volume of the music during this passing-out parade; me, I think they only turned it up that loud to drown out the sound of Leni Riefenstahl coming.

So, we get to see this setting from the viewpoint of Kim Kinnison and his mates being strong and brave and heroic, fighting beastly crooks and monsters in a series of thrilling adventures. We do not get to see it from the viewpoint of the ordinary citizens, struggling to think nice safe thoughts while a capricious military complex rearranges their lives at a whim, knowing that if they even think about being unhappy, they risk being labelled an enemy of the state, and the guys in black and silver uniforms will come for them, and that will be that, no appeal, no mercy.

“But, Steve,” I hear you cry, “you’re forgetting that they do have oversight! The ancient, mystic and wise Arisians will surely not let their gift of the Lens be abused!”

Ah, yes. Them.

Let’s take another look at Clarrissa MacDougall, and why not? She’s gorgeous. Like so many female characters of the time, she’s basically just a trophy for the hero, but “Doc” Smith at least made his ladies good-quality trophies. Richard Seaton’s partner Dorothy is a virtuoso violinist who can hold a whole planet spellbound with her playing, she’s tough enough to stand up to (some, at least) of the dastardly villains they encounter, and at one point, when Seaton and his crew have projected themselves into a four-dimensional world, it’s Dorothy who works out how to sort out their jangled perceptions so they can function. Similarly, Clarrissa MacDougall is an experienced front-line military nurse, physically and mentally courageous, highly skilled and highly intelligent, frank and forthright in her opinions… she is, in fact, the only woman on whom the Arisians confer a Lens, and by the end of the series she is Unattached and Second Stage as well. And, as previously noted, she’s a looker. In fact, she has the same “red-bronze-auburn hair” and “gold-flecked, tawny eyes” as her ancestor, First Lensman Virgil Samms….

Port Admiral Haynes and his crony (and Clarrissa’s boss) Surgeon General Lacy both agree that Kim and Clarrissa are a perfect match, and devote a lot of time and effort into throwing the two of them together, in a not at all creepy and completely not inappropriate way. Haynes even goes so far as to spy on the couple’s intimate moments. ”Doc” Smith does not actually tell us that Haynes is using his “spy-beam” one-handed, with his trousers round his ankles, but I think we may be excused for drawing some inferences, here. Anyway, the two do, eventually, get together, and Haynes and Lacy (the Stadler and Waldorf of the Galactic Patrol) congratulate themselves on a job well done. If only they’d known how much help they’d been getting.

Because Kim and Clarrissa are not just two implausibly wonderful young people. They are the culmination of a selective breeding programme, initiated by the Arisians, which has been producing heroic Kinnison males and hot people with red-bronze-auburn hair and gold-flecked tawny eyes since at least the time of the sinking of Atlantis. For millennia, the Arisians have been secretly nudging Kim and Clarrissa’s ancestors to marry, or at least procreate with, the right kind of person to foster their superior genes. And, sometimes, taking great pains to keep the bloodlines from merging prematurely – there is a subplot in First Lensman about Virgil Samms and the heroic Kinnison of his generation trying to get their two kids (Virgilia and Jack) together… and failing, because the Time Is Not Ripe for such a development. But the Time Is Ripe for Kim and Clarrissa, the first two human beings with the capacity for Second Stage Lensmanning, and the prospective parents of the glorious new Third Stage generation.

The Arisians, aware of the importance of having backup plans, have been pursuing similar breeding programmes on three other worlds, producing three other beings at Second Stage level. But, with Kim and Clarrissa turning out so well, there is no need for the backups, so Worsel of Velantia, Tregonsee of Rigel IV, and Nadreck of Palain VII will never meet their genetically programmed perfect counterparts. Or, as I put it more crudely, once, Kim Kinnison has inadvertently cock-blocked his three best mates.

“But, Steve,” you may say, “although the Arisians’ programme is a bit, well, eugenics-y… all right, nakedly and shamelessly eugenics-y… but the end result is a psychic superman with unimpeachable ethics, so maybe it’s, well, sort of justifiable? I mean, if the Arisians are developing the Lensmen as a force for good, well….”

To which I might reply, “But are they?”

The extent to which the Arisians have been gaslighting the whole of Civilization is partially revealed in Children of the Lens, and made more explicit in the prequel novels. The main body of the Lensman series involves a lengthy hunt for the heads of the criminal Boskonian empire, where, time after time, the principal villains are defeated in spectacular acts of destruction, only for it to be revealed that they were just puppets dancing on the strings of some other, more powerful, villains. The Galactic Patrol, even in its climactic moments, never gets to find out about the ultimate Man Behind The Man, the godfather shoggoths of the planet Eddore.

(“Doc” Smith isn’t xenophobic in the way that H.P. Lovecraft was – Worsel, Tregonsee, and Nadreck are all radically non-human in appearance – but he does seem to have it in for shapeless or amoeboid life-forms. The Eddorians are formless, sexless, reproduce by division, and are Always Chaotic Evil. And, in the Skylark series, the chlorine-breathing Chlorans are also amoeboid, and very unpleasant… and Smith sees fit to wipe them out, to the very last blob, including – in the final volume, Skylark DuQuesne – an entire galaxy’s worth of Chlorans, annihilated in what has to be the most spectacular act of genocide that even Smith could come up with. Some day, I really must get around to a compare-and-contrast piece on Smith and Lovecraft – they have so many similar tendencies, while also having whole different sets of vices and virtues.)

Smith’s first prequel, Triplanetary, is an unlovely fix-up, the main body of which is a short space opera that looks like it’s been hastily retrofitted to fit the Lensman continuity. But it does have one heck of an opening line: Two thousand million or so years ago two galaxies were colliding; or, rather, were passing through each other. Smith was relying on a now outmoded theory of planetary formation, whereby planets originate when two stars pass close by each other, and gravity draws out some of the substance of each, which then coalesces into little planet-sized droplets. We know rather more about planetary formation and galactic collisions now than we did then, but that’s hardly Smith’s fault. Anyway. Such astronomical near-misses are unlikely in a single galaxy, but the interpenetration of the Milky Way and the Second Galaxy, or Lundmark’s Nebula, created thousands or millions of them. To the Arisians, this meant the possibility of thousands of new life forms appearing, which could one day be moulded into civilizations capable of appreciating the Arisians’ perspectives. To the Eddorians, this meant the possibility of thousands of new life forms appearing, which could be enslaved by superior Eddorian science and willpower.

The Arisians are superior to the Eddorians in mental science, so they can operate without the Eddorians noticing them. However, the Eddorians have been practicing social Darwinism for billions of years, and the ones who’ve survived are very, very hard to kill. To wipe out the Eddorians down to the very last blob, the Arisians (who find this concept agreeable, which says something about them in my opinion) have to craft a psychic super-weapon, a genocide gun composed of millions of living minds, all dedicated to one tremendous effort to will the entire Eddorian species to death. Millions of whose living minds? you ask. Why, whose but the massed Lensmen of the Galactic Patrol, of course.

So. If you’re a Lensman in this setting – well, you get to go on exciting space adventures, see many wondrous new worlds, meet fascinating alien creatures, and kill them in amazing new ways. If you are not a Lensman in this setting… well, then, you are part and parcel of the military-industrial complex that keeps the Galactic Patrol running, and that is never going to change, and if you even think about trying to change it, you are likely to attract the attention of the Lensmen, who are dressed like the SS and can invade your privacy, even the privacy of your thoughts, any time they like, and if they decide you are an enemy of Civilization, you will be taken away and never heard from again. And their qualification for being Lensmen? Suitability for being a component of an alien species’s psionic weapon of mass destruction. This is assuming that you’re part of Civilization. If, because of your moral turpitude, your disgusting criminality, or your misfortune in being born on the wrong planet or in the wrong galaxy, you are part of the Eddorian realm… well, I hope for your sake that you’ve got nice legs. Because if you’re on the side of Boskone, that’s the only thing that might save you. Otherwise, well, forget about even a closed-casket funeral – when the Galactic Patrol really comes gunning for you, there isn’t going to be enough of your home planet left to bury, never mind its inhabitants.

If this is not Fascism, then it’s certainly a damn good imitation.

“But, Steve,” I hear you say, “are you not, perhaps, over-analyzing this just a tiny bit? Also, do you not think you should stop over-analyzing, take a few deep breaths, play some soothing music, and take a rest for a while, preferably somewhere with no sharp objects readily to hand?”

Well, duh. Of course I’m over-analyzing.

“Doc” Smith came by his Ph.D. perfectly honestly; he was a working scientist, an organic chemist specializing in food – he did a lot of work on baked goods, and is credited with some innovations in doughnut making. It’s the sort of work that is painstaking, methodical, and unglamourous, and Smith was, from all accounts I’ve seen, pretty good at it. At some point in his career, he worked with explosives, which may sound more exciting, but which mostly requires you to be even more painstaking and methodical, if it’s not going to become very briefly exciting. It’s not surprising, then, that in his other career as a writer, he shed the caution and the mundane detail, and escaped into slam-bang gosh-wow no-holds-barred wish-fulfilment space opera. It’s my belief that Smith knew perfectly well that the “science” in his SF was completely bogus (I’m rather less convinced that John W. Campbell realized that); things like the “Sybly White” self-parody in Children of the Lens suggest that Smith was fully aware of the quality of his own writing. It’s not meant to be serious. It’s a straightforward piece of escapism with well-defined Good Guys fighting equally well-defined Bad Guys with a maximum of spectacle, cool gadgets, and pyrotechnics. The world-building extends no further than the bits we get to see – heck, even the plot is barely there, it’s just about enough to connect one spectacular set-piece to the next one. Like many another space opera, once you start to look past the showy façade, there isn’t anything much of substance behind it. It’s not meant to be seriously analyzed.

It’s not meant to be a serious blueprint for society either. But if people genuinely want to use old pulp SF as a template for the future… well, then, you bet I’m going to over-analyze it. Because if 1930s style SF started leaking out of the pulps and into the real world, the consequences would be appalling.

The Lensman series is never going to escape into reality, fortunately. There are some fundamental problems with it, like the absence of woo-woo psychic powers and debatably altruistic Arisians to hand out amplifiers for them. Ralph 124C41+, oddly, is more plausible. (And that’s not a sentence you’re likely to see very often.) I think we can all picture some people who like to think of themselves as visionary intellectual supermen, dispensing the fruits of their mighty cogitations to the adoring proles below. And those people would probably love to be officially accountable to no one, allowed to execute all their plans without being handicapped by petty little things like ethics, and equipped with that nice little “+” sign just to show everyone that they are officially superior. (Though one of them might prefer a multiplication symbol instead.) Of course, as with the British elites who gave us Brexit, PPE fraud, collapsing public services, and all those other good things, these guys are not so much “plus” men as “double minus, see me after class” men. I’ve read a certain amount of the TESCREAL mob’s output (for my sins), and entirely too much of it is along the lines of “here are all the cool things we will do with nanotechnology/AI/aneutronic fusion/whatever, just as soon as those science peons in the laboratories get round to inventing it.” (Nanotechnology is a prime example here, with the visionaries saying things like “by 2050 at the latest, we will all have fleets of micro-miniature submarines cruising around our bodies, detecting and correcting every defective cell, so that we can enjoy perfect health and an indefinitely long lifespan,” while actual nanotechnologists are like, “hey, cool, check this out, we can make cogs now.”)

There are people out there who really want to be “plus” men, or Lensmen – or Nexialists, or slans, or psychohistorians, or homo superior, or (the war criminal) Richard Seaton. They’re not qualified, of course, because nobody is, or ever will be. The super-science heroes of the Golden Age get all the breaks an indulgent author can give them; reality is, alas, much less forgiving. And while a tiny minority get to pretend they are the masters of the world (and usually make an appalling mess in the process), the bulk of the population – which includes me and (I suspect) thee, dear reader – are nothing in their minds but lay figures, a powerless and voiceless mass in the background that is theirs to dispose of as they wish. This is just fine according to John W. Campbell’s literary theories, where the clever ideas and the people who come up with them are the only things that matter. As a background character who, nevertheless, happens to be a real live person with opinions of his own… I beg to differ.