Our ongoing series reviewing audio adaptations of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror works. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
By John J. Joex
Book Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars
Audio Book Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 Stars
![Galactic Patrol: Lensman Series | [E. E. 'Doc' Smith]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/618L7YS2vyL._SL175_.jpg "Galactic Patrol: Lensman Series | [E. E. 'Doc' Smith]")
Way back in 1937, E.E. “Doc” Smith kicked off his seminal Lensmen space opera with a serialized story that appeared in Astounding magazine. This later saw print as a novel in 1950 titled Galactic Patrol. This story follows Patrol member Kimball Kinnison who achieves the status of Lensman, one of an elite group who wield the mysterious lenses given to them by the highly advanced alien species known as the Arisians. The galaxy is at war with the Boskonian “pirates” who have superior technology and who continue to wreak havoc on the civilized races. Kinnison is sent on a mission to get the secret of their advanced technology, which he accomplishes but must sacrifice his ship and many of his crew in the process. He stores the technical specs of the Boskonian ships on a “spool” that he loads into a little droid that he must get back to the Rebel Alliance . . . wait, wrong story. Needless to say, he eventually gets the data to the Galactic Patrol which escalates the war with the Boskonians and many grand space battles follow.
Galactic Patrol is pure, early sci fi, pulp space opera and you can easily see when reading it how much of this early story (along with the other Lensmen books that followed) has worked its way into the science fiction milieu with the allusion above as just one small example. Unfortunately, it has a bit of a dated feel to it and not just because of all the technical and scientific advances that we have seen since it was first published. This story comes from the days of sci fi when men were real men, women were real women and fuzzy little green creatures from Alpha Centauri were real fuzzy little green creatures from Alpha Centauri . . . sorry, wrong story again. But there is definitely a strong sexist bent to the book (with a touch of xenophobia as well) with the men out fighting the battles and the impeccably hot women back at home in their nurses uniforms waiting to tend to them. There’s even a bit of an elitist, perhaps fascist, whiff about the perfect specimens of the Galactic Patrol and the Lensmen. But the latter is much more muted and requires a cynical interpretation of the subtext, whereas the former is much more notable and may detract from the story for today’s readers. All of that said, the Lensmen series never tried to be socially relevant or a literary masterpiece. If you keep it in context, it is a fun read for those looking for some good throwback pulp Science Fiction.
Galactic Patrol was the first story that Smith wrote in the Lensmen series even though it now appears as the third of six books. Books 1 and 2, Triplanetary and First Lensman, came later as prequels that filled in some back story for the universe used in the books, though Triplanetary was based on stories Smith wrote previously and later adapted to the Lensmen series. I had started reading Triplanetary some years ago, but found it difficult to get through that one, finding the sexist and elitist elements even worse there. I would recommend starting with Galactic Patrol and then working forward, and if you really like the series you can go back and read the two prequel books.
I downloaded the audio version of Galactic Patrol from Audible.com and that service also has all of the other books in the series available in audio along with Smith’s Skylark of Space series. Reed McColm provides the narration for this and all of the Smith books available from Audible.com, and he does a very good job for the most part, though he does one of the worse Dutch accents I have ever heard and his accent for the Helmuth character seems to shift between Scottish and German. Consider those just a minor quibble, though. This audio version also has my usual complaint about the Audible.com books in that it is broken into two very large files instead of a more maneuverable distribution across smaller, shorter files. In any case, this one provides some good fun pulp adventure to keep you distracted while on your daily commute.
