Finally, an Explanation for the Lensman Sex Issue

[Shawn Wilson]

In the Lensmen novels, women can't be lensmen. That's the issue. The Arisians say their minds are incompatible, but that's obviously bullshit. Arisians have made lenses for infinitely stranger minds than mere women.

So, why? It comes across as a plot seed that never got developed. It isn't like Doc Smith didn't have strong, poweful women everywhere you looked.

So...

Because the ultimate female products of their breeding lines would NECESSARILY be lensmen. The whole point is to produce lensmen.

How to they manage the breeding? By manipulating attraction and intimacy. That wouldn't work if the people involved could see through it.

Alternatively, female lensmen would warp society in ways incompatible with the Arisian plan, ie less macho. Civilization needs to be macho and warlike so as not to be immediately conquered by boskone.

[David Johnston]

On 6/27/2015 5:25 PM, Shawn Wilson wrote:
> In the Lensmen novels, women can't be lensmen. That's the issue.
> The Arisians say their minds are incompatible, but that's obviously
> bullshit. Arisians have made lenses for infinitely stranger minds
> than mere women.
>
> So, why? It comes across as a plot seed that never got developed.
> It isn't like Doc Smith didn't have strong, poweful women everywhere
> you looked.
>
> So...
>
> Because the ultimate female products of their breeding lines would
> NECESSARILY be lensmen. The whole point is to produce lensmen.
>
> How to they manage the breeding? By manipulating attraction and
> intimacy. That wouldn't work if the people involved could see
> through it.

Well of course they couldn't, but it would take a lot of effort to keep
lensmen of opposite sexes from hooking up if they were working together.

[A.G.McDowell]

If you identify with the Universe of the Lens, you will see it as an
attractive picture of a utopian Civilisation, and (Second Stage Lensman,
Chapter 11, "Alcon of Thrale") "it has been argued that sexual equality
is the most important criterion of that which we know as Civilisation".
But this is not sexual equality as we think of it today - it is more
like equality of opportunity, or the equality of equal treatment under
the law. The equality that states that men and women are identical in
every respect is the equality of Eddore/Boskone (Children of the Lens,
Chapter 21, "The Red Lensman on Lyrane") "Although they had long since
learned that their asexuality was practically unique, that sexual life
dominated the universe, that knowledge served only to stiffen their
determination to rule the Universe, but also to change its way of life
to conform with their own".

For most of the series there's a temptation to think of a Lensman as an
all-purpose hero and good guy, but you wouldn't necessarily want to work
for one. In the first chapter of "First Lensman" "Killer" Kinnison
justifies his ultra-competitive behaviour in a doubles tennis match
"Start giving away points in anything and you'll find out some day that
you've given away too many. I'm not having any of that kind of game -
and as long as you're playing with me you aren't either - or else." To
borrow a phrase from Ivanova of Babylon V - "Worst case of testosterone
poisoning I've ever seen". Jill Samms explains this mindset in Chapter 3
"Pure killers, all of you, each in his own way, of course. No more to be
stopped than a glacier, and twice as hard and ten times as cold". She
justifies Mentor's decision not to give her a lens here.

In the Universe of the Lens, a very few men have this mindset and are
simultaneously socially well enough adapted to be trusted with the power
of the Lens. No women, except for Clarissa MacDougall, do. Nevertheless
we are told that this is a functioning civilisation, with liberty, in
which men and women can choose to come to agreements with each other -
or not. Here, it is possible to have equality under the law without men
and women either being functionally identical, or living under a system
which penalizes any speech which denies that they are functionally
identical.

I suspect that E.E.Smith's social attitudes were influenced by the time
he live in, and what he wrote was constrained by what he could get away
with saying in his time. I think every time has its own social
attitudes, and its own constraints on what people can get away with
saying. I have tried here to analyse the Universe of the Lens on its own
terms, and not to say anything about its relationship with reality,
either the reality of E.E.Smith's time, or of our own. (But those who
think of our time as enjoying universal free speech could look at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Hunt).

[David Johnston]

Right. Women have the same opportunity to be Lensmen, if they were
capable. They're just all incapable. No matter what species.

[A.G.McDowell]

(I suspect we agree that) your first statement is incorrect. Galactic
Patrol chapter one states that the Lensmen are the survivors of a
process of elimination which starts with one million eighteen year old
boys of earth chosen by competitive examination). This is a bureacratic
process no more capable of recognising anything outside its rules than
any other bureacractic organisation, and Clarissa MacDougall did not
receive her lens by going through that process.

I suspect that your second statement is also incorrect, but can't prove
it. In Chapter 10 of Triplanetary Samms encounters the Palainian Tallick
and sees that selecting Lensmen from other species is not like selecting
Lensmen in Homo Sapiens, because the distribution of strengths and
weaknesses is different, and because the way those species approach
tasks is also different "By a conscious, a tremendous effort, the First
Lensman was lifting himself about the narrow, intolerant prejudices of
human experience..." I can't find a reference, but a web search finds at
least one other person who believes that Palanians have more than 2
sexes(http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/07/gods-and-genre.html),
so it seems quite likely that Nadreck is not accurately described as
either male or female.

[hamis...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, June 28, 2015 at 4:02:17 PM UTC+10, A.G.McDowell wrote:

> But those who
> think of our time as enjoying universal free speech could look at
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Hunt).

So do you really confuse "the right to say anything you want" with "the right to say anything you want without consequences"?

[William December Starr]

In article <274dc3be-a1d8-4e12...@googlegroups.com>,

That's roughly what I was going to say too. I don't see Hunt's
right to freedom of speech as having been violated here.

-- wds

[A.G.McDowell]

I am considering the questions "Is it possible that what E.E.Smith wrote
was influenced by some constraint imposed by society?" and "Is it
possible that people are writing today is also influenced by constraints
imposed by society?" For this purpose I do not see a distinction between
people being literally gagged, bound, and disappeared, people being shot
later on after government due process, or people finding out that nobody
wants anything to do with them ever afterwards. The impact is that
anybody analysing anything communicated after any of these events should
consider the possibility that these events will from now on deter people
from saying what they think, or encourage them to say things that they
do not in fact think.


Curiously, within the story, E.E.Smith nods at restrictions on using
rude words during his time e.g. Grey Lensman, Chapter Six, in which
Kinnison is posing as a dock-walloper and drunk in Bomingers "Did I
_ever_ ask you for a drink, you (unprintable here, even in a modern and
realistic novel, for the space of two long breaths)..."

[Quadibloc]

Before even following that link, I will tell you that the right to free speech, as embodied in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution *is* -

a) the right to engage freely in certain limited kinds of speech - not including speech that is also _action_, such as lies for illegitimate purposes of deception, incitement to violence, disruption of other people's lawful activities...

b) without certain kinds of consequences.

Thus, expressing an unpopular view should not lead to one being sent to a
re-education camp, to prison, to an insane asylum... or to an underworld gang
or a terrorist group doing violence to you.

So there certainly are consequences of speech that are inadmissible under free
speech.

When it comes to Tim Hunt - I believe that the reaction to his remarks *is* an
overreaction. It is a common problem for young women of a certain age to
develop crushes on handsome young instructors, leading to problems. To
acknowledge the existence of the problem is not to take the position that no
female should be allowed to receive instruction in science; they can just work
in the lab of a less youthful and handsome instructor if there are no women
professors handy.

To work for equality of both sexes, all ethnicities and all faiths is
commendable - but some people have let this goal seduce them into support of an
ideological rigidity highly incompatible with what people used to think of as a
free society - where differing views are generally tolerated in daily life, and
people don't live in fear of deviating from orthodoxy in public.

If Tim Hunt were expressing serious misogyny and hatred of women, *then* of
course social consequences would be reasonable. But as far as I can tell, Tim
Hunt is no Dave Sim.

John Savard

[David Johnston]

On 6/28/2015 6:01 AM, A.G.McDowell wrote:
> On 28/06/2015 09:18, hamis...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Sunday, June 28, 2015 at 4:02:17 PM UTC+10, A.G.McDowell wrote:
>>
>>> But those who
>>> think of our time as enjoying universal free speech could look at
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Hunt).
>>
>> So do you really confuse "the right to say anything you want" with
>> "the right to say anything you want without consequences"?
> I am considering the questions "Is it possible that what E.E.Smith wrote
> was influenced by some constraint imposed by society?"

Obviously. His society regarded female combat personnel as freaks of
nature and that's why there were no female Lensmen except for one
special snowflake.

[Shawn Wilson]

On Saturday, June 27, 2015 at 8:23:28 PM UTC-7, David Johnston wrote:


> > How to they manage the breeding? By manipulating attraction and
> > intimacy. That wouldn't work if the people involved could see
> > through it.
>
> Well of course they couldn't, but it would take a lot of effort to keep
> lensmen of opposite sexes from hooking up if they were working together.

See, thing is I realized certain problems in my idea before I even finished the post, but I still wanted to talk about it.

The Arisians basically read everyone's mind all the time. So 'take a lot of effort'? They already do it. Manipulate attraction (for and against)? They regularly do that too. Doing it to women in addition to men? Nothing to them.

Perhaps women would realize...? No, even if someone did, they could just alter their mind to suit. They utterly alter Kim Kinnison's mind in his third book and he was a second stage lensman. (he thinks he fought and won a mental battle against a rogue Arisian, he actually was merely the conduit for the Arisians to destroy an Eddorian, they didn't want him to know Eddorians existed yet).

So, why would female lensmen be bad? A reason exists, it is just a case of discovering it.

One effect, and it seems likely the point was to bring about this effect, was that Clarissa was instantly uniquely known to everyone, especially lensmen. And lensmen can contact each other only if they 'know' them, even if only referred by another. So, that could enable her to act as a conduit for the entire lensman corp to channel their energies through her to Kim...

But that doesn't happen.

[Shawn Wilson]

On Saturday, June 27, 2015 at 11:02:17 PM UTC-7, A.G.McDowell wrote:


> I suspect that E.E.Smith's social attitudes were influenced by the time
> he live in, and what he wrote was constrained by what he could get away
> with saying in his time.

Have you ever READ Doc Smith??? His women were capable by MODERN standards. His no female lensmen thing stands out as a bizarre oddity in his work, not merely an expression of 30s attitudes towards women.

Even so, ultimately the final breakdown of high level lensmen in the series is 3 aliens, 2 human men and 5 human women. And, no, the series is NOT about overcoming prejudices to see the value of women in any way, shape or form.

[David Johnston]

Ahunh. No, the sister harem weren't human or really Lensmen. Yes, they
could make lenses for themselves if they chose but they were still
something else.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 28 Jun 2015 17:16:37 -0600, David Johnston
<Da...@block.net> wrote in<news:mmpv62$aaf$2...@dont-email.me>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

True. And I agree with A.G. McDowell as well. However,
there’s considerable truth in Shawn’s basic point as well.
There are many extremely capable women in Smith’s work; I
think particularly of those in _The Vortex Blaster_, _The
Galaxy Primes_, and _Subspace Explorers_, and there are
some in _Skylark DuQuesne_ as well, especially Stephanie de
Marigny. The last two are relatively late Smith, but the
first two aren’t.

The sensibility isn’t quite modern, in that the men tend to
be closer to the narrative focus and to make advances
first, even when paired with women who prove to be equally
competent, but it’s damned close.

Brian
--
It was the neap tide, when the baga venture out of their
holes to root for sandtatties. The waves whispered
rhythmically over the packed sand: haggisss, haggisss,
haggisss.

[Alie...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, June 27, 2015 at 11:02:17 PM UTC-7, A.G.McDowell wrote:

> On 28/06/2015 00:25, Shawn Wilson wrote:
> > In the Lensmen novels, women can't be lensmen. That's the issue. The
> > Arisians say their minds are incompatible, but that's obviously bullshit.
> > Arisians have made lenses for infinitely stranger minds than mere women.
> >
> > So, why? It comes across as a plot seed that never got developed. It
> > isn't like Doc Smith didn't have strong, poweful women everywhere you
> > looked.
> >
> > So...
> >
> > Because the ultimate female products of their breeding lines would
> > NECESSARILY be lensmen. The whole point is to produce lensmen.

I'm pretty sure that possession of mammalian testicles is not a necessary condition.

That male and female *minds* are fundamentally different is a theme common to much of Smith's work.

> > How to they manage the breeding? By manipulating attraction and intimacy.
> > That wouldn't work if the people involved could see through it.
> >
> > Alternatively, female lensmen would warp society in ways incompatible with
> > the Arisian plan, ie less macho. Civilization needs to be macho and
> > warlike so as not to be immediately conquered by boskone.
> >

> For most of the series there's a temptation to think of a Lensman as an
> all-purpose hero and good guy, but you wouldn't necessarily want to work
> for one. In the first chapter of "First Lensman" "Killer" Kinnison
> justifies his ultra-competitive behaviour in a doubles tennis match
> "Start giving away points in anything and you'll find out some day that
> you've given away too many. I'm not having any of that kind of game -
> and as long as you're playing with me you aren't either - or else." To
> borrow a phrase from Ivanova of Babylon V - "Worst case of testosterone
> poisoning I've ever seen". Jill Samms explains this mindset in Chapter 3
> "Pure killers, all of you, each in his own way, of course. No more to be
> stopped than a glacier, and twice as hard and ten times as cold". She
> justifies Mentor's decision not to give her a lens here.

> In the Universe of the Lens, a very few men have this mindset and are
> simultaneously socially well enough adapted to be trusted with the power
> of the Lens.

I always inferred that [Smith thought] women either incapable of being "pure killers", or of being pure killers *and* being trustworthy enough for a Lens.

Females of any species will kill readily, say in defense of their young, and human women kill for any variety of reasons, and there have been infamous female serial killers. Hence it is possible for a female to be a "pure killer". It is also possible for a woman to be as trustworthy as any man (in my admittedly limited experience), so either there was a hole in Smith's perceptions, or he was writing for a primarily young male audience.


Mark L. Fergerson

[Quadibloc]

On Monday, June 29, 2015 at 2:36:48 AM UTC-6, nu...@bid.nes wrote:

> I always inferred that [Smith thought] women either incapable of being
> "pure killers", or of being pure killers *and* being trustworthy enough for a
> Lens.

> Females of any species will kill readily, say in defense of their young,
> and human women kill for any variety of reasons, and there have been infamous
> female serial killers. Hence it is possible for a female to be a "pure
> killer". It is also possible for a woman to be as trustworthy as any man (in
> my admittedly limited experience), so either there was a hole in Smith's
> perceptions, or he was writing for a primarily young male audience.

Although your conclusion is likely to be correct, your argument contains what
was known as a "does not follow" in one science-fiction story I remember
reading. That is, of course, a _non sequitur_.

The existence of two traits in *isolation* among women, as well as among men,
in no way proves that the *combination of the two traits* has to occur at all
among women, even if it occurs among men.

It's easy enough, therefore, at least to see the _stereotypes_ that could have
led to the conclusion. If normalcy for women is to be maternal, while normalcy
for men includes a fairly high level of aggression - that the ability to kill
might be, for women, either deeply pathological in some cases, or, where it
_is_ normal, since it's linked to the defense of one's own young, it's
naturally connected with a highly emotional non-objective state; while in the
case of men, a *few* have been able to properly harness their aggressiveness so
as to confine it to objectively moral uses.

Unlike racial stereotypes, it's hard to argue that sexual stereotypes don't
have some basis in fact.

If you visit a dairy farm, for example, you will not be cautioned about the
dangers posed by the intact cows, but you will be cautioned about the dangers
posed by the intact bulls.

And yet cattle do *not* read books or watch TV, so how could they have been
brainwashed by sexual stereotypes?

Of course, there is great variability among humans, and so a general tendency
among the average woman is not a reason to deny opportunity to the exceptional
individual woman. But it may affect affirmative action quotas.

And so, given that there were *very few* Lensmen in the whole Universe - that
they were extremely exceptional individuals - that there are plenty of
competent women who are, say, police officers might not make it *impossible*
that a woman who could be a Lensman would be difficult to find among the human
race as a whole at any given time.

That E. E. "Doc" Smith apparently eventually let the Arisians be proved wrong
on this score - and he generally showed women as competent - is to his credit.
He seems to have done his part in pushing the boundaries as far as he could get
away with, given where he was working - in the field of light entertainment in
a conservative time, not politics.

John Savard

[Shawn Wilson]

On Monday, June 29, 2015 at 5:55:41 AM UTC-7, Quadibloc wrote:


> That E. E. "Doc" Smith apparently eventually let the Arisians be proved wrong
> on this score - and he generally showed women as competent - is to his credit.

Proved wrong? The Arisians were never shown to be anything less than nigh omniscient, and could manifestly predict the future with high degree of accuracy. They didn't make a mistake. They made a choice. The issue is why? It was necessary to their plan. Obviously to gain something, but what?

Arisians don't judge by stereotypes, and they aren't even human and wouldn't begin to care about human cultural stereotypes.

[Magewolf]

I think there was two parts to it. One, just to save themselves trouble
they tried to keep Lensman quality men and women separate except for the
ones they needed for the plan. Second, to hide that a breeding program
was going on at all they had to keep any proto-children from showing up
which would have meant more hoops for them to jump through to keep male
and female lensmen from ever breeding.

Or to put it another way. They needed the right man to breed with the
right woman while keeping the almost right man from breeding with the
almost right woman. Making Lensmen male or female only was the easiest
way to do both.

[A.G.McDowell]

The Arisians were not confident of complete omniscience, if only because
of the influence of the Eddorians. One example of this is that the
non-human L2s were developed as potential replacements for the Arisians,
alongside the humans, but at some stage these breeding lines were taken
no further, so the non-human L2s never got to meet their partners as
Kinnison/MacDougall met. I don't know at what stage these lines were
dropped - whether there were MacDougall equivalents who forlornly never
got to meet Mr Right, or whether the right grandparents never met, or what.

Going back to the Kinnison/Samms tennis match in Chapter II of First
Lensman (and from memory later, when Kinnison puts his lens on Jill
Samms) this is an example when the breeding lines met prematurely, but a
strong mental incompatibility meant that they were barely on speaking
terms, so there was no risk of what the Arisians would surely regard as
an unplanned pregnancny.

[David Johnston]

On 6/29/2015 12:58 PM, A.G.McDowell wrote:

> Going back to the Kinnison/Samms tennis match in Chapter II of First
> Lensman (and from memory later, when Kinnison puts his lens on Jill
> Samms) this is an example when the breeding lines met prematurely, but a
> strong mental incompatibility meant that they were barely on speaking
> terms, so there was no risk of what the Arisians would surely regard as
> an unplanned pregnancny.

The only thing that was incompatible about their minds was the Arisians
implanting that "you will find him/her irritating" command.

[Shawn Wilson]

On Monday, June 29, 2015 at 11:58:21 AM UTC-7, A.G.McDowell wrote:


> The Arisians were not confident of complete omniscience, if only because
> of the influence of the Eddorians. One example of this is that the
> non-human L2s were developed as potential replacements for the Arisians,
> alongside the humans, but at some stage these breeding lines were taken
> no further, so the non-human L2s never got to meet their partners as
> Kinnison/MacDougall met. I don't know at what stage these lines were
> dropped - whether there were MacDougall equivalents who forlornly never
> got to meet Mr Right, or whether the right grandparents never met, or what.

At the very end- they just never met their would be mates. Those mates did exist. I think it is mentioned explicitly somewhere.

Why for that? I imagine the Arisians predicted that eventually the races would go to war against each other if they were all equally powerful. But it's possible it was a simple, 'this is the bar, you pass they don't' case. or they only needed one hit team to kill all the Eddorians and first to the
finish wins. No value in excess.

[Quadibloc]

On Monday, June 29, 2015 at 11:13:29 AM UTC-6, Shawn Wilson wrote:

> Arisians don't judge by stereotypes, and they aren't even human and wouldn't
> begin to care about human cultural stereotypes.

Also, Arisians aren't even *real*, so the fact that E. E. "Doc" Smith was human
is what matters here.

John Savard

[Shawn Wilson]

On Monday, June 29, 2015 at 2:04:51 PM UTC-7, Quadibloc wrote:


> > Arisians don't judge by stereotypes, and they aren't even human and wouldn't
> > begin to care about human cultural stereotypes.
>
> Also, Arisians aren't even *real*, so the fact that E. E. "Doc" Smith was human
> is what matters here.

And we have SEEN Doc Smith's women, and they are not 30's stereotypes...

[David DeLaney]

On 2015-06-28, A.G.McDowell <andrew-...@o2.co.uk> wrote:
> I suspect that E.E.Smith's social attitudes were influenced by the time
> he live in, and what he wrote was constrained by what he could get away
> with saying in his time.

We _definitely_ have evidence of the latter, given that a) the Children of
the Lens were going to be the progenitors of a new super-race of humans, more
capable than the Eddorians, b) they were all siblings, and c) none of the girls
would ever think any normal human male, or even L2 (though there was only one
of those for humans), would measure up enough to mate with... The resulting
plot hook could not POSSIBLY have been written about back then, and would have
some trouble even today.

Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting thru EarthLink - "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://gatekeeper.vic.com/~dbd/ -net.legends/Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

[David DeLaney]

On 2015-06-29, Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> The sensibility isn???t quite modern, in that the men tend to

> be closer to the narrative focus and to make advances
> first, even when paired with women who prove to be equally

> competent, but it???s damned close.

And even the ones who, like Seaton's wife Dorothy, seem to be making a point of
acting in the traditional 'female' "oh, I can't handle all those big numbers,
let me go off here and paint or cook for a while" manner had their own
strengths, different from the men's - remember that Dorothy was a MASTER
violinist, enough so that Crane _gave_ her his Stradivarius after hearing her
play it once... and remember that _both_ of those wives WENT OFF INTO SPACE
with their husbands on a newly-built spaceship _several_ times, and generally
faced bizarre situations with equanimity and only brief mild emotional
episodes.

(Just finished reading the part in Skylark of Valeron where Seaton and Margaret
Crane get kidnapped by the 4D propellor-tail beings, and when he straps her
back-to-back with him and they start going to town on the kidnappers she's
right in there swinging, rather than having hysterical fits, swooned from
shock, or even complaining that she shouldn't have to DO this there's
HYPERBLOOD all over the remains of her dress make them STOP...)

[Shawn Wilson]

On Sunday, June 28, 2015 at 2:10:45 PM UTC-7, Shawn Wilson wrote:


> So, why would female lensmen be bad? A reason exists, it is just a case of discovering it.

I think I have it!

Pregnancy. A female lensman would, if only unconsciously and unintentionally, contact her baby's mind and likely damage it.

But what about Clarissa? Her kids were proto-3rd stage and couldn't be harmed that way. The Arisians might have actually wanted their mom to be a lensman. Remember one of the main effects of the 'wide-open two-way' was that Kim knew Clarissa was lensman material and as a consequence she got a lens. Of course the Arisians gave it to her, but they might have wanted Kim to convince her to take it up.

Sure, the Arisians could have explained this, but they didn't care what their cattle thought about things. So they gave them a simple explanation that brooked no further discussion. Sterile women, et al? The plan wasn't predicated on large numbers of 1st stages, so not worth exceptions just to get some more dross.

[Kevrob]

On Saturday, June 27, 2015 at 7:25:09 PM UTC-4, Shawn Wilson wrote:
> In the Lensmen novels, women can't be lensmen. That's the issue. The Arisians say their minds are incompatible, but that's obviously bullshit. Arisians have made lenses for infinitely stranger minds than mere women.
>
> So, why? It comes across as a plot seed that never got developed. It isn't like Doc Smith didn't have strong, poweful women everywhere you looked.
>
> So...
>
> Because the ultimate female products of their breeding lines would NECESSARILY be lensmen. The whole point is to produce lensmen.
>

> How to they manage the breeding? By manipulating attraction and intimacy. That wouldn't work if the people involved could see through it.
>
> Alternatively, female lensmen would warp society in ways incompatible with the Arisian plan, ie less macho. Civilization needs to be macho and warlike so as not to be immediately conquered by boskone.

Am I the only one who read the topic and thought,

"How well would a LENSMAN SEX ISSUE' of
AMAZING or ASTOUNDING have sold?"

Kevin R

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <e0f4e78c-e9e1-42e0...@googlegroups.com>,

Kevrob <kev...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>Am I the only one who read the topic and thought,
>
>"How well would a LENSMAN SEX ISSUE' of
>AMAZING or ASTOUNDING have sold?"
>
>Kevin R

Pretty well, I expect -- I get the impression the readers were
less prudish than Campbell, and Doc Smith was always ready to
introduce nude societies into his books...
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[JRStern]

On Tue, 30 Jun 2015 13:59:25 -0700 (PDT), Kevrob <kev...@my-deja.com>
wrote:

>Am I the only one who read the topic and thought,
>
>"How well would a LENSMAN SEX ISSUE' of
>AMAZING or ASTOUNDING have sold?"

My reaction was, "I don't think I saw that one!" quickly followed by,
"I wonder what the cover looked like?"

J.

[JRStern]

On Sat, 27 Jun 2015 16:25:06 -0700 (PDT), Shawn Wilson
<ikono...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Arisians have made lenses for infinitely stranger minds than mere women.

Maybe not.

But then, well, y'know, if in the final scene it's the massed minds of
all the Lensman that are needed to do the deed, maybe another few
million or trillion or whatever females would have helped after all?
Eh. It turned out OK, so there we are.

J.

[Dimensional Traveler]

Not much different than all the others? :P (Maybe I'm thinking of the
European versions....)

--
Veni, vidi, snarki.