Galactic Patrol by E.E. “Doc” Smith: where space opera started

Galactic Patrol is E.E. “Doc” Smith’s 1937 novel about a young officer in a interstellar police force who is given a device that lets him read minds and is then sent to fight an empire that has been winning for centuries. It is the book that invented most of what space opera did for the next fifty years, and it is still enormous fun if you meet it on its own terms.

The idea behind it

Smith’s premise is that a small force of exceptional individuals, equipped with technology nobody else has, can hold a line against something much larger and worse. The Lens is the literal version of that: a badge issued by an older and wiser species, which cannot be forged or stolen and which tells its wearer when someone is lying to him.

Everything else follows. The Patrol is outnumbered, its ships are slower, and the enemy is a slave empire run on fear. The novel is not subtle about any of this, and it is not trying to be. It is a story about courage and cleverness, told at a scale nobody had attempted before.

The story, spoiler-light

Kimball Kinnison graduates from the Patrol academy and immediately runs into a raid that nearly kills him. What saves him is a Lens, granted on the strength of a quality the Arisians have been breeding for across generations, and it makes him one of a handful of people who can reach the enemy’s mind rather than only its ships.

Two things are worth knowing before you start. The prose is 1930s pulp, with exclamation marks and coincidences, and it should be read the way you would read a serial adventure rather than a novel. And the second half is one long campaign, so the pleasure is in the escalation rather than the resolution.

What makes it science fiction

Almost every piece of hardware here became a genre standard: the inertialess drive that removes acceleration from the equation, the screens and beams that make fleet combat a contest of energy budgets, the tractor beams, the armoured suits, the psychic Lens itself. Smith was a chemist who wrote with an engineer’s appetite for systems, and his battles read like a mathematician enjoying himself.

It is worth reading for that reason as much as for the story. Lensman is where a great deal of what we now call space opera was assembled, and it is striking how much of it simply stuck.

Who should read it, and who should give it a miss

Read it if you want to see where the genre came from, or if you enjoy pulp at full volume. It is short, fast and entirely sincere, and there is something bracing about a book with no irony in it at all.

Give it a miss if dated attitudes will spoil it for you. The women in the novel are decorative, the aliens are villains by nature, and the science is cheerful nonsense. Readers who cannot get past that should start with something from the 1970s instead.

Where to start, and what to read next

Start here, and ignore the numbering arguments. The Lensman books are best read in publication order, which begins with Galactic Patrol, because the two books that come before it in the internal timeline were written afterwards as prequels and are weaker for it. Triplanetary and First Lensman explain how the Patrol and the Lens came to exist, and they read better once you already care.

The two to pick up next are Gray Lensman, which continues Kinnison’s story directly and is generally thought the strongest of the six, and Second Stage Lensmen, where the scale of the war becomes absurd in the best way.

The rest of the series, for reference: Triplanetary, First Lensman, Galactic Patrol, Gray Lensman, Second Stage Lensmen and Children of the Lens.

The verdict

The founding document of space opera, read today as history and as a genuinely enjoyable adventure. Read it for the scale and for where everything came from.

Frequently asked questions

Should I start with Triplanetary or Galactic Patrol?

Galactic Patrol. Triplanetary and First Lensman are prequels written afterwards, and they assume you already know what the Lens is. Publication order is the better reading order here.

When was Galactic Patrol published?

It was serialised in 1937 and appeared as a book in 1950. It is the third Lensman book in internal chronology and the first in publication order.

Is it suitable for younger readers?

The action is bloodless by modern standards, but the social attitudes are those of the 1930s. It reads best as a period piece.

Does it still hold up?

The technology is dated and the characters are thin, but the momentum and the scale hold up well. It is a book you read quickly rather than a book you admire slowly.

Where can I buy it?

It is available in paperback and as a Kindle edition, and the buy links for Amazon.com and Amazon.in are on this page.