Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Pyramid / Berkley
Date Published: 1982
ISBN-13:9780425054604ISBN:0425054608
Description: Acceptable. Poor Condition Overall below average used book. May have highlighting, underlining, notes, price sticker on cover, or be an ex-library book. read more
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean cover with fairly heavy edge rubbing and creasing. Tiny chip at back lower edge and one closed tear on front spine edge. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Poor. No dust jacket as issued. Small tear along spine, affecting back cover and last 3 pages. Creases on back cover. If it did not have these flaws, it would be VG. Excellent for reading copy! read more
Binding: Paper
Publisher: Berkley, N. Y.
Date Published: 1982
Description: Cover Art. Good. No Jacket. Vintage Paperback. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. The cover has light shelf wear with a crease by the spine....Light yellowing to the pages.......The book may have minor flaws that may have gone unnoticed. read more
Edition: 5th Printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Pyramid, New York
Date Published: 1970
Description: Good Plus. To view other titles by this author enter the keywords; XDCX, XJGX, Smith or Sc Fi. The book is in good+ condition with minor wear o/w tight, clean and square. Cover art by Jack Gaughan. read more
Description: Good. 1998-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Description: Good. 1882968123 Mass Market Paperback, 1982, David Maddingly, Condition: Good; somewhat worn, will work well as a reading copy. read more
Description: Very Good. 1882968123 Mass Market Paperback, 1997, Warren James Palmer & Neil Stuart Lawson, Condition: Very Good; this book is in very good condition with light curve to the spine / light reading creases to the covers. read more
Description: Very Good. 1882968123 Mass Market Paperback, 1997, Warren James Palmer & Neil Stuart Lawson, Condition: Very Good; this book is in very good condition with light curve to the spine / light reading creases to the covers. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Pyramid
Date Published: 1971
Description: Like New. 1976 pyramid. mass paper back book like New with no jacket as issued * Unmarked* * All merchandise is fully guaranteed* Buy from a professional company that cares about your satisfaction*S. read more
Edition: First Old Earth Printing
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Old Earth Books, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9781882968121ISBN:1882968123
Description: Binkley, Ric. Near Fine. No Jacket. Unread copy with lightest of shelf rub to corner. Fourth of the 'Lensman' space opera stories. Facsimile of the 1951 Fantasy Press edition. Scan available. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Fantasy Press
Date Published: 1951
Description: HB. First Edition. No Dustjacket. VG condition with slight spine fade, Bookplate on front pastedown, and slight browning on hinge edges. Tight solid copy. read more
Edition: Reprint.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Fantasy Press
Date Published: 1979
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Hardcover with dust jacket in slipcase, an exact facsimile of the original Fantasy Press first edition, First Edition Library, 1979. A descriptive card from the publisher laid in. The dust jacket has a closed tear and wrinkle at the top spine edge, otherwise the book, jacket and slipcase are in very good condition. read more
"The Lensman saga doesn't cut it for me, so I gave it up towards the end of Gray Lensman. While it has some interesting plots, they're too spread out and the space in between is a waste of time."
"The Lensman series as a whole is a kind of archaeological dig into a landfill, except probably without toxic outgassing. You have compressed layers of awesome, then quaint silliness, and then just painfully awkward moments.
The awesome (important: this is "awesome" in the summer blockbuster movie sense): science-be-damned space battles that do not screw around, informed from that early 40's "throw enough scientists and engineers at a problem, and they can do absolutely anything" mindset. It occurs to our hero about midway through the book that it'd be handy to have both a planet built entirely out of antimatter (well, "negamatter," no one really had a handle on exactly what antimatter would behave like), and planets made out of regular matter that could be dropped out of inertialess spacedrive to act as a cosmic nutcracker against enemy planets. So he has the Galactic Patrol throw enough scientists and engineers at the problem to fix them both.
Also, at one point he's rousting out the evil drug dealing arm of the opposing civilization off a planet, and does so by arranging to get himself captured, so that they'd learn where the headquarters was upon his transport there. As part of his commandeering of the entire planetary resources of law enforcement, he also asks for a couple "oglons" (or "cateagles") which are your basic Ravenous Bugblatter Beast (only without the towel weakness) vicious alien animal monster template. He requisitions these from the zoo because he can use his psionic powers on them to mind control them and use them as weapons, which he does, in order to maul and kill the guys who captured him. That's not the awesome bit. This is the awesome bit:
Simultaneously with that, the entire planetary law enforcement resources who've been tailing and following his capture to the headquarters in various hypercompetent cloaked ways open up with artillery and precision sniping, instantly destroying the buildings and killing everyone in it. They could have sniped the guys who he allowed to capture himself too, rendering the mauling death by cateagle entirely moot. So basically, he had them mauled to death by alien cateagles simply because he could.
The cutely quaint: This is mostly of the way all old science fiction falls prey to, and the way all modern science fiction will in another 60ish years (if that). You have your astronavigators working feverishly over slide rules. You have breathless descriptions of sorting through library systems with assistants so skilled that they sorted through nearly HUNDREDS of index cards per MINUTE! And so forth.
The painfully awkward: an almost exact quote from way back in the first book: "Forget that I am a woman! For now we are simply three people against a planet of monsters!" The casual misogyny is basically everywhere. (Usually) more subtly, eugenics are everywhere as well.
You never quite know what layer you're going to run into from paragraph to paragraph, too. So far, Gray Lensman is the best of the bunch, mainly because it had more of the awesome and quaint layers, with comparatively fewer pockets of the awkward."
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