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Book Note: Edward E. Smith, Galactic Patrol (#2)

I read this book about 18-May-2006. I've read this book before. The book is copyright 1937. This note was last modified Monday, 19-May-2014 16:36:50 PDT.

This is book 3 of the "Lensman" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

 

An old favorite, and I'm kinda surprised I've only reread it twice in these five 6 years. Maybe it's been the beneficiary of my willingness to occasionally skip book-logging umpteenth rereads.

So here are some more detailed notes, keyed to a different pagination than last time.

p.42: Third Galactic Survey -- there's a reference to the latest data on Valentia coming from that, and Kim calls it "a hell of a long time ago". So that survey, not necessarily the latest, was a long time ago. How often do they run such surveys? The first such survey must have been after First Lensman, so the timespan since then must be quite large. It makes sense given the amount of human colonization and such. There's no information for precise arguing that I can find -- but 500 years, maybe? Or more?

p.103: Driving projectors work by emitting "fourth-order particles or corpuscles". This seems to echo a usage from Skylark, which doesn't appear elsewhere in the Lensman books.

p.114: Tregonsee says "In all probability neither of us would enjoy the other's equipment if he had it", somewhat foreshadowing Kinnison's impending acquisition of the sense of perception -- which he does enjoy having. Poor Tregonsee doesn't, so far as we ever learn, acquire hearing or sight when he gets his second stage training.

p.148: Further to my previous discussion of Lensmen holding military rank, Kinnison is commanding the new Britania as a full Captain (four silver bars in that service). And cancelling his commission is mentioned in conunjunction with granting his release (p.159). Apparently lensmen sometimes (or always) hold military rank, but not unattached lensmen. It's still an anomaly that his classmate Clifford Maitland is skippering a mauler (p.156); Kinnison has acquired 10 years' rating (p.15) by his success with the Britannia, and isn't a mauler a more major command than a heavy cruiser?

I suppose eventually I'll have to pull together all these notes, purge the ones I've decided were stupid over the years, and do something "definitive" with them.


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