Children of the Lens (novel)

Lore & Background

Children of the Lens is the sixth and final book in the Lensman series. The story takes place twenty years after the close of Second Stage Lensmen, and focuses on the five children of Kimball and Clarrissa Kinnison: a boy and two pairs of twin girls. As Kimball and Clarrissa are both Lensmen, their offspring are dubbed the 'Children of the Lens'. They are also the ultimate product of a two-billion-year-long Arisian breeding program that has molded them into 'third-level' minds with such potential power that not even the Arisians themselves fully understand their capabilities.

The story of the children is intertwined with the story of the five Second Stage Lensmen: Kimball, Worsel, Nadreck, Tregonsee, and Clarrissa (who is already a full Second Stage Lensman).

Reader's Guide

Children of the Lens concludes the Lensman series, introducing the five Kinnison children as the culmination of the Arisian breeding program. The novel shifts focus from massive fleet battles to more subtle mental and strategic conflicts, though super-weapons like superluminal planets are deployed in hundreds. The children form a five-fold super-mind called 'The Unit', which guides a combined mental bolt from all Lensmen and Arisians to destroy the Eddorians. The Arisians then pass on to the next plane, leaving the children as guardians. Reception was mixed: Groff Conklin faulted the style and characters but acknowledged the series as 'a pretty solid achievement'; Anthony Boucher found Smith's works unreadable but noted others considered them the 'acme of hypergalactic adventure'; P. Schuyler Miller said Smith remained convincing despite exhausted superlatives. Robert A. Heinlein later claimed Smith had planned a seventh volume but never wrote it down. The novel's publication history notes that Astounding editor John W. Campbell Jr. was reportedly reluctant to publish it, finding it antiquated, but was persuaded by fan Ed Wood.

Did You Know?

• The novel was originally serialized in Astounding beginning in 1947, and first published in book form in 1954 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 4,874 copies.
• The five Kinnison children—Kit, Camilla, Constance, Karen, and Kathryn—are born with abilities that Second Stage Lensmen gain only through years of training.

Publication and Series Position

Children of the Lens stands as the sixth and final installment in E. E. Smith's sprawling Lensman saga. The novel first reached readers through serialization in the pulp magazine Astounding, beginning in 1947. It would take another seven years before the story was gathered into book form, with Fantasy Press issuing a first edition of 4,874 copies in 1954. As the capstone of a series that had built its mythology across multiple volumes, this final entry was expected to deliver a definitive resolution to the decades-long conflict between Civilization and the Boskone remnants. Smith used the book to close out the narrative threads introduced in Second Stage Lensmen, bringing the five Kinnison children to the forefront while still weaving in the adventures of the established Second Stage Lensmen. The relatively modest print run reflects the niche audience that sustained the genre in the post-war era, even as the story itself reached its most ambitious and cosmic scale.

The Children and the Five-Fold Super-Mind

The five offspring of Kimball and Clarrissa Kinnison—Kit, Camilla, Constance, Karen, and Kathryn—represent the ultimate achievement of a two-billion-year Arisian breeding program. Born with the mental and physical capabilities that Second Stage Lensmen acquire only through years of grueling training, the children quickly surpass even that threshold, becoming Third Stage Lensmen whose full potential remains opaque even to the Arisians who engineered their existence. Their most extraordinary feat is the formation of a five-fold super-mind they call The Unit, a collective consciousness of such advanced nature that the Arisians themselves cannot predict what it is capable of achieving. This Unit serves as the guiding intelligence behind the final mental bolt that shatters Eddore's defenses. The children are not merely powerful individuals; they are the culmination of an evolutionary project spanning geological time, designed to produce guardians far exceeding their creators in capability.

Escalating Warfare and the Final Confrontation

The novel marks a dramatic shift in the Lensman series' approach to conflict. Where earlier books centered on massive fleet engagements and singular super-weapons, Children of the Lens emphasizes subtlety, intelligence, and strategic maneuvering. The technology has escalated to the point where weapons once considered unique and difficult to construct—free planets used as nut-crackers, negaspheres—are now deployed in the hundreds. Hyperspace tubes, once rare, become standard for inserting invading fleets into enemy territory, and super-atomic bombs are fired by the thousands. The story's central conflict is traced through a series of untraceable terrorist attacks that lead the Lensmen to the hidden planet of Ploor, where remnants of Boskone are being controlled. The climax involves the Patrol rendering two superluminal planets inertialess in Nth space and hurling them through hyperspace tubes to annihilate Ploor and its sun. The Eddorians are ultimately destroyed by a mental bolt channeled through the Unit, ending the ancient war once and for all.

Critical Reception and the Arisian Farewell

The novel's reception was mixed, reflecting the challenges of capping a long-running series. Galaxy reviewer Groff Conklin was particularly critical, describing the writing style as ranging from the irritating to the infantile and dismissing the characters as little more than cardboard cutouts. Yet even in his criticism, Conklin acknowledged the series' unique place in the landscape, calling it a sort of overblown fairy tale for modern juveniles—a characterization that, while unflattering, recognized the work's mythic ambition. The novel's emotional core lies in its closing revelation: after the Eddorians are destroyed, Mentor of Arisia announces that the Arisian race is passing on to the next plane of existence, their guardianship complete. They have succeeded in creating a race far better suited to protect the galaxies. The final image is Kit Kinnison sealing a message in a time capsule for some distant future civilization, preserving the memory of the long war and the means to contact the Children of the Lens should the threat ever return.