First Lensman

Imagine a bunch of super space cops who get magic eye-glasses called Lenses that let them read minds, talk far away, and always be good guys no matter what. The first leader, Virgil Samms, visits wise old aliens on Arisia who give him the first Lens, then he builds a secret team with friends like Rod Kinnison to fight bad space pirates selling a yucky dream-drug called thionite that makes people naughty. They zoom around in sneaky spaceships, have epic battles, and save the whole galaxy from evil bosses—it's like the best space adventure ever!

In 'First Lensman,' the second installment of E.E. Smith's monumental Lensman series, Virgil Samms, a principled officer of the Solarian Council, undertakes a transformative quest to the ancient planet Arisia. There, after rigorous psychic trials, he receives the first prototype Lens—a symbiotic crystal that amplifies telepathic abilities, enforces unyielding ethics, and marks him as the inaugural Lensman. Samms then spearheads the clandestine formation of the Lensman Corps, recruiting elite talents like Roderick Kinnison amid rising threats from the Boskonian conspiracy, a sprawling syndicate peddling the hallucinogenic drug thionite to undermine Civilization's moral and social order. The narrative pulses with high-stakes espionage and combat across exotic locales such as the pirate-infested Aldebaran system and Venusian frontiers, where Lensmen deploy Q-ships, inertialess drives, and mental duels against Boskonian overlords like Knobos and the shadowy Helmuth. Smith's grand vision explores the forging of interstellar justice, blending super-science with philosophical depth on free will and corruption, culminating in pivotal victories that solidify the Corps as Civilization's ultimate safeguard against cosmic savagery.