History Trivia / Lensman

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: There was going to be a Lensman movie written by J. Michael Straczinsky and directed by Ron Howard, but it immediately fell in DevelopmentHell before Universal decided to drop the project due to budget issues.

* ScienceMarchesOn: Spaceships developed on slide rule, with fantastic beam weapons that use vacuum tubes and punch cards! Given that every spaceship which flew in Smith's lifetime (d.1965) was probably drafted on slide rule, he wasn't doing too badly. It's also helpful to keep in mind that when he started writing, the concept of an entirely electronic programmable computer was itself the stuff of science fiction.

** The ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' RPG supplement [[Administrivia/JustifyingEdit threw in the explanation]] that the Arisians deliberately [[FakeDifficulty prevented anyone]] in Civilization from inventing the transistor or modern computing theory, because the entire point of the Arisian breeding program was to improve the powers of the mind. Allowing the existence of surrogate minds (i.e., computers) would have interfered with that development, by removing most of the need for heightened intellectual capacity beyond the current human average. Some canonical support for this theory exists – when the Arisian breeding program finally reached its end (i.e., when the Children of the Lens were finally born), Civilization ''did'' immediately start to develop advanced computing technology, as seen in both ''Children of the Lens'' and ''Masters of the Vortex''. Although ''that'' begs the question of why even ''slide rules'' had been allowed in the interim...

*** The vacuum tubes might not qualify, give that transistors can only handle very small power loads and tube circuits are very much more resistant to [=EMP=]s and hard radiation.
*** The vacuum tubes are best described as qualifying in some cases and not in others. In low-power benchtop gadgets such as the apparatus used by the Delgonians to extract life-force they certainly do. At the other end of the scale, however, the "sunbeam" works by converting an entire solar system into a giant "vacuum tube", and the description of its operation only makes sense in terms of vacuum-tube physics; a solid-state version would just be silly... In any case, vacuum tubes are far from obsolete in Real Life - specialised vacuum tubes are still the device of choice for a lot of high-frequency, high-power applications.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: There was going to be a Lensman movie written by J. Michael Straczinsky and directed by Ron Howard, but it immediatley fell in DevelopmentHell before Universal decided to drop the project due to budget issues.

** The ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' RPG supplement [[Administrivia/JustifyingEdit threw in the explanation]] that the Arisians deliberately [[FakeDifficulty prevented anyone]] in Civilization from inventing the transistor or modern computing theory, because the entire point of the Arisian breeding program was to improve the powers of the mind. Allowing the existence of surrogate minds (i.e., computers) would have interfered with that development, by removing most of the need for heightened intellectual capacity beyond the current human average. Some canonical support for this theory exists – when the Arisian breeding program finally reached its end (i.e., when the Children of the Lens were finally born), Civilization ''did'' immediately start to develop advanced computing technology, as seen in both ''Children of the Lens'' and ''Masters of the Vortex''.

*** Note that the description of the SunBeam in terms of a vaccuum tube is explicitly called out as an analogy, and when Kinnison tries to correct the description he is told that the audience (Hayes and Lacey) do not need the exact detail, just the general idea.

** At one point in the main series, Kimball Kinnison needs to find Civilization's absolutely smartest minds to work on a weapons project of utmost importance. To figure out who he needs, he performs an index search on the personality profiles listed in Civilization's main records database... using a mechanical [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine tabulating machine]] to process stacks upon stacks of hardcopy files.

** At one point in the main series, Kimball Kinnison needs to find Civilization's absolutely smartest minds to work on a weapons project of utmost importance. To figure out who he needs, he performs an index search on the personality profiles listed in Civilization's main records database... using a mechanical sorting device to process stacks upon stacks of hardcopy files.

** The ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' RPG supplement [[JustifyingEdit threw in the explanation]] that the Arisians deliberately [[FakeDifficulty prevented anyone]] in Civilization from inventing the transistor or modern computing theory, because the entire point of the Arisian breeding program was to improve the powers of the mind. Allowing the existence of surrogate minds (i.e., computers) would have interfered with that development, by removing most of the need for heightened intellectual capacity beyond the current human average. Some canonical support for this theory exists – when the Arisian breeding program finally reached its end (i.e., when the Children of the Lens were finally born), Civilization ''did'' immediately start to develop advanced computing technology, as seen in both ''Children of the Lens'' and ''Masters of the Vortex''.

* ScienceMarchesOn: Spaceships developed on slide rule, with fantastic beam weapons that use vacuum tubes! Given that every spaceship which flew in Smith's lifetime (d.1965) was probably drafted on slide rule, he wasn't doing too badly. It's also helpful to keep in mind that when he started writing, the concept of an entirely electronic programmable computer was itself the stuff of science fiction.

* LifeImitatesArt: Development of the Essex-class Combat Information Center was inspired by the Directrix after operational analysis indicated that fleet losses early on in WorldWarII were due to a lack of coordination.

** The {{GURPS}} RPG supplement [[JustifyingEdit threw in the explanation]] that the Arisians deliberately [[FakeDifficulty prevented anyone]] in Civilization from inventing the transistor or modern computing theory, because the entire point of the Arisian breeding program was to improve the powers of the mind. Allowing the existence of surrogate minds (i.e., computers) would have interfered with that development, by removing most of the need for heightened intellectual capacity beyond the current human average. Some canonical support for this theory exists – when the Arisian breeding program finally reached its end (i.e., when the Children of the Lens were finally born), Civilization ''did'' immediately start to develop advanced computing technology, as seen in both ''Children of the Lens'' and ''Masters of the Vortex''.

* LifeImitatesArt - Development of the Essex-class Combat Information Center was inspired by the Directrix after operational analysis indicated that fleet losses early on in WorldWarII were due to a lack of coordination.
* ScienceMarchesOn - Spaceships developed on slide rule, with fantastic beam weapons that use vacuum tubes! Given that every spaceship which flew in Smith's lifetime (d.1965) was probably drafted on slide rule, he wasn't doing too badly. It's also helpful to keep in mind that when he started writing, the concept of an entirely electronic programmable computer was itself the stuff of science fiction.

** At one point in the main series, Kimball Kinnison needs to find Civilization's absolutely smartest minds to work on a weapons project of utmost importance. To figure out who he needs, he performs an index search on the personality profiles listed in Civilization's main records database... using a mechanical sorting device to process stacks upon stacks of hardcopy files.