These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
YMMV: Lensman
Broken Aesop: The Drugs Are Bad Aesop is applied unclearly; in fact, it's only applied to the dealers of a completely fictional drug which is solely manufactured and distributed by the bad guys' food chain. By contrast, the main character picks a marijuana-equivalent drug to adopt as part of a persona, and it's almost completely harmless (the text even takes note of him learning that the drug is better taken after alcohol instead of beforehand). So...drugs are bad if they're specifically designedto fund the Evil Empire?
Magnificent Bastard - Mentor of Arisia is the king, but honorable mention goes to Nadreck the Palainian, exemplified when he single-handedly defeated a massively defended enemy fortress by secretly manipulating the inhabitants into a civil war that killed them all. He's so embarrassed that his planning and execution wasn't perfect,forcing him to deal with the last three survivors personally, that he only reveals the extent of this "failure" when ordered to do so, and refuses to discuss it further.
It's implied that Nadreck's entire species is like this, except that Nadreck is the most capable of them (and one of the few willing to stick his neck out to perform tasks for the general good- a little). Palainians are among the stranger aliens in the history of science fiction, both physically and mentally, especially if you look at its early days when Human Aliens were the norm.
Come on - what about Helmuth? He at least realised what he was up against and tried to take precautions; had Kinnison not already learned his lesson from an incredibly close brush with death that he was lucky to survive, he'd have been toast.
It is a measure of Kinnison's respect for the man that even two novels later, he would look at a sloppy Boskonian defensive emplacement and go 'You know, Helmuth wouldn't have screwed this one up.'
Serial Numbers Filed Off: The shareware game Children of Arisia takes place on the planet Medon, where the player, a third-level intellect, must fight against the forces of Boskone and the Overlords of Delgon who are attaching humanity via a hyper-spacial tube...
Also, it's taken for granted that libertarianism is the right form of government. At one point, government is loftily mentioned as having been "reduced to its proper sphere and concentrated in the Patrol."
On another note, pacifistically inclined modern readers may be uncomfortable with the Galactic Patrol's willingness to use overwhelming force against Boskone's fortified planets, or feel that they do so without due regard for collateral damage. Whereas the books were written during and immediately after World War II, when the Allies were indiscriminately pouring megatons of explosives over German and Japanese cities and few people found anything questionable in this.
