Alternate Lensemen

[LoneWolf23k]

Okay, I got GURPS Lensmen recently, and while the setting looks interesting, the in-book notion that "Arisians blocked the creation of Transistors as part of their long-term plans" is something I find annoying.

I figure going with a more modern Safe-Tech approach might work, even if only updating the tech to 70s sci-fi standards. Meaning no massive Genetic Engineering, Neural Interfaces, Molecular Nanotechnology, Cybernetics, Swarmbots, Volitional AI or Mind Emulations. And even then, I'd probably allow Robots, if only because I feel Droids and Space Opera go very well together.

How drastically would transistor and post-transister computer technology alter the Universe of Lensmen? For that matter, how would adding Psi-Tech items alter it?

[Refplace]

Did you read the books?
It would change the feel from the books but if you and your group have not read them and your just going for a Space Opera feel then would be fine IMHO.
Transistors and smaller electronics would make minor difference but smart computers and robots which can do things for you would change the original feel.
Also now there would be things the Lensman would have a harder time countering.
Psitech well the main thing about the book is how rare and powerful most psi is, though several races did have natural psi.
But if everyone can grab a device that makes them a psi or more powerful that would also change the feel.
But again you could still do nice Space Opera with square jawed psychic lawman patrolling the universe.

[Puppetminion]

Robots do exist in the Lensman 'verse (just) so having them is even canon :). They're dumb enough to double for comic relief droids too.

At a guess they're impossible to build with any tech in the books, but since we only see them used by an Eddorian that's okay. You could make them the Eddorians "gift" to their side, a twisted reflection of the lens. Instead of a tool that empowers the best people that belong to Civilization, Boskone has cheap blaster fodder that they can sell dirt cheap and use as great spies (see how long it takes before the PCs realize every single droid they see, interact with or ignore is tracelessly reporting back to Boskone).

The setting also has card machines and single purpose analog computers (like the course adjustor, which follows a ship that has a Tracer set on it), updating their tech to use transistors rather than mechanical linkages sounds more like a style choice than anything else. Space Opera tends to be about the heroes rather than tech that can replace them, so personally I wouldn't increase automation all that much.

Psi-tech though... the Lens is supposed to be not merely of a higher TL but literally impossible to build with any technology, they are created by Arisian psi (more or less). If your game has PC Lensmen then I think any psi-tech would be a dilution of their special niche. Psi tech only usable by a Lensman though, that would be a good way to power up PC Lensmen with little damage to the setting. And mind-screens already exist, so maybe I'm wrong anyway.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf23k

Okay, I got GURPS Lensmen recently, and while the setting looks interesting, the in-book notion that "Arisians blocked the creation of Transistors as part of their long-term plans" is something I find annoying.

I figure going with a more modern Safe-Tech approach might work, even if only updating the tech to 70s sci-fi standards. Meaning no massive Genetic Engineering, Neural Interfaces, Molecular Nanotechnology, Cybernetics, Swarmbots, Volitional AI or Mind Emulations. And even then, I'd probably allow Robots, if only because I feel Droids and Space Opera go very well together.

How drastically would transistor and post-transister computer technology alter the Universe of Lensmen? For that matter, how would adding Psi-Tech items alter it?

Honestly, I don't think losing the tubes makes that much difference. As for Psi-Tech items, well, the mechanical mind screens are canonical Psi-Tech. So, for that matter are the insignia that were used before the Lens. So the question is "What Psi-Tech and in whose hands?"

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf23k

How drastically would transistor and post-transister computer technology alter the Universe of Lensmen? For that matter, how would adding Psi-Tech items alter it?

<shrug> The last of the Lensman saga went to the printer in the same year the transistor was invented so it's no suprise that transistorized (and ore importantly printed circuit devices) don't figure in the books.

Humanoid-appering robots do appear once in the series, in Roger's planetoid in Triplanetary. However, they seem to be absolutely useless for combat purposes. They just stand there and let you blind and deafen them.

One or more of the characters were fooled briefly into thinking a particular robot was an emotionally aberrent human but no one was suprised at the existence of the tech so it's probably not an Eddorian monopoly.

Remote controlled drones are pretty common throughout the series.

There is some psi-tech in the series. Most prominantly are artifical thought screens. Nadreck the Palainian then turns out to have invented mechnical aids for penetrating those screens. The exact nature of the Golden Meteor is never explained in the books but psi-tech is as good as any explaination.

Also, in Children of the Lens, Kinnison has a 2000 hp battlesuit that I believe was probably controlled through a telepathic interface, thus expalining why it had not come into general use. If you wodner how you pump 2000 hp/15100 kw into a battlesuit I hypothesize that the "drvietrain" was made up of miniature tractor and pressor beams which used Medonian superconductors.

The :Lens itself is not a product of any materlal or physcial scicne. It comes from a phiolosophical science and simply can not be duplicated by any mind of less than Third Stage Stability. Third Stagers don't need equipment to do it either, thoguh the Arisians apparently do leave "Lens-makiers".behind on their planet after they transcend.

However, multi-purpose digital computers simply don't exist in the series and data processing and automatic control functions that can not be achieved without them don't exist either.

The state of the art computer in existence at the beginning of Masters of the Vortex is a "Super-Gomeac" which I interpret as a bigger and more complicated Univac. It doesn't do anythng except solve mathematical equations (up to "the calculus of warped surfaces" whatever that is) and it doesn't do that as fast an an Intuitive Mathematician does. By the end of Masters they've produced a better computer that's a little more than twice as fast but takes a light warship to carry.

Thsi doesn't mean there is no electronic gear. The personal comunicator built into every suit of space armor and carried by unarmored cops and Patrolmen probably isn't any bigger than what 2011 cops and soldiers use but it won't have any special features like frequency hopping or data encryption.

Concealed earpiece and wristwatch microphone rigs like those carried by Secret Service men since the 70s are also possible. There just aren't any cell phones.

There are other sci-fi technologies such as 3D photography but this produces soild "image cubes" and not data files.

Cars don't drive themselves and they appear to burn chemical fuel too. By the period of the books I'd make it all sythetic just for a touch of realism.

Youi can have electronics and other futuristic tech but not stuff that operates itself. If you want to change this you will be changing a basic thing about the way tech works and feels in the books.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The :Lens itself is not a product of any materlal or physcial scicne. It comes from a phiolosophical science and simply can not be duplicated by any mind of less than Third Stage Stability. Third Stagers don't need equipment to do it either, thoguh the Arisians apparently do leave "Lens-makiers".behind on their planet after they transcend.

Which indicates that it may not in fact be true that it can't be duplicated by any mind of less of less than Third Stage Stability, although presumably it can't be invented by a lesser mind.

Youi can have electronics and other futuristic tech but not stuff that operates itself. If you want to change this you will be changing a basic thing about the way tech works and feels in the books.

To be precise, you can't have a lot of stuff that operates itself in the Civilisation cultures. It doesn't seem like it's impossible, just that Civilisation philosophically rejects taking people out of the equation.

[stefanj]

(A college friend and I once rescued Vernor Vinge from a horrible meet the pros event at a media convention. The long conversation that followed eventually led to the Lensmen setting. I described the Shockley-meets-Arisan-agent bit in GURPS Lensmen that justified why the transistor was never developed. He got the BIGGEST kick out of that.)

[maximara]

Originally Posted by stefanj

(A college friend and I once rescued Vernor Vinge from a horrible meet the pros event at a media convention. The long conversation that followed eventually led to the Lensmen setting. I described the Shockley-meets-Arisan-agent bit in GURPS Lensmen that justified why the transistor was never developed. He got the BIGGEST kick out of that.)

The problem is that the the transistor is portrayed as a Great man event but it is now known that Julius Edgar Lilienfeld filed the first transistor patent in Canada in 1922 and Oskar Heil filed one in Germany in 1934 and that Shockley and Pearson first transistor resembled the Lilienfeld patent so closely that they had to come came up with the point-contact transistor...which was independently invented by Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker in 1948.

In short the transistor was a Great Moment and removing Shockley from the equation wouldn't have done anything but delay the invention of the point-contact transistor by a year and the field-effect transistor had already been invented...twice.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by maximara

The problem is that the the transistor is portrayed as a Great man event but it is now known that Julius Edgar Lilienfeld filed the first transistor patent in Canada in 1922 and Oskar Heil filed one in Germany in 1934 and that Shockley and Pearson first transistor resembled the Lilienfeld patent so closely that they had to come came up with the point-contact transistor...which was independently invented by Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker in 1948.

In short the transistor was a Great Moment and removing Shockley from the equation wouldn't have done anything but delay the invention of the point-contact transistor by a year and the field-effect transistor had already been invented...twice.

That doesn't prove much, though, because the Arisians were certainly capable of manipulating multiple chains of events to head off multiple moments of invention.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

To be precise, you can't have a lot of stuff that operates itself in the Civilisation cultures. It doesn't seem like it's impossible, just that Civilisation philosophically rejects taking people out of the equation.

Boskonia didn't have transistors either. Even Medon which was the most technolgically evolved culture in the Second Galaxy that hadn't been absorbed by Boskonia had no transistors.

I simply have no evidence to support the idea that transistors are possible in the Lensman universe. Considering how different some of the physical laws seems to be (i.e the Lensman Earth is less than 2 billion years old) transistors might not be possible.