24 Jan 2020 and the ray gun has been authorised.

Don’t laugh, we have the technology to make fatal light beams in the vacuum of space. So Sy/Fy is today.

Buck Rogers, Star Wars, Star Trek and the rest that have kept us all enthrailed for 2 generations since the 60s.

Slide back a little further in time to the old time greats, Heinlein, Assimov, Clarke and finally E. E. Doc Smith the grandfather of space opera and the Lensman.

While Heinlein, Assimov and Clarke are thought of as the three greatest Sy/Fy writers in modern history there is only one Grandfather of space opera and that is E.E. Doc Smith.

Let me tell you a wee yarn about the battle of the ‘greats’ for the best space opera spot.

One was E. E. Doc Smith who wrote the Lensmans Series and the other was L. Ron Hubbard who ‘discovered’ Scientology.

They used to be pals. E. E. Doc Smith for very much a part of the Dianetics movement fab in the US 1950s but fell out with Hubbard and his works from ’51-’52 on when Hubbard started to pursue the setting up a religion angle.

They both wrote space opera. But sold them under different labels. Albeit the results were very very similar.

A key premise in the Lensman series is people are not just bodies but connected enough to their spirit that a bracelet they wear called a Lens can tune into this life force and attune to it.

In Scientology it is generally acknowledged that people are seperate entities from their bodies called thetans and they can exist outwith their own bodies. Incidently the stars in the Lenmans series do a lot of out of body work to.

Telekinesis is daily practiced by the Lensman in battle and day to day life as much as the Jedi do in Star Wars.

A less known fact is Scientologists try and practice this art by shouting at an ashtray. Using what they call Tone 40 or command intention to make and ashtray stand up from a seated position in an ashtray and then sit down.

It involves a lot of shouting at an ashtray shall we say and they do not move unless you move them by hand. But I assure you Scientologists have spent millions of hours trying to get ashtrays to stand up or sit down from a chair.

Both howler to telepathy. E. E. Doc Smiths hero’s can regularly just give one another a mental call via their braclets lenses and blether away. Simple enough in a novel.

Scientology has it a bit harder but still runs at it… there’s Tone 40 commands, silent order drills, emergency response language… alot of it is based on body language mainly and drilling for the rest.

But it’s people tuned to each other.

And they do act almost as if they are telepathicaly connected. Bear in mind. They live in a commune. Work together. Counsel one another. And always know the intimate of one another… like the borg.

Both wrote Sy/Fy and now we’re living it.

But where ends the fact and where begins the fiction.

Time will tell.