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The Effect of the Lensmen on Martial Arts

Many of the martial arts, like karate are fiction. Slam somebody on the nose with a palm and bone shards will spear into his brain and kill him, except there isn’t any bone in the nose, its all cartilage. And all those old legends, a lot of them are good for washing the hog, if you have a willing hog.

But, there is a certain science in the martial arts that is true. This is the science of geometrical energy potentials. I discovered this field in a series of books called the Lensmen Series.

I suppose the first time it hit me was when the author, E. E. Smith, described people fighting on the hull of a space ship. They were hooking their feet under hand grips so they would not fly into space from the reverse force of their strikes. They were anchoring themselves so they could apply force, and not be the effect of their own force.

Soon I was wrapped in a universe where weapons created geometries of force. If a death ray was a rod like beam, it could be deflected by a shield. And if a shield could deflect, then a shield sheared sideways could slice into the first shield.

Soon I was enraptured by concepts of fleets of space ships creating their own particular brand of strategic logics. Fleets of space ships would form globes around other fleets, and cones of fleets of spaceships would engulf and swallow globes of fleets. Each time a geometry was described, my mind struggled to keep up with the concepts.

Then, shock of shocks, fleets of spaceships gave way to the exercising of mental powers. Those same rods and globes and cones and shields, made real in the extreme of space combat, became the stuff of minds battling minds. How do you slide your awareness through the grid of another mentality, especially when that mentality is utterly alien?

And, ultimately, having finished the series of books, I began extending those outer space alien mind warfare strategies to my chosen field of the martial arts. I sank my weight into deep horse stances so I would not fly away from the projection of my own force. I described cones with the movements of my limbs, and went after globes of fists as they flew out of space at me.

When I tell people about what has inspired me in the martial arts they generally think I am a bit crazy, or they realize I am a genius. Reading sci fi so as to use weird concepts in the martial arts, who would have ever imagined? Yet, both fields are art, and should not art be brandishing creativity and expression and beams of force and mind to mind conflicts?

Al Case has researched martial arts for 4O++ years. A writer for the magazines, he is the originator of Matrixing Technology. You can find out about Matrixing by getting his free ebook at Monster Martial Arts.