Back from Egypt, so just going through this thread now...
Are you going to clarify what multidimensional means? Because humans are technically in that category. We do exist in 3 dimensions
The reason bravery exists is because there are different social groups and it helps if members of each group are willing to die for the good of the group. Having their environment being made of liquid helium will not change this. What you would need to do is have a species that doesn't have any group evolution. I have a hard time seeing such a species get to space flight though.
On the multi-dimensional part, here's what Doc Smith had to say about the Palainians:
First Lensman wrote:Or, strictly speaking, he saw a part of his first Palainian; for no three-dimensional creature has ever seen or ever will see in entirety any member of any of the frigid-blooded, poison-breathing races. Since life as we know it - organic, three-dimensional life - is based upon liquid water and gaseous oxygen, such life did not and could not develop upon planets whose temperatures are only a few degrees above absolute zero. Many, perhaps most, of these ultra-frigid planets have an atmosphere of sorts; some have no atmosphere at all. Nevertheless, with or without atmosphere and completely without oxygen and water, life - highly intelligent life - did develop upon millions and millions of such worlds. That life is not, however, strictly three-dimensional. Of necessity, even in the lowest forms, it possesses an extension into the hyper-dimension; and it is this metabolic extension alone which makes it possible for life to exist under such extreme conditions.
This extension makes it possible for a human being to see anything of a Palainian except the fluid, amorphous, ever-changing thing which is his three-dimensional aspect of the moment; makes any attempt at description or portraiture completely futile.
Virgil Samms stared at the Palainian; tried to see what it looked like. He could not tell whether it had eyes or antennae; legs, arms, or tentacles, teeth or beaks, talons or claws or feet; skin, scales, or feathers. It did not even remotely resemble anything that the Lensman had ever seen, sensed, or imagined.
As for bravery... the Palainians describe themselves as cowardly, lazy, deceitful, etc etc etc. "Ignore and be ignored is, as you must already know, the Prime Tenet" says one, whilst Nadreck, one of the 4 Second Stage Lensmen, would always refer to his abilities and power as small or insignificant, despite the fact that his subterfuge and psychological warfare skills (never mind telepathy) make groups like the Culture's Special Circumstances look like bumbling amateurs.
As for space flight and such, remember that both the Arisians and Eddorians regularly interfered in Palainian history, and of course there were "insane" individuals who would contemplate, say, a trip to Arisia to receive a Lens and work in the Galactic Patrol, despite the "personal risk" and "discomfort" that would involve
. Certainly other races on worlds similar to Palain VII have developed differently - the Eich
may have been like them, and they weren't cowards. Kandron & the other Onlonians seemed made of sterner stuff than the Palainians too.
One thing to note is that the narrator (often an in-universe "historian" though, so far from the omniscient narrator you usually get) at one point mentions that, had the Palainians had more human-like characteristics, then they may well have become the most dominant species-type (I say species-type because a lot of things that are physically human evolved on worlds other than other) in Civilisation. Kinnison & the other main characters also get on well with Nadreck and, whilst they don't necessarily understand his point of view (human Lensmen are expected to be Real Men™ and so on), they certainly tolerate & respect it (in fact, Kinnison eventually has to realise that the Lensman Code - that "(human) Lensmen always go in" - must no longer apply to himself if he's to help the Patrol win - if anything Doc Smith was pretty good when it came to the Palainian way of doings things).
If you want to apply human norms to such a thing, start by explaining how natural selection applies to something with completely unknown biology that is in no way related to our own - as far as I know, nothing in our biology operates at four kelvin. For all you know, they reproduce by crystallising out of the ether.
See above. Also note that, whilst their life expectancy was not mentioned, they do live in similar timeframes to humans (eg, they communicate happily to humans - no thousand-year thoughts etc).
DH - I'm not sure we can say for certain where Palainians get their energy from (they must have some physical matter for reproductive purposes for starters), and I tend to ignore anything not written by Doc Smith, but what you said looks fairly good. They colonised Pluto some time before 1492, but we don't know how long it took them to reach that stage of technology (eg, humans would likely be more advanced if we'd evolved half a billion years ago and had it our way ever since).
Well, I would at least make an exception for New Lensman, the manuscript of which Smith himself approved and gave Ellern written permission to publish. The GURPS book is full of errors and - you guessed it - minimalism, so I could do without that one, but it was, after all, approved by Doc's estate; specifically Verna Smith Trestrail, who was herself deeply involved in the writing of the original series; and it was continuity-checked. Should they not have the right to decide what is in?
Haven't read
New Lensman, but
Moon Prospector was ok and helps with the timeline (200 years between WW3 and Triplanetary IIRC, and by Kinnison's time the Patrol is at least 500 years old), as well as some of the hard sci-fi bits Doc Smith left out (such as the lack of radiators on ships).
GURPS Lensman is both very minimalist and not proof-read all that well, whilst I don't think Kyle's attempts worked all that well. Both GURPS and Kyle also take quite a different view to robots & computers than the one Doc Smith took in
Triplanetary and
Vortex Blaster etc. Ellern's work was approved by Doc Smith, and all the others by his daughter, as the controller of his estate. Me, I'm happy to be a Doc Smith purist, although one day I might get around to going over the non-Doc Smith books in the setting for technical stuff.
Hoth, I'm pretty sure that only Humans were involved in the Arisian breeding program. The other races just evolved that way. None of them were artificial though, even humans, this wasn't genetic engineering it was just the Arisians using the concept of animal husbandry with sentient races...which, as it turns out, worked fine.
Palain VII, Velantia, Rigel IV and Tellus were the four Arisian breeding programs, and the four worlds Gharlane had the most trouble with (not coincidentally of course).
They were "created", in the sense that they evolved from the stuff the Arisians seeded the universe with, or some such.
Most were, although I don't think any species was definitely confirmed as having been the result of the Arisian panspermia program (although in
GURPS it's claimed that the Palainians were not a result of it).
You have to understand how incredibly alien some of these people are, even more than just having no concept of bravery. There was at least one race of huge, horse-sized dragons with a hundred eyes on little extendable stalks. There was another race with three arms, three legs, cylinder-like bodies and as far as I can tell NO FUCKING EYES...they "saw" through other senses. Possibly "hear" through them too, since when the main character goes to their homeworld the noise was extremely intense and they didn't really grasp the idea of "too loud" until he explained it to them. The main villains, the Eddorians, were blobs of flesh with no discernable features who repoduced by cell division like some kind of sentient cancers. Most of these races...possibly all of them...can not communicate with one another without telepathy. They're not just people with bumps on their forehead, they're exceedingly different in appearance, society, evolution and mental processes.
The Velantians were 30ft flying dragons capable of performing 11g manoeuvres, with at least 6 (8?) retractable eye-stalks on their heads and scales you needed a power drill to cut through when performing surgery on them. Very good philosophers, and with multi-compartmented minds that let them work on multiple complex tasks at once in a way that humans cannot. The Rigellians meanwhile were described as basically a domed head, oildrum body, four short legs, four mouths & noses on the head, and four branching tentacles as arms. Could not hear, and "saw" in a sort of greyscale telepathic vision. Generally uninterested in space travel when Samms made contact. Society was crazy too: no laws, government, police, armed forces, but currency, advertising and a strong communal work ethic (I'd almost call it idealised communism actually). The Cahuitans were energy-based beings who bred in nuclear vortices (think self-sustaining nuclear fireballs), whilst the Lyranians are telepathic humans from a man-hating matriarchy with basically no culture to speak of as a result (equality of the sexes was one of the hallmarks of Civilisation's member species).
The Eddorians are basically your ultimately Darwinistic life-form; rather than cooperating harmlessly with others, as is the norm in space opera, they destroy all life that they cannot control absolutely. On the other hand, they are semi-parasitical and require organic servitors, so they cannot wipe out everyone. They always struck me as interesting adversaries, especially given the time in which they were written. They were simply logical and pitiless, rather than moustache twirlers; they were prepared to use human vice against us, but only because it was efficient. When they realised that the idealistic organisation of the good guys, the Lensmen and the Patrol, worked better than their dominance hierarchies, they simply copied it!
I don't think that they copied the Patrol much, although both sides stole technology. They did develop their own "Black Lensmen", but that never really got anywhere. As for being parasitic - that's more because they wanted power than because they needed them - Eddorians could have manned all the fortresses around their homeworld, but they just preferred control too much (not to mention, using for Gunner #114 a guy who can out-think a Culture Mind and is a power-hunger sociopathic megalomaniac is a recipe for trouble
).
And yes, in retrospect they and Boskonia's technocratic dictatorship very much do resemble the Singularitarians and their "transhuman" ideas, down to their Visualisation of the Cosmic All (fits most "super intelligence"-wanking - they are so smart they can predict the future mathematically before it happens)
It was the Arisians who had that "Visualisation of the (Macro)Cosmic All". Mentor described it to Samms as their equivalent to chess - they do it for mental exercise and enjoyment, but also in the case of the war with Eddore to be able to plan effectively. Here's perhaps the most ridiculous quote about it for you, from
First Lensman:
In my visualisation a descendent of yours named Clarissa MacDougall will, in a store called Brenleer's upon the planet... but no, let us consider a thing nearer at hand...
...
"Five Tellurian calendar years then, from the instant of your passing through the screen of "The Hill" on this persent journey, you will be... allow me, please, a moment of thought... you will be in a barber shop not yet built; the address of which is to be fifteen hundred fifteen Twelfth Avenue, Spokane, Washington, North America, Tellus. The barber's name will be Antonio Carbonero and he will be left-handed. He will be engaged in cutting your hair. Or rather, the actual cutting will have been done and he will be shaving, with a razor trade-marked "Jensen-King-Byrd", the short hairs in front of your left ear. A comparatively small, quadrupedal, greyish-striped entity, of the race called "cat" - a young cat, this one will be, and called Thomas, although actually of the female sex - will jump into your lap, addressing you pleasantly in a language with which you yourself are only partially familiar. You call it mewing and purring, I believe?"
"Yes," the flabbergasted Samms managed to say. "Cats do purr - especially kittens."
"Ah - very good. Never having met a cat personally, I am gratified at your corroboration of my visualisation. This female youth erroneously called Thomas, somewhat careless in computing the elements of her trajectory, will jostle slightly the barber's elbow with her tail; thus causing him to make a slight incision, approximately three millimetres long, parallel to and just above your left cheekbone. At the precise moment in question, the barber will be applying a styptic pencil to the insignificant wound. This forecast is, I trust, sufficiently detailed so that you will have no difficulty in checking its accuracy or lack thereof?"
...
"These that I have mentioned, the gross occurrences, are problems only for inexperienced thinkers," Mentor paid no attention to Samms' determination never to enter that shop. "The real difficulties lie in the fine detail, such as the length, mass and exact place and position of landing, upon apron or floor, of each of your hairs as it is severed. Many factors are involved. Other clients passing by - opening and shutting doors - air currents - sunshine - wind - pressure, temperature, humidity. The exact fashion in which the barber will flick his shears, which in turn depends upon many other factors - what he will have been doing previously, what he will have eaten and drunk, whether or not his home life will have been happy... you little realise, youth, what a priceless opportunity this will be for me to check the accuracy of my visualisation. I shall spend many periods upon the problem. I cannot achieve perfect accuracy, of course. Ninety-nine point nine nines per cent, let us say... or perhaps ten nines... is all that I can reasonably expect..."
...
...but since you will be wearing your Lens, I myself can and will compare minutely my visualisation with the actuality. For know, youth, that wherever any Lens is, there can any Arisian be if he so desires.
Whilst we never find out if those hairs all land in the "right" spot, Mentor is right about the "gross occurrences", as well as the bit about his descendant Clarissa MacDougall visiting a shop called Brenleer's... on the planet Thrale, which wouldn't be even captured by Civilisation until Kim Kinnison's time, hundreds of years later.
