Quote:???
BUT! If you read carefully, you start to pick out inconsistencies. The Arisians first of all, caused the Boskonian galaxy to slip out of whatever universe they occupied and into this one. The galaxy was then as a result of their actions on a collision course with the Milky Way. The Boskonians took exception to this.
According to the version of the story I read, the Eddorians (the super-race behind Boskone) - having exhausted their own universe, and seeking one in which there was or would be enough life for them to have Empire and Dominion - sent their *planet* hopping from one universe to another. They eventually arrived in ours, over in Lundmark's Nebula, which was already on a collision course with our own galaxy; realizing that this would result in the creation of a plethora of planets and hence (by the rules of that multiverse) sentient races, they decided to stay.
The Arisians, having noticed Eddore's advent into their universe, went for a visit, assessed the Eddorians, realized that they could neither be coexisted with nor (by the Arisians) destroyed, sealed the newcomers' memories of that visit, and began the process of creating a race superior to themselves for the purpose of thwarting the ambitions of the fundamentally hostile interlopers - by the only means possible given the Eddorians' mindset, destroying them.
Quote:Again, in the version of the story I read, the Arisians were trying to guide the rise of Civilization, and it was the Eddorians - specifically Gharlane, second most powerful of their race - who were responsible for knocking it back to the Stone Age so many times; he was also doing so elsewhere, in between times, intent on preventing any of the newly developing races from becoming even a potential threat to the Eddorians down the line. The Overlords of Delgon, bane of the Velantians, are also specifically stated to be his creatures.
The first book in fact deals with several Earth histories, which keep being rolled back and rewritten as the Arisians take humanity's toys away from them. Finally, they decide the only way humanity can be useful is if they never develop anything more sophisticated than the vacuum tube
The only place I've seen any indication that the Arisians decided to prevent humanity from developing 'advanced' technology (meaning computers and the like) is in the backstory to a Lensman RP book, I think one for GURPS. It struck me as something of a retcon, written to explain away the technological discrepancy for the mind of the modern consumer; it's by no means necessary to the continuity.
That the Arisians acted in a way which can easily be described as cold-blooded I don't dispute; things like the Nemian war, to cite one of the earliest on record (and to say nothing of the pre-interstellar-travel conflicts, even just in the Solarian system), involve horrific tragedies and could have been prevented. Since, however, if they had intervened at that stage then barring outside intervention by someone *else* the Eddorians would later have won, with results even *more* horrific, they took the long view.
I'd note that the original versions of at least some of the Lensman stories were apparently written as serials in one or more of the SF magazines of the time, and later collected and rewritten (to allow them to be made part of the same universe) for publication in book form. This is why I don't just call bullshit; it's entirely possible that you have a version of the story in which things are quite different from the one I have.