Consideration of Works Past: A. E. Van Vogt

In my pursuit of fiction from times past, it was inevitable I would eventually run across A. E. Van Vogt. (Also here.)

My memory of Van Vogt was positive. I remembered enjoying Rogue Ship, The Beast (aka Moonbeast) and The Weapons Shops of Isher.

So, when I ran across Slan, a book I somewhat remembered enjoying, I opened it and re-read it.

It was terrible.

I don't mean that it was composed of interesting ideas wrapped in terrible prose and story telling terrible-- though that was, in fact, true. I mean even the ideas were marginal. SF ideas long enjoyed were slashed in a ruthless drive towards some vague storytelling goal. For example, a portion of the book takes place on Mars. Which had the same gravity as earth.

I mean, Slan was written in 1946. There's a lot of 1946 vintage New Age crap in the book. (Turns out that there were fools back then, too. Who knew?) The story centers around a genetically superior boy (a "slan") trying to survie in a world trying to exterminate such. Think X-Men. Think X-Men without the wit and sophistication of a 1960's comic book.

Well, that set me off. So I re-read The Beast. That was actually all right. It was still crap as far as the science was concerned. Like a lot of SF writers of the time, Van Vogt suffered from Ayn Rand syndrome. Little things like facts and actual science did not distract him from presenting a higher truth. But, hey. So did Sigmund Freud.

This led me to The Weapons Shops of Isher. Which was actually pretty good. Only a little Randism. And more interesting ideas. Still mored in the Golden Age rhetoric (which is pretty hard to take in the 21st century) but not bad.

I began to see a pattern.

It wasn't just experience. Slan was his first novel. The Weapons Shops of Isher was his seventh. The Beast was his eighteenth. Certainly, there is a progression in skill. What was interesting, though, was the introduction of limited narrators. Slan's narrator is the kid to whom it happens. He knows everything. Sees all. Talks to God. Not much room there for growth.

While there is an all knowing character in TWSOI, he's only on the stage for a small period. Not enough to affect the story. The other characters all interact out of their own drives and needs. It's the net of their interactions that makes the story. And the Weapons Shops were pretty cool, too.

The Beast returns back to a single main character but here Van Vogt does something very interesting. He breaks the character. Not once but several times, Jim Pendrake loses his memory, his wife and various limbs. It's the recovery of these things that make the novel interesting.

So: Where in my psyche as writer did Van Voght end up?

I'm not sure. I think he might have suggested complex story telling to me. Or multiple ideas. He's not the only one to do this so there's not likely to be a sole source. Certainly, along with Bester, he suggests that the mind is a fertile place to place the science in the fiction.

I think Van Vogt best exemplifies what others have referred to as a "sense of wonder". I think it would be better put as making sense of wonder. Any writer worth his salt should be able to show something wonderful to the reader. But SF, more than some genres, tries to put that wonder in the perspective of the real world.

At least, though, I've convinced myself he had something worth revisiting.
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