Seekers of Tomorrow

by Sam Moskowitz

  12 A.E. van VOGT

  Men have become famous because they introduced a single new word to the language. A. E. van Vogt is a good example. His term "slan" as an appellation for a human being possessing genetically superior attributes has virtually supplanted "mu-tation" and "superman" in communication among science-fic-tion readers. Like Karel Capek's R.U.R. which gave us the word "robot," van Vogt's term came from the title of a work of moving intensity. Its acceptance became an affirmation of its creator's narrative power.

  "Slan! That's a nonsense word now—a meaningless sylla-ble," announced editor John W. Campbell, Jr., in astounding science-fiction. "Next month it will mean a story so powerful it's going to put a new word in the language! 'Superman' is a makeshift term—'slan' will be the designation you'll remem-ber." Slan first appeared in astounding science-fiction, Sep-tember, 1940, as a four-part novel. It justified every word of the preliminary press agentry. A highly original approach to the concept of the superman in science fiction, it was instant-ly apparent that it must be counted among the classics in its category. Science fiction had enjoyed superman stories before: Gladiator by Philip Wylie; Seed of Life by John Taine; The Hampdenshire Wonder by J. D. Beresford; and probably the best known, Odd John by Olaf Stapledon.

  Van Vogt's story is a natural outgrowth of the last two. It deals with the development of a true mutation which will propagate its characteristics, but proceeds one step further than either novel. In The Hampdenshire Wonder, the super-man is killed while still a boy by the villagers who are instinctively hostile to him. A colony of supermen in Odd John, about to be attacked by the fleets of the major nations, destroys itself rather than come into tragic conflict with the human race. Van Vogt seems to have been the first science-fiction author with the courage to explore the sociological implications of the superhuman race living in and among humans.

  Slan is the story of a nine-year-old boy, Jommy Cross, who is a member of a superhuman race. His people possess both mental and physical superiority, being capable of reading minds through the aid of antenna-like tendrils in their hair; two hearts invest them with extraordinary stamina. His par-ents killed, Jommy Cross fights to survive in a society where organized hunts are conducted against slans by the humans and where tendrilless slans—born without the ability to read minds—are even more dangerous enemies.

  The moving and dramatic detail with which van Vogt relates the perpetual persecution of the slans by the "nor-mal" people and the superb characterization of Granny, the drunken old woman who aligns herself with Jommy Cross, lift this novel a big step above ordinary action adventure. The story is convincingly told from the viewpoint of the superman or "slan," which helps to give an air of believability unmatch-ed by its predecessors.

  Beyond this, the pace of the novel is sustained and height-ened by van Vogt's inventiveness in contriving a continuing series of taut situations. Even the scientific concepts contain much validity, particularly the great emphasis and detail on the use of atomic energy—in a story written five years before the explosion of the first atomic bomb.

  Slan was van Vogt's most famous and perhaps his finest story, but it was by no means his first success in science fiction.

  Alfred E. van Vogt was born of Dutch parentage in Winnipeg, Canada, April 26, 1912. His childhood was spent in a rural Saskatchewan community where his father was a lawyer. Two childhood incidents, individually trivial, scarred van Vogt emotionally for the rest of his life. The first occurred when he was eight years old. "At that time I went to the rescue of my younger brother, who was being beaten up by a kid my size," van Vogt recalls. "Justice was on my side, but for once right did not triumph. The bully, who, as I have said, was no bigger than I, turned on me, and proceeded to give me the lambasting of my life. It was so unfair, so completely at variance with the moral teachings I had re-ceived, that I was devastated by the defeat. I who had been gregarious became a lone wolf. . . . Somewhere, at this time, I got hold of a fairy story book—and my reading began."

  His reading preference was the cause of his second inci-dent. "When I was twelve, and we had moved to a town in Manitoba," he vividly remembers, "one of my school teach-ers took a fairy book away from me, and ordered me out to play. 'You,' she said, 'are too old for fairy stories.' I was profoundly sensitive to her implied criticism that I was back-ward. It was years before I looked at another fairy story. Childhood was a terrible period for me. I was like a ship without anchor being swept along through darkness in a storm. Again and again I sought shelter, only to be forced out of it by something new. I have come to the conclusion that most people are like that. They arrive at adulthood battered, shaken by the countless misunderstood passions of their bodies, and they very seldom completely recover." The family was living in Winnipeg when the depression struck in 1929. His father lost an excellent position as Western agent of the Holland-America Line, and as a result Alfred did not get to go to college. In the gaps between jobs as farmhand, truck driver, and statistical clerk, he turned to writing. It is strange that van Vogt did not immediately attempt science fiction, for he became a regular reader of amazing stories when he chanced upon the November, 1926, issue with the first installment of Garrett P. Serviss' epic novel, The Second Deluge. He secured most back issues and read the magazine regularly until 1930. But his initial literary success was with MacFadden Publications for a "true confes-sion" story. During the next seven years he subsisted on sales of confessions, love stories, trade magazine articles, as well as occasional radio plays. When van Vogt turned to science fiction in 1939 his writing was already in every sense of the word professional.

  He was inspired to write science fiction when he picked up a copy of the August, 1938, astounding science-fiction containing John W. Campbell's Who Goes There? That story dealt with an alien creature capable of controlling the body of any living thing. The first science-fiction story van Vogt wrote was Vault of the Beast, concerning a shapeless metallic robot that can mold itself into the image of any life form. It is the agent of extradimensional intelligences who entrust it with the mission of inducing a master human mathematician to open the lock of an impenetrable vault on Mars in which one of their number is imprisoned. The story was sent back by Campbell for rewriting and he quickly received another one, Black Destroyer, also patterned after Who Goes There?

  Black Destroyer won the cover position and first place in reader voting on stories in the July, 1939, astounding science-fiction, creating an overnight reputation for van Vogt. The "Black Destroyer" was Coeurl, an immensely pow-erful catlike creature who, unaided, almost conquers an earth spaceship which has landed on its planet. Possessed of ad-vanced intelligence and the ability to change the vibrational pattern of metal so that it can pass through walls, the beast proves a formidable foe. In the early portions of this story, as in Vault of the Beast, van Vogt strives for mood as well as action by utilizing techniques he learned from reading Thomas Wolfe. It is noteworthy to point out that while stylistically van Vogt and other science-fiction writers of this period were influenced by the mainstream, their themes were derived from authors in their own fields.

  Encouraged by the tremendous reception of Black De-stroyer, van Vogt redid the story, substituting as a menace a six-limbed creature capable of walking through metal, who plagues the same ship that had so much trouble ridding itself of the super-cat. Discord in Scarlet (astounding science-fiction, December, 1939) scored another hit.

  But van Vogt was having trouble coming up with anything original. While there were no complaints about the skillfully done Vault of the Beast (astounding science-fiction, August, 1940), it was becoming evident to readers that van Vogt was a one plot writer. He showed every evidence of repeating his monster bit as frequently as Ray Cummings had reworked The Girl in the Golden Atom. No one was more aware of the situation than van Vogt. "I was in a very dangerous position for a writer," he admitted. "I had to break into a new type of story or go down into oblivion as many other science-fiction writers have done. . . . I had to have s
omething. I thought to myself, what I need is all the alien attraction of the monster stories, but not about a monster. About this time I happened to glance through an old story for boys entitled A Biography of a Grizzly by Ernest Thompson Seton. That gave me the idea of what the story should be, and so the first chapters of Slan were written." There was no ignoring Slan. By any standard it was a milestone in science fiction. One of the most striking features of the tale was the breathless pace at which it proceeded. Event followed event in a manner reminiscent of the old silent movie cliffhangers.

  The method behind this compelling narrative flow was supplied by van Vogt in his essay Complication in the Science Fiction Story printed in Of Worlds Beyond, a symposium on "The Science of Science Fiction Writing," edited by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach and published by Fantasy Press in 1947. Van Vogt confided that he plotted his stories in terms of 800-word sequences. "Every scene has a purpose," he wrote,

  "which is stated near the beginning, usually by the third paragraph, and that purpose is either accomplished or not ac-complished by the end of the scene."

  By any reasonable standard, following the publication of Slan van Vogt should have instantly become the leading new author on the science-fiction horizon. He didn't, simply because 1941 turned out to be one of the most phenomenal years in author maturation the science-fiction field had ever seen. Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, L. Ron Hubbard, L. Sprague de Camp, Malcolm Jameson, Clifford D. Simak, Alfred Bester, Eric Frank Russell, Leigh Brackett, and Nelson S. Bond were all making their mark at this time.

  During 1941 only two relatively minor short stories by van Vogt were published. Not the First (astounding science-fiction, April, 1941) harkened back to that earlier period in the magazine's history when editor F. Orlin Tremaine estab-lished the magazine as leader in the field, through the device of featuring as

  "thought variants" startling new concepts and off-beat twists. In Not the First, a ship which has exceeded the speed of light is on a collision course with a star and unable to decelerate. It "saves" itself by backing up in time to the period just before it attained light's velocity. When time is permitted to flow normally, the same sequence of events repeats.

  The second story, The Seesaw (astounding science-fic-tion, July, 1941), tells the remarkable saga of a man who is sent back in time to before the creation of the universe. He has accumulated so much energy in transit that it is released in an immense explosion, which brings the universe into being. This story contains the earliest mention of the Weapon Shops, later to become the unifying element in one of van Vogt's most successful series.

  The entry of the United States into World War II saw a siphoning of science-fiction writers from the field. Most of them were young men and many had a scientific education. Those who did not go into the army went into research and industry.

  Van Vogt, living then in Toronto, had been turned down by his draft board because of poor vision. The year of his entry into science fiction, 1939, he had met and married Edna Mayne Hull, another professional writer, so his life revolved around the written word. Both of them began writing science fiction and fantasy with increased vigor and found the welcome sign out at astounding science-fiction and un-known. The moment was opportune for van Vogt to return and he did it impressively. Recruiting Station, built around the theme of men from 20,000 years in the future discreetly enlisting men from the past, was the first of his "comeback" stories and appeared complete as a short novel in astounding science-fiction March, 1942. The concept was later much imitated.

  The next issue of astounding science-fiction contained Cooperate — or Else, an immensely readable action story held together by a philosophical debate between an earthman and an alien monstrosity of high intelligence on the need to pool resources for survival. Actually, the story was a switch on his old monster theme.

  Asylum, a novelette in the May, 1942, astounding science-fiction, was a superb improvisation on the vampire theme in future tense. By this time it was obvious that van Vogt had developed a clear, sharp style of his own. It was virtually free of Thomas Wolfe, yet retaining emotional im-pact and employing astonishing adroitness. The paucity of ideas that seemed to limit him up until 1942 was now replaced by a seemingly endless stream of originality.

  This was particularly noticeable in the novelette The Weapon Shops, December, 1942, astounding science-fiction. Utilizing an idea first suggested in The Seesaw, he projected the most original retail chain store in fiction, shops appearing out of nowhere in a dictatorial nation and selling advanced types of energy weapons. The slogan of the shops is: "The right to buy weapons is the right to be free." Operating interdimensionally and capable of moving in time, the shops are invulnerable to any force, and through thought-reading devices they screen out those inimical to their exis-tence. The enthusiasm which greeted this story resulted in a novel-length sequel, The Weapon Makers, which ran in three installments beginning in the February, 1943, astounding science-fiction. The complexity of time and spatial lore that van Vogt embroidered into the story was staggering to the imagination, but its long-range influence lay in the introduc-tion of monarchies of the future, operating with a technology advanced enough to include spaceships.

  The alacrity with which other authors seized upon this theme was at best disconcerting. Since the heyday of, first, Heinlein and then van Vogt, the bulk of modern science fiction has visualized governments of the future as outright dictatorships, religious dictatorships, military dictatorship, or unvarnished monarchies. There has been precious little utopi-anism, let alone liberalism. There was no gainsaying van Vogt's emergence as an entertainer. There was a certain element of purity in his approach to writing. Above and beyond everything else the story was the thing. There rarely was any explicit propagan-dizing or moral message. His personal views and feelings he kept strictly in check. That he had his share of failures is an admission he has personally made, but in the worst of them he battled for reader interest in every line of the story, and where his motif became too cosmic to sustain the necessary sense of wonder, he substituted a note of mystery, which served nearly as well. Through 1943 and 1944, van Vogt produced a steady stream of stories. It was apparent that he was adept in any length from short story to novel. The most acclaimed during this period was Far Centaurus in astounding science-fic-tion, January, 1944, which embraced the notion (popular-ized by Robert A. Heinlein in Universe) of voyages to other star systems involving centuries of time. In this novelette, a group of men remain in suspended animation for 500 years in order to reach the nearest star Alpha Centauri. When they get there they learn that while they were in transit, faster-than-light ships were developed and a civilization hundreds of years old is waiting to welcome them.

  His success as a writer prompted him to move to Los Angeles in 1944, a change that had pronounced repercus-sions. Los Angeles was the center of every conceivable form of scientific, religious, and naturalist cult. Van Vogt's inquir-ing mind was receptive to most of them.

  The most profound effect upon his thinking resulted from the reading of Science and Sanity, "an introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and General Semantics" by Alfred Korzybski. A Polish-born engineer, Korzybski preached that the inability of men truly to interpret one another's words, really to communicate meaning, was a major cause of the world's woes. In Science and Sanity he attempted to show how one could evaluate words and facts sanely. He referred to his system as Null A or A, meaning non-Aristotelian. While there was some validity to Korzybski's theories, they were not original with him and the book was written in prose so ambiguous and involved that it virtually destroyed his premise. Van Vogt seized upon Korzybski's theories as a drowning man grasps at a floating spar. They became an obsession and swiftly appeared in his fiction.

  His World of A, a 100,000-word novel, began in the August, 1945, astounding science-fiction. Bewildered Gilbert Gos-seyn, mutant with a double mind, doesn't know who he is and spends the entire novel trying to find out. This involves walking through w
alls, being killed twice, and several epi-sodes on a Venus verdant with plant life but with no animal or insect life for cross-fertilization purposes. For these and many other mysteries van Vogt offers no explanation. A fascinating literary inspiration, a super computer, a

  "Games Machine," which selects the most advanced intellects on earth to be sent to Venus for Null A training, is scrapped early in the story. Though fast-paced, the novel is carelessly and choppily written with an alternate-chapter scene-transition technique lifted shamelessly out of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Letters of plaintive puzzlement began to pour in. Readers didn't understand what the story was all about. Campbell advised them to wait a few days; it took that long, he suggested, for the implications to sink in. The days turned into months but clarification never came. Lured by the little quotes from Science and Sanity which led off various chap-ters in World of A, readers began to investigate semantics and Korzybski. Sales of Science and Sanity soared. This book, which then retailed at $9 a copy and had seen only two small editions since 1933, prepared its first large printing. A reading of Science and Sanity was enough to absolve van Vogt of deliberately aiming to confuse. His work was every bit as clear as its inspiration. Nevertheless, World of A created such a furore that the term "Null-A Man," like "slan," became another synonym for superman with science-fiction and fan publications adopting it. General Semantics failed to supply all the answers for van Vogt. Suffering from extreme myopia, he decided to try the Bates' system of eye exercises, endorsed by Aldous Huxley among others. To many, among them van Vogt, the system offered the promise of disposing of glasses through a sys-tem of visual exercise and mental orientation.