Archive for the ‘A.E. Van Vogt’ Category
Mission to the Stars (also published as The Mixed Men), by A. E. Van Vogt
published as a novel in 1952, based on short stories written in the 1940′s
where I got it: purchased used
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With an incredibly immersive and involved story, Van Vogt manages to use very few words to imply so much about characters, the environment, and complex political situations. I was happily surprised at how few pages it took me to feel like I was “in” the story. And another happy surprise, a female main character, who is also in a position of power, along with a handful of other female officers! How wonderfully unexpected!
Grand Captain Lady Laurr Gloria Cecily commands the Earth ship Star Cluster on their ten year mapping mission of the Megallanic Cloud. As their mission comes to a close and they are readying for the interstellar trip home, they come across a lonesome weather station, manned by a suicidal meteorologist named Watcher. What is a weather station doing out in the middle of no where, where humanity has barely been, and why in the world did he kill himself after he had been given medical care on board the Star Cluster? Against the strong suggestions of the rest of the captains on the ship, Grand Captain Gloria Cecily decides to dive back into the Magellanic Cloud to search for possible colonists.
The government of Earth is a singular government, and does not tolerate any independent human colonies. Revolts are either put down, or the populations involved are killed. If there are human colonists living in the Magellanic Cloud, they will be absorbed into the government of Earth. But these people do not want to be found!
Born and raised in rural Canada, A.E. Van Vogt (1912-2000) would grow up to become one of science fiction’s most complex and talked about authors. Always a fan of the fantastic, Van Vogt got his start writing regular old pulp fiction. He sold his first science fiction story in 1939. Like many golden age science fiction writers, most of his early works were short stories for the magazine industry. As the industry later changed to short novels and chapbooks, Van Vogt attempted to weave together short stories that took place in the same universe into a longer coherent story. Known as “fix-ups”, some of the them were very successful, others, not so much.
He moved to California in the 1940s, and watched as World War II unfolded. Obsessed with humanities reaction to totalitarian police states, the concept of governments that had complete control would be a theme that showed up in many of his works, along with the concept of superbeings that took control, or had to be kept from taking control.
His most well known works are Slan and The World of Null-A. Written in the 40s, both novels deal, to some extent or another, with superbeing humans, who are what we “really” are, and how to deal with a world that fears and hates those who are different. Mission to the Stars, which I’ll be reviewing tomorrow, also deals with the issue of humanity standing together to hate, hunt, and exterminate humans who are different from them. Pretty heavy stuff for pulp stories, if you think about it. The World of Null-A was eventually followed by two more Null -A books and inspired John C. Wright’s 2008 novel Null-A Continuum. For those of you suddenly craving a sample, the opening chapters of both Slan and The World of Null-A can be found on The Weird Worlds of A. E. Van Vogt.
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