Mission to the Stars, by A. E. Van Vogt
Posted on: January 19, 2012
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
.
.
.
.
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!
After the Grand Captain and her chief psychologist Nelsor take a guess at who these hidden people may be, the story splits, following Gloria Cecily in some chapters, and then switching to the point of view of Peter Malty, who is a “mixed man” living among the Dellians in the Cloud. It’s been nearly 15,000 years since the expulsion of the Dellian people from the galaxy. The Dellians followed a special kind of mind manipulation with the goals of intense intelligence, pure logic and unbelievably high IQs that caused many to be referred to robots, even though they were still human. Their “normal” human caretakes became known as the “non-Dellians”. In the rare event that a Dellian and non-Dellian were able to have a child, the result was a superbeing. Called the Mixed Men, these superbeings were capable of reading minds, and mentally manipulating others with ease.
Curiousity for the Mixed Men turned into fear, which quickly led to hatred, extermination and expulsion. The Dellians, non-Dellians, and secretive Mixed Men have been living in hiding in the Magellanic Cloud for the last 15,000 years. Perhaps in another fifteen thousand, the Mixed Men will be seen as equals by their own people. Until then, Maltby and his underground can only plan, and wait.
With his superbeing powers, Maltby allows his ship to be captured by the Star Cluster. His goal is to slowly take over the minds of the crew so he can learn about these humans, and destroy them if necessary. Once Chief psyhcologist Nelsor figures out his plan, she comes up with something so much more subtle.
See how quickly this gets complicated? And I haven’t even told you anything yet about the space weather and the technologies on board the ship, not to mention the politics of the Dellian culture and the dangers of the Mixed Men.
And yes, there is weather.The ship has entire departments of astrogators and meteorologists, analyzing and mapping storms. It’s someone what explained, but I believe the “Storms” they are trying to avoid are radiation and other waves that would blast out of supernovae? Again, not sure, and scientists probably had no idea at the time what “space weather” might have entailed, or not. The references to astrogators and meteorologists lent a deliciously nostalgic feeling to the whole story, like we were on a giant sea-going ship in the middle of an endless ocean, with only the night sky to guide the way.
Van Vogt couldn’t possibly have been the first science fiction author to come up with the idea of a “transporter”, but his definitely is the coolest. Called the “matter transmitter”, it breaks you down into your bits and pieces, send the bits and pieces to where you want to go, and then puts you back together again. Grand Captain Lady Laurr Gloria Cecily uses it all the time to get from one part of the ship to the another, because this ship is miles long (It kept bringing to mind the infamous line “The ship is too big. If I walk, the movie will be over”). But here’s the brilliant part, that I wish Star Trek had latched onto: because you are being scrambled back together again at the other side, who is to say you have to be put back together again exactly the way you were? These future humans use the Matter Transmitter as a medical device, fixing war wounds and injuries as they are transporting people. How brilliant is that?
The first two thirds or so of Mission to the Stars was absolutely incredible. Immersive, imaginative, innovative, I loved it and couldn’t put it down. The end of the story takes an incongruous direction and gets very strange and disconnected, proving this was indeed one of Van Vogt’s “fix-ups”, where he took a handful of short stories that followed the same characters and attempted to smush them into one coherent novel. But all in all, Mission to the Stars was a total winner, probably one of my better Vintage/golden age reads yet!
6 Responses to "Mission to the Stars, by A. E. Van Vogt"
January 19, 2012 at 4:51 pm
I think I read this in 1958 or 1959, and at the time didn’t care much for it. I wonder if I’d like it better now? Come to think of it, the only van Vogt I really liked were The Voyage of the Space Beagle and The Weapon Shops of Isher.
LikeLike
January 20, 2012 at 9:55 am
It had a great start, but the end really faltered for me. Van Vogt’s Voyage of the Space Beagle sounds really good, but I don’t know anything about The Weapons Shop of Isher, what’s that one about? Have you read his Man of a Thousand Names? I have it, but haven’t picked it up yet.
July 21, 2020 at 12:32 pm
It’s eight years later and during the pandemic I found and read, “Mission to the Stars”, what a treat. I agree with the reviewer and others about the rushed ending, there was so much more Van Vogt could have done with the main characters, but didn’t. I really enjoyed the politics, the interplay between the Grand Captain and psychologist—I wished for more. Same with Maltby, he tied up the crisis in a few paragraphs and without much of a struggle and the the same with Gloria—it was rushed but still satisfying.
“Voyage of the Space Beagle,” was a series of short stories was my first sf novel, so I’m completely biased, but again shows Van Vogt’s amazing imagination and how the politics of humanity affects space exploration. Great characters, both human and not. It may be my next pandemic read.
Thanks for your review.
LikeLike
July 21, 2020 at 6:37 pm
Thank you for visiting and commenting! I too, have used these last few months to catch up on reading. And it sure is nice to escape into a book for a few hours.
LikeLike
the Little Red Reviewer 
January 19, 2012 at 11:22 am
That one sounds really good and at the same time sounds like SO many classic sf books I’ve read where the author suddenly seems to get this desire to take the story in some weird, often abstract, direction. But if the majority of the story is good enough it often overcomes my frustration with that occurrence and this one sounds good.
That matter transmitter as medical device sounds similar to something Niven did later in A World Out of Time where they used their transporters to remove sickness/disease.
How fun to have a book written during this time that was populated by female characters who weren’t the sf equivalent to waitresses, stewardesses, or sex objects. Well done Van Vogt!
LikeLiked by 1 person
January 20, 2012 at 10:01 am
I know, totally! The Grand Captain is a woman, as are a few other officers that she has a lot of conversations with. And she’s not very nice either, she completely manipulates people to get what she wants (and wins nearly every time), ignores most of her subordinates pleadings and suggestions, at the beginning she kinda reminded me of Cain from BSG. She’s almost more pirate captain than military captain. If this was a movie, it would actually pass the Bechdel test!
But yes, very much so about the strange abstract direction at the end. I don’t know if he felt pressured to put in an awkward attempt at romance or what. It’s a fix-up, a handful of shorts smushed to together to make a novel. All the stories fit so perfectly that you’d never know they weren’t originally meant to be a novel. All of course, except the last one, which is the same characters in the same timeline, but everyone has completely different personalities.
LikeLiked by 1 person