A. E. van Vogt

A. E. van Vogt

Van Vogt about 1963
Born Alfred Elton van Vogt
(1912-04-26)April 26, 1912
Gretna, Manitoba, Canada
Died January 26, 2000(2000-01-26) (aged 87)
Los Angeles, California, US
Occupation Writer
Nationality Canadian
Period 1939–1986 (science fiction)
Genre Science fiction
Literary movement Golden Age of Science Fiction
Spouse
Signature

Alfred Elton van Vogt (/væn voʊt/; April 26, 1912 – January 26, 2000) was a Canadian-born science fiction author regarded as one of the most popular, influential, and complex[1] science fiction writers of the mid-twentieth century, the so-called Golden Age of the genre.

Early life and writings

Van Vogt was born on a farm in Edenburg, a Russian Mennonite community east of Gretna, Manitoba, Canada. Until he was four years old, van Vogt and his family spoke only a dialect of Low German in the home.[2] Van Vogt's father, a lawyer, moved his family several times and his son found these moves difficult, remarking in later life:

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.[2]

After starting his writing career by writing for true-confession style pulp magazines such as True Story, van Vogt decided to switch to writing something he enjoyed, science fiction (SF).[3] He was inspired by the August 1938 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, which he picked up at a newsstand. The story "Who Goes There?" led him to write "Vault of the Beast", which he submitted to that same magazine. It was rejected, but the rejection letter encouraged him to try again. He then sent in a new story called "The Black Destroyer," which was accepted. A rewritten version of "Vault of the Beast" would be published in 1940.

van Vogt's "Ship of Darkness" was the cover story in the second issue of Fantasy Book in 1948

Van Vogt's first SF publication was inspired by The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin.[4] "The Black Destroyer" was published in July 1939 by John W. Campbell in Astounding Science Fiction, the centennial year of Darwin's journal. It featured a fierce, carnivorous alien, the coeurl, stalking the crew of an exploration spaceship. "Discord in Scarlet" was his second story to be published, also appearing as the cover story.[5] It was accompanied by interior illustrations, created by Frank Kramer[lower-alpha 1] and Paul Orban.[6][7] (Van Vogt and Kramer[lower-alpha 1] thus debuted in the issue of Astounding that is sometimes singled out for ushering in the "Golden Age" of science fiction.[8]) The former story served as the inspiration for a number of science fiction movies.[lower-alpha 2] In 1950, the two were combined with two other stories as a fix-up novel, The Voyage of the Space Beagle (Simon & Schuster), which was published in at least five European languages by 1955.[6] Positing the need for exobiologists who will appreciate the differences between the inhabitants of other planets and ourselves, it stresses the importance of the civilian rather than military in exploration of other cultures.

Van Vogt's first completed novel, and one of his most famous, is Slan (Arkham House, 1946), which Campbell serialized in Astounding September to December 1940.[6] Using what became one of van Vogt's recurring themes, it told the story of a 9-year-old superman living in a world in which his kind are slain by Homo sapiens.

In 1941, van Vogt decided to become a full-time writer, quitting his job at the Canadian Department of National Defence. Extremely prolific for a few years, van Vogt wrote a large number of short stories. In the 1950s, many of them were retrospectively patched together into novels, or "fixups" as he called them, a term that entered the vocabulary of science-fiction criticism. When the original stories were related (e.g., The War against the Rull) this was often successful. When not (e.g., Quest for the Future) the disparate stories thrown together generally made for a less coherent plot.

Post-war philosophy

In 1944, van Vogt moved to Hollywood, where his writing took on new dimensions after World War II. Van Vogt was always interested in the idea of all-encompassing systems of knowledge (akin to modern meta-systems)—the characters in his very first story used a system called "Nexialism" to analyze the alien's behavior, and he became interested in the general semantics of Alfred Korzybski.

He subsequently wrote three novels merging these overarching themes, The World of Null-A and The Pawns of Null-A in the late 1940s, and Null-A Three in the early 1980s. Null-A, or non-Aristotelian logic, refers to the capacity for, and practice of, using intuitive, inductive reasoning (compare fuzzy logic), rather than reflexive, or conditioned, deductive reasoning.

Van Vogt was also profoundly affected by revelations of totalitarian police states that emerged after World War II. He wrote a mainstream novel that was set in Communist China, The Violent Man (1962); he said that to research this book he had read 100 books about China. Into this book he incorporated his view of "the violent male type", which he described as a "man who had to be right", a man who "instantly attracts women" and who he said were the men who "run the world".[9]

At the same time, in his fiction, van Vogt was consistently sympathetic to absolute monarchy as a form of government.[10] This was the case, for instance, in the Weapon Shop series, the Mixed Men series, and in single stories such as "Heir Apparent" (1945), whose protagonist was described as a "benevolent dictator".

Van Vogt systematized his writing method, using scenes of 800 words or so where a new complication was added or something resolved. Several of his stories hinge on temporal conundra, a favorite theme. He stated that he acquired many of his writing techniques from three books: Narrative Technique by Thomas Uzzell, The Only Two Ways to Write a Story by John Gallishaw, and Twenty Problems of the Fiction Writer by Gallishaw.[2]

He also claimed many of his ideas came from dreams; throughout his writing life he arranged to be awakened every 90 minutes during his sleep period so he could write down his dreams.[11]

In 1950, van Vogt was briefly appointed as head of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics operation in California. Dianetics was the secular precursor to Hubbard's Church of Scientology. The operation went broke nine months later, but never went bankrupt, due to van Vogt's arrangements with creditors. Van Vogt and his wife opened their own Dianetics centre, partly financed by his writings, until he "signed off" around 1961. At the time of his interview with Charles Platt,[11] van Vogt was still president of the Californian Association of Dianetic Auditors.

In 1951, he published The Weapon Shops of Isher; in the same decade, van Vogt also produced collections and fixups such as The Mixed Men (1952) and The War Against the Rull (1959), and the two "Clane" novels, Empire of the Atom (1957) and The Wizard of Linn (1962), which were inspired (like Asimov's Foundation series) by the Roman imperial history, specifically the reign of Claudius. His later novels included fixups such as The Beast (also known as Moonbeast) (1963), Rogue Ship (1965), Quest for the Future (1970) and Supermind (1977); expanded short stories (The Darkness on Diamondia (1972), Future Glitter (also known as Tyranopolis; 1973); original novels such as Children of Tomorrow (1970), The Battle of Forever (1971) and The Anarchistic Colossus (1977); plus sequels to his classic works, many of which were promised, but only one of which appeared, Null-A Three (1984; originally published in French). Several later books were original in Europe, and at least one novel has only ever appeared in Italian, no English version yet published.

On January 26, 2000, van Vogt died in Los Angeles, United States from Alzheimer's disease and was survived by his second wife, the former Lydia Bereginsky.

Critical reception

Critical opinion about the quality of van Vogt's work has been sharply divided.

One early and articulate critic was then-23-year-old Damon Knight. In a 1945[12] chapter-long essay reprinted in In Search of Wonder,[10] entitled "Cosmic Jerrybuilder: A. E. van Vogt", Knight famously remarked that van Vogt "is no giant; he is a pygmy who has learned to operate an overgrown typewriter". Knight described The World of Null-A as "one of the worst allegedly adult science fiction stories ever published". About van Vogt's writing, Knight said:

In general van Vogt seems to me to fail consistently as a writer in these elementary ways: 1. His plots do not bear examination. 2. His choice of words and his sentence-structure are fumbling and insensitive. 3. He is unable either to visualize a scene or to make a character seem real.

About Empire of the Atom Knight wrote:

If you can only throw your reasoning powers out of gear—something many van Vogt fans find easy to do—you'll enjoy this one.

Knight also expressed misgivings about van Vogt's politics, noting that his stories almost invariably present absolute monarchy in a favorable light. But in 1974, he went partly back on his criticism after finding out about Vogt's working methods about writing down his dreams:[13]

This explains a good deal about the stories, and suggests that it is really useless to attack them by conventional standards. If the stories have a dream consistency which affects readers powerfully, it is probably irrelevant that they lack ordinary consistency.

On the other hand, when science fiction author Philip K. Dick was asked [14] which science fiction writers had influenced his work the most, he replied:

I started reading sf when I was about twelve and I read all I could, so any author who was writing about that time, I read. But there's no doubt who got me off originally and that was A.E. van Vogt. There was in van Vogt's writing a mysterious quality, and this was especially true in The World of Null A. All the parts of that book did not add up; all the ingredients did not make a coherency. Now some people are put off by that. They think that's sloppy and wrong, but the thing that fascinated me so much was that this resembled reality more than anybody else's writing inside or outside science fiction.

Dick also defended van Vogt against Damon Knight’s criticisms:

Damon feels that it's bad artistry when you build those funky universes where people fall through the floor. It's like he's viewing a story the way a building inspector would when he's building your house. But reality really is a mess, and yet it's exciting. The basic thing is, how frightened are you of chaos? And how happy are you with order? Van Vogt influenced me so much because he made me appreciate a mysterious chaotic quality in the universe which is not to be feared.

In a review of Transfinite: The Essential A.E. van Vogt, science fiction writer Paul Di Filippo said:

Van Vogt knew precisely what he was doing in all areas of his fiction writing. There's hardly a wasted word in his stories... His plots are marvels of interlocking pieces, often ending in real surprises and shocks, genuine paradigm shifts, which are among the hardest conceptions to depict. And the intellectual material of his fictions, the conceits and tossed-off observations on culture and human and alien behavior, reflect a probing mind...Each tale contains a new angle, a unique slant, that makes it stand out.[15]

In The John W. Campbell Letters, Campbell says, "The son-of-a-gun gets hold of you in the first paragraph, ties a knot around you, and keeps it tied in every paragraph thereafter—including the ultimate last one".[9][16]

Harlan Ellison (who began reading van Vogt as a teenager)[17] wrote, "Van was the first writer to shine light on the restricted ways in which I had been taught to view the universe and the human condition".[9]

Writing in 1984 David Hartwell said:[18]

No one has taken van Vogt seriously as a writer for a long time. Yet he has been read and still is. What no one seems to have noticed is that van Vogt, more than any other single SF writer, is the conduit through which the energy of Gernsbackian, primitive wonder stories have been transmitted through the Campbellian age, when earlier styles of SF were otherwise rejected, and on into SF of the present.

The literary critic Leslie A. Fiedler said something similar:[19]

Van Vogt is a test case, ...since an apology for or analysis of science fiction which fails to come to terms with his appeal and major importance, defends or defines the genre by falsifying it.

The American literary critic Fredric Jameson says of van Vogt:

...that van Vogt's work clearly prepares the way for that of the greatest of all Science Fiction writers, Philip K. Dick, whose extraordinary novels and stories are inconceivable without the opening onto that play of unconscious materials and fantasy dynamics released by van Vogt, and very different from the more hard-science aesthetic ideologies of his contemporaries (from Campbell to Heinlein).[20]:315

Nevertheless, van Vogt still has his critics. For example, Darrell Schweitzer writing to The New York Review of Science Fiction in 1999[21] quoted a passage from the original van Vogt novelette "The Mixed Men", which he was then reading, and remarked:

This is the realism, and logic, of a small boy playing with toy soldiers in a sandbox. I'm tougher than you. I’ve got a billion spaceships! They’re brand-new. They only took 800 years to develop.

And this is a story in which most of the cast either have two brains or are really robots...and even the emotions of the human characters are programmed or deprogrammed as part of plots within counter plots. Next to this, Doc Smith was an icy realist. There is no intersection with adult reality at any point, for all van Vogt was able to write was that small boy's sandbox game with an adult level of intensity. This is, I think, the secret of van Vogt's bizarre fascination, as awful as his actual writing might be, and why he appealed so strongly to Philip K. Dick, who managed to put more adult characters and emotions into equally crazy situations. It's ultimately very strange to find this sort of writing so prominently sponsored by supposedly rational and scientifically minded John W. Campbell, when it seems to contravene everything the Golden Age stood for.

Recognition

In 1946, van Vogt and his first wife, Edna Mayne Hull, were Guests of Honor at the fourth World Science Fiction Convention.[22]

In 1980, van Vogt received a "Casper Award" (precursor to the Canadian Prix Aurora Awards) for Lifetime Achievement.[23][24]

The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 14th Grand Master in 1995 (presented 1996).[25] There had been great controversy within SFWA regarding its long wait in bestowing its highest honor (limited to living writers, no more than one annually[25]). Writing an obituary of van Vogt, Robert J. Sawyer, a fellow Canadian writer of science fiction remarked:

There was no doubt that van Vogt should have received this honor much earlier — the injustice of him being overlooked, at least in part because of damnable SFWA politics, had so incensed Harlan Ellison, a man with an impeccable moral compass, that he'd lobbied hard on the Sci-Fi Channel and elsewhere on van Vogt's behalf.[26]

It is generally held that the "damnable SFWA politics" concerns Damon Knight, the founder of the SFWA, who abhorred van Vogt's style and politics and thoroughly demolished his literary reputation in the 1950s.[27]

Harlan Ellison was more explicit in 1999 introduction to Futures Past: The Best Short Fiction of A. E. van Vogt:[17]

... at least I was able to make enough noise to get Van the Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Award, which was presented to him in full ceremony during one of the last moments when he was cogent and clearheaded enough to understand that finally, at last, dragged kicking and screaming to honor him, the generation that learned from what he did and what he had created had, at last, 'fessed up to his importance. ... were the same ones who assured me that Van would never get the Grand Master until Damon Knight had gotten it first, because Damon had loathed Van's work and had, in fact written the essay that ridiculed Van and held him up to opprobrium for decades thereafter, and Damon having founded SFWA it would be an affront to him if Van got it first. Well, I don't know if that's true or not, though it is was common coin in the field for years; but Damon got the Grand Master award in 1994. And Van got it in 1995.[lower-alpha 3] As they say during sweeps week on television: coincidence or conspiracy?

In 1996, van Vogt received a Special Award from the World Science Fiction Convention "for six decades of golden age science fiction".[24] That same year, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in its inaugural class of two deceased and two living persons, along with writer Jack Williamson (also living) and editors Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell.[28]

The works of van Vogt were translated into French by the surrealist Boris Vian (The World of Null-A as Le Monde des Å in 1958), and van Vogt's works were "viewed as great literature of the surrealist school".[29] In addition, Slan was published in French, translated by Jean Rosenthal, under the title À la poursuite des Slans, as part of the paperback series 'Editions J'ai Lu: Romans-Texte Integral' in 1973, this edition also listing the following works by van Vogt as having been published in French as part of this series: Le Monde des Å, La faune de l'espace, Les joueurs du Å, L'empire de l'atome, Le sorcier de Linn, Les armureries d'Isher, Les fabricants d'armes, and Le livre de Ptath.[30]

Works

Novels

Primary dates represent first publication in book form.

Collections

Nonfiction

Notes

  1. 1 2 According to ISFDB, writer van Vogt[6] and illustrator Kramer both made their debuts, at least in speculative fiction, with "The Black Destroyer".
    "Frank Kramer – Summary Bibliography". ISFDB. Retrieved 2013-04-04.
  2. ↑
    This [The voyage of the Space Beagle] is the classic 'bug-eyed monster' novel, the unacknowledged inspiration for the film Alien and scores of similar
    — David Pringle, (1990) "The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction", Grafton Books, page 346.
    The stories collected in The Voyage of the Space Beagle were perhaps the first to chronicle the adventures of the crew of a large, military-style starship exploring the universe, and doubtless influenced Gene Roddenberry strongly when he created Star Trek. [...]One of the Space Beagle stories purportedly inspired the movie Alien - the resemblance was great enough that van Vogt brought a lawsuit against the filmmakers, which reportedly settled for a $50,000 payment.
    — Aaron Hughes, "Neglected Masters Book Review" retrieved 2010-09-09
    ... The Voyage Of The Space Beagle (1950), later inspired the original Star Trek series and the movie Alien.
    .
    'Black Destroyer' has been cited as the inspiration for the movie Alien and its many sequels and imitations
    — Gerald Jonas, (2000) "A. E. van Vogt, 87, Forceful Science-Fiction Voice", New York Times obituary, 2000-02-04
    Alien is thus virtually a film version or translation of "Black Destroyer". (Van Vogt is not credited, and as it turns out he sued the film-makers for plagiarism; the latter settling out of court.
    — Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future. The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (New York: Verso, 2005, pp. 325)
  3. ↑ The award was presented to Knight and van Vogt in 1995 and 1996 respectively, the years following selection. It is restricted to living authors, no more than one annually. It was renamed the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master (Award) after Knight's death in 2002.[25]

References

  1. ↑ "Although [van Vogt] catered for the pulps, he intensified the emotional impact and complexity of the stories they would bear[.]" Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter, eds. (1995). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 1268. ISBN 978-0-312-13486-0.
  2. 1 2 3 Panshin, Alexei "Man Beyond Man. The Early Stories of A. E. van Vogt" (page 1). Retrieved August 29, 2010.
  3. ↑ Elliot, Jeffery: "An Interview with A. E. Van Vogt", Science Fiction Review #23, 1977. Available online http://www.angelfire.com/art/megathink/vanvogt/vanvogt_interview.html Retrieved on August 29, 2010
  4. ↑ Drake, H. L., A. E. van Vogt: Science Fantasy's Icon, Booklocker.com Inc., 2001, page 36.
  5. ↑ "The Voyage of the Space Beagle" (cover images for numerous editions and adaptations of "The Black Destroyer" and its series). The Weird Worlds of A. E. van Vogt. Magnus Axelsson (pre-2000 to 2009). Now hosted by icshi.net. Retrieved April 4, 2013.
  6. 1 2 3 4 A. E. van Vogt at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). Retrieved April 4, 2013. Select a title to see its linked publication history and general information. Select a particular edition (title) for more data at that level, such as a front cover image or linked contents.
  7. ↑ Panshin, Alexei (1994). "Introduction to Slan". Connecticut: The Easton Press.
    Quote: "His first published SF story was "Black Destroyer" in the July 1939 Astounding. Not only was "Black Destroyer" pictured on the cover of the magazine, but it would be recognized as one of the most significant stories published in Astounding that year".
  8. ↑ For example, Peter Nicholls (Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter, eds. (1993). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-312-09618-2.) says "The beginning of Campbell's particular Golden Age of SF can be pinpointed as the summer of 1939" and goes on to begin the discussion with the July 1939 issue. Lester del Rey (del Rey, Lester (1979). The World of Science Fiction and Fantasy: The History of a Subculture. New York: Ballantine Books. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-345-25452-8.) comments that "July was the turning point".
  9. 1 2 3 Drake, Harold L. (1989). The Null-A Worlds of A.E. van Vogt. C. Drumm Books. ISBN 093605543X.
  10. 1 2 Knight, Damon (1967). In Search of Wonder. Chicago: Advent.
  11. 1 2 Platt, Charles, "A. E. van Vogt – A Profile". From Who Writes Science Fiction? (London: Savoy Books, 1980); Dream Makers: The Uncommon People Who Write Science Fiction (Berkeley Books, 1980).
  12. ↑ Van Vogt, A E (1970). Introduction to The World Of Null-A (London: Sphere Science Fiction, 1976), p. viii
  13. ↑ "Notes, Reports, and Correspondence: Spring 1974". Retrieved March 15, 2016.
  14. ↑ "Vertex Interviews Philip K. Dick". Vertex, Vol. 1, no. 6, February 1974.
  15. ↑ DiFilippo, Paul: "Off The Shelf". Retrieved January 19, 2003. Archived April 3, 2005, at the Wayback Machine.
  16. ↑ Campbell, John W. (1991). The John W. Campbell Letters With Isaac Asimov and A.E. van Vogt. 2. A.C.Projects. ISBN 978-0-931150-19-7.
  17. 1 2 Ellison, Harlan (June 1999), "Van is Here, But Van is Gone". Introduction to Futures Past: The Best Short Fiction of A.E. van Vogt (Kilimanjaro Corp., 1999). Reprinted in "A. E. van Vogt, 1912-2000" (SFRevu 2001-01-28). Retrieved 2001-08-31.
    Quote: "Van is still with us, as I write this, in June of 1999, slightly less than fifty years since I first encountered van Vogt prose in a January 1950 issue of Startling Stories ...."
  18. ↑ Hartwell, David (1984), Age of Wonders: Exploring the Worlds of Science Fiction, New York, Walker, pages 131-32. ISBN 978-0-89366-163-2.
  19. ↑ Fiedler, Leslie A. (1983), "The Criticism of Science Fiction", Coordinates: Placing Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. George E. Slusser, Eric S. Rabkin, and Robert Scholes (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press), pages 10-11. ISBN 978-0-8093-1105-7.
  20. ↑ Jameson, Fredric. "The Space of Science Fiction: Narrative in Van Vogt", Archaeologies of the Future. The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (New York: Verso, 2005).
  21. ↑ Schweitzer, Darrell (1999), "Letters of Comment", The New York Review of Science Fiction, May 1999, Number 129, Vol. 11, No. 9.
  22. ↑ Beetz, Kirk H. (1996). Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction. Beacham Publishing. ISBN 978-0-933833-38-8.
  23. ↑ Mullin, Dennis (October 27, 2007). "Prix AURORA Awards". Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Retrieved May 2, 2008.
  24. 1 2 "van Vogt, A. E." Archived October 16, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.. The Locus Index to SF Awards: Index to Literary Nominees. Locus Publications. Retrieved March 25, 2013.
  25. 1 2 3 "Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master". Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Retrieved March 25, 2013.
  26. ↑ Sawyer, Robert J. "Remembering A. E. van Vogt". Retrieved August 31, 2010.
  27. ↑ Hartwell, David: "The Way We Were: A. E. van Vogt, 1912-2000", The New York Review of Science Fiction, March 2000, Number 139, Vol. 12, No. 7, page 24.
  28. ↑ "Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame". Mid American Science Fiction and Fantasy Conventions, Inc. Retrieved March 25, 2013. This was the official website of the hall of fame to 2004.
  29. ↑ Watson, Ian (1999), "Science Fiction, Surrealism, and Shamanism", The New York Review of Science Fiction, June 1999, Number 130, Vol. 11, No. 10, page 9.
  30. ↑ À la poursuite des Slans, A. E. Van Vogt, Editions J'ai Lu, 31, rue de Tournon, Paris-VIe, 1973
  31. ↑ Dubé, Denis. "Plot Summary: To Conquer Kiber by A.E. van Vogt". Sevagram. Retrieved 12 June 2016.

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