van Vogt...?

WTF. Who knew about this - a "sequel" to van Vogt's Null-A books by John C. Wright? Wasn't it enough that the World's Greatest Hack, Kevin J. Anderson, spewed out a sequel to Slan?

Admittedly, van Vogt's novels were mostly rubbish, but he did write some cracking, and bonkers, sf. The Undercover Aliens remains a favourite, The Weapon Shops of Isher is still a lot of fun, and Mission to the Stars is certainly worth a read.

I like some of his stories, collected in volumes like DESTINATION UNIVERSE and...and...er, others. I'd have to go down into my basement to check. VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE is fun, a series of interlocked short stories about the alien life forms the crew encounters as they trek about the cosmos. And I know he (van Vogt) gave Philip K. Dick the idea of how to structure a novel: have two separate stories going on and bring them together at some point in the narrative. And there you have it, boys and girls, one way to create a 250-page book...

Wasn't it on the basis of Voyage of the Space Beagle that VV sued the makers of Alien?

Yes. The story 'Discord in Scarlet', I think.

Cliff, could those other volumes be The Best of A.E van Vogt Volume 1 and The Best of A.E van Vogt Volume 2?

Ian: Eh, I'm trying remember...you sonofabitch, now I have to go and look.

(Returning, huffing from the steps and a fight with a spider the size of a potted plant)

DESTINATION UNIVERSE, BEST OF A.E. VAN VOGT (intro by Barry Malzberg) and a really battered copy of PENDULUM. Satisfied?

I'm MAILING the spider to you, Sales. Watch you P.O. box, you swine...

What sort of science fiction does Van Vogt write? I have seen a few of his books, but have not had the chance to read them yet. From what little has been written here, it seems like old Space Opera stuff.

Yeah, and given books today, the sequel might be as long as any 4 of his books, too.

Here's some examples :-

'Black Destroyer' a well known early story from the Space Beagle time.

2113 : A. E. van Vogt : Black Destroyer - A. E. van Vogt
2114 : A. E. van Vogt : Hand of the Gods - A. E. van Vogt
2115 : A. E. van Vogt : A Son is Born - A. E. van Vogt
2116 : A. E. van Vogt : Child of the Gods - A. E. van Vogt

Yeah, it's Space opera type, golden age stuff, similar themes to Blish at times, Space exploration and Diaspora and Advanced humans.

I found SLAN dull and really do prefer his short stories--I suggest readers new to Van Vogt should start there.

I didn't like Slan much either. And while The Weapon Shops of Isher libertarian sensibilities rankled a little, I did enjoy it. I recently managed to pick up a copy of Null-A Three, so I plan to reread all three of the Null-A books some time.

The Weapon Shops is worth a look (and is short stories).

The Secret Galactics is rubbish, and Rogue Ship is silly. Both are best avoided.

I remember one of van Vogt's signature moves was to have a character suddenly come to an extremely important realization, which changed everything - and I, at least, never would figure out just what that realization was.

iansales #13 - the silliness may be the most interesting part, sometimes, with van Vogt.

"I remember one of van Vogt's signature moves was to have a character suddenly come to an extremely important realization, which changed everything - and I, at least, never would figure out just what that realization was."

I can never understand why people make such a fuss over PKD, and 'ignore' van Vogt. I'd pick up a van Vogt in an instant, if I hadn't seen it before, but I'd hesitate over Dick.

Arthur: the Big Three were Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke. Never van Vogt. He was certainly popular, and during the 1970s and early 1980s his books were as ubiquitous in UK books shops as Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Herbert and Smith. That's when I bought most of mine - I loved his fiction when I was a kid.

And now that I'm older... his books are still entertaining, albeit somewhat dated, frequently incoherent, and often let down by shoddy prose. Van Vogt is said to be the only sf writer to have made a career out of the advice given by a How To Write book. He always wrote using 800-word scenes... which gives his stories a headlong frantic pace which can make them exciting reads. His science, however, was usually completely bogus - there's a description of voiceprint reader in, I think, The Gryb which is just plain silly: something about the frequencies being reproduced as a 3D hardcopy in laquer, and a mechanical arm reads its peaks and troughs...

I always found van Vogt to be far closer to E. E. 'Doc' Smith than Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke or Blish. These days I find Smith to be almost unreadable, and I fear that if I try van Vogt again I'll find the case to be the same with him. Possibly with exceptions for The Weapon Shops of Isher, and some of his better short stories.

I share what seems to be the general view, that van Vogt has a fevered intensity and abundance of invention that makes him worthwhile even in the face of illogical plotting and other such flaws. I think this contradiction in his qualities appears mainly in the novels - the stories are too short to become very confusing, or to build to his greatest pitch of intensity. However, I'm pretty sure I haven't actually read a van Vogt novel since my early twenties, 30 or more years ago.

This raises an interest of mine - to what extent do we admire the older, great stories because we read them as impressionable youngsters, not because of any inherent quality they may possess? Remember CliffBurns' trip to his basement - most of my van Vogt is in a storage unit, not at my fingertips, because it has been so long. Can you say when or at what age you last read a van Vogt novel?

2-4 (I think) in the last couple of years, anyway. I could check, but that would be around the mark. I probably read The Weapon Shops the first time 30 years ago perhaps, think I like it more now.

Likely get to some more and some collections within the next couple, two.

Arthur: terrific breakdown of van Vogt's career and writing. Thanks, lad!

Read SLAN in my late twenties and the short stories probably along that same time. I was initially interested in him because of a tenuous Phil Dick connection (alluded to earlier). I did enjoy VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE and, as I said, some of the short stories are fun.

Duke: I absolutely agree that some of us retain a liking for an author based on youthful readings and that may explain why we may sometimes (too) vociferously defend an author, regardless of his/her faults. There's a nostalgic aspect involved but, as Ian has rightly said, most of the authors we liked in our formative years really don't stand up to adult scrutiny.

I shudder at some of the shit I used to read--as well, I wasn't reading a lot of mainstream, literary fiction way back when so my aesthetic sensibilities weren't too sharp. My tastes weren't wide-ranging enough or demanding and therefore anything with a neat idea, regardless of its clumsy execution, caught my attention (like a shiny object mesmerizing a monkey).

Noisy, I'd still take Phil Dick over van Vogt, especially when it comes to the novels. Both could be completely nutty in their full-length efforts but Phil had the virtue of being a funnier writer and, in my view, more entertaining.

" the Big Three were Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke. Never van Vogt."

As I understand it, the term predates the 3 you mentioned and originally included VanVogt. VanVogt's greatest success in the fan community was with Slan ("fans are Slan"), and I seem to remember reading the term being coined around that time. That novel predates Clarke's first published short stories by 6 years.
Then Van Vogt fell out of favor and was supplanted by Clarke in "The Big Three".

I don't remember now where I read this, but when I find it I'll bring it back here.

"Van Vogt is said to be the only sf writer to have made a career out of the advice given by a How To Write book."

The name of the how to write book that VanVogt learned from was "The Only Two Ways to Write A Story (A Book for Writers Which Cites Cases in the Craftsmanship of the Modern Short Story)" by John Gallishaw.
VanVogt's writing can often be appalling. That it's as good as it is, when it's good, is one of the great mysteries of the VanVogt reading experience. There's almost a savant syndrome aspect to his writing.

20>"This raises an interest of mine - to what extent do we admire the older, great stories because we read them as impressionable youngsters, not because of any inherent quality they may possess?"
I didn't read him as a kid, so what works about him works regardless of any consideration of nostalgia, as far as I'm concerned. He was a relatively recent compulsion. For me he embodies a certain essential element that I think is important in SF. I now search like an obsessive compulsive for those writers who can reinvent the VanVogt experience for me.

James Gunn wrote about that in the road to Science Fiction I think.

After Slan he was as popular or more than Heinlein, until Damon Knight took a crack at the World of Null-A in some geeky criticism arena somewhere or other, and faded from there, or something like that is what I remember reading.

Being associated as a Scientologist weirdo mightn't help, either.

Aldiss called Van Vogt Dick's 'spiritual forefather' in Trillion Year Spree, too.

Which makes sense, both are on the crazypants end.

Re- The Big Three with Van Vogt:

I haven't found a meaty citation yet, but here are a few people who mention it in passing, just so you know I didn't make it up because I thought it sounded good...

http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.arts.sf.written/2006-02/msg05756...

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/v/a-e-van-vogt/

http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/exhibits/asimov/asimov.htm

http://www.physics.emory.edu/~weeks/misc/gunnrev.html

http://www.entheta.org/archive/oca/wonders.html

http://www.trashotron.com/agony/news/2005/01-03-05.htm

http://weblog.xanga.com/necrodefy/536921275/so-like-i-need-advice.html

The problem is I don't remember whether it's something I read in a book or online...

And here's PKD being asked about VanVogt, and the Damon Knight essay:

" What sf writers have influenced your work the most?

DICK: 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.

What about Damon Knight's famous article criticizing van Vogt?

DICK: 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."

Arthur: Thanks for the snippet of Phil talking about van Vogt. Much appreciated.

And NOBODY would accuse you of making stuff up, chum. We respect you too much.

Frankly, I'm as surprised as the next guy that van Vogt (at one time) had such an exalted reputation.

And Damon Knight putting down another writer for stylistic shortcomings is a bit rich. I'm NOT a fan of ol' Damon's. Again, a few clever stories but book-length? I know he garnered a reputation as an editor and anthologist but that was mostly before my time. Publicly mocking a colleague, lampooning their style, seems unprofessional and low to me and doesn't speak well of D.K. as a person.

Tacky, Damon, real tacky. I think I recall "To Serve Man" and, also, a tale called "Cabin Boy". That's about it. Not exactly a literary legacy to hang your hat on, is it?

Ouch, receiving a "Damon Knight Memorial Award" must have seemed, um, just a trifle ironic, doncha think?

I forgot van Vogt was originally a Canadian lad...

Cliff: "Ouch, receiving a "Damon Knight Memorial Award" must have seemed, um, just a trifle ironic, doncha think?"

Only, he didn't. Not quite. He recieved a Grand Master award. It wasn't renamed after Damon Knight until after he died in 2002.

Cliff: "And Damon Knight putting down another writer for stylistic shortcomings is a bit rich. I'm NOT a fan of ol' Damon's. Again, a few clever stories but book-length? I know he garnered a reputation as an editor and anthologist but that was mostly before my time. Publicly mocking a colleague, lampooning their style, seems unprofessional and low to me and doesn't speak well of D.K. as a person."

I might have my chronology a bit off here, but I understood that when Knight wrote that article on van Vogt, it was before he was a professional writer himself. So one couldn't call van Vogt a 'colleague' of him at the time.

Also, I don't believe it's fair to say that if Knight shouldn't be allowed to criticise people on the grounds that his own work isn't above reproach. That way lies an old argument, much like the one of whether a sports coach should be able to play them game himself.

Let it not be forgotten, Knight was the first person to apply serious criticism to the field of science-fiction. That is a good thing! I'm all for science-fiction being taken serious. The alternative is people saying "It may be silly and not make sense, but that's OK, it's only science-fiction," which drive me potty (see: anyone defending the RTD-helmed New Who).

arthur: "He essentially destroyed Van Vogt's reputation, and it is the single thing he is most famous for. A way distant second is having written "To Serve Man"."

What, no mention of the fact that he found the Milford workshops, which lead to the creation of Clarion? Or the fact that he founded the SFWA? You sell him short. Knight was hugely talented and influential, and it's unfair to suggest the only thing he ever really did was destroy van Vogt's reputation and write an episode of the Twilight Zone.

"I think I recall "To Serve Man""

Of course you recall "To Serve Man"-it's one of the most famous "Twilight Zone" episodes.

The Knight story you are missing is The Country Of the Kind.

Arthur, I'd imagine it is much more likely he is remembered for editing the long-running Orbit 7 series and stuff like A Century Of Science Fiction compared to some essay or other.

I think you might be surprised when you Google his name, just how often The Cosmic Jerrybuilder essay comes up.
It marks an important change in direction in how SF should be approached, and not merely "some essay or other".
There's a prominent enough discussion of the essay and it's impact in Clute's bio entry of Knight in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

It's mythic -it's a David and Goliath scenario. It's not going to be swept under the rug by a successful stint as an editor.

Yeah, but that doesn't matter, really, name all the writers and editors remembered more for essays than anything else in this sort of area?

If you were writing a few lines about H. G. Wells, would you put in he disagreed with Henry James, or something about the War of the Worlds et. al.?

Good god, Arthur. You've got some kind of full-on, frothing at the mouth vendetta against Damon Knight going on here. What did he do, sleep with your wife?

I say again. You can't loudly shout him down over his criticism, that's just silly. He was a fine critic - heck, you mention Clute at one point above. You could probably trace a line right down from Knight to Clute. Sure, critics may say things you disagree with, so what?

You also entirely miss my point about his criticism and his fiction writing. I wasn't saying that his writing should be beyond criticism. I was saying that, though you may perceive his fiction writing to be poor, that doesn't invalidate his criticism at all. John Clute wrote a novel that wasn't great - does that mean his criticism can be ignored too?

I also find it presumptuous of you to say "You can luxuriate in it {criticism} just as he did," as you as ascribing motives to him which you can't possibly know to be the case. Do you really think he went around thinking "Cor, that van Vogt is a right bastard, I know, I'll duff him up in text!"? I find it more likely that he read the book and thought "This is a terrible book, I shall write a critical essay to explain my stance and push for better fiction." I've written highly critical reviews of Firefly and Doctor Who. Does mean that I should only be remembered as someone who was a right bastard to Joss Whedon and Russell T. Davis? Bugger that. Granted, I don't expect to end up having any success in the field myself, but the point remains.

In short, I strongly contend that you're barking up the wrong tree. Firstly, I don't believe that he'll be remembered solely for destroying van Vogt's reputation. As bluetyson mentions, to the average fan, his numerous anthologies are much more visible. I'd also contend, as I said as much above, that if he's remembered for his criticism, it's for bringing a form of literary respectibility to the field for the first time.

As bluetyson mentions, to the average fan, his numerous anthologies are much more visible. I'd also contend, as I said as much above, that if he's remembered for his criticism, it's for bringing a form of literary respectibility to the field for the first time.

Knight's involvement with Clarion doesn't exactly redeem him him to my mind. Clarion--feh! Workshops for writing in general serve little or no purpose. Clarion is expensive, over-rated and a cash cow for its instructors and administrators. Like most workshops and creative writing programs.

Knight "hugely talented and influential"? I dunno about that. That's giving him far too much credit. He was a mediocre writer (at best) and I have little faith in the so-called abilities of most editors. Picking a story that should or shouldn't go into an anthology doesn't require a whole lotta brain power--and if you've met any of the current crop of SF editors you know I speak the truth.

I'm with you, Arthur, I'll take van Vogt at his worst over Knight any ol' day. And I'm willing to bet van Vogt's literary legacy is far more secure than D.K.'s.

Download my personality in 100 years and we'll see if I'm right...

Clarion has also started operating as a form of "certification" for writing. Editors will look more kindly on your submission if you've been to Clarion. While editors may go on quality once they've seen the ms, they receive far too many to look at personally so they've started using other criteria to manage the process...

Following this discussion I decided to check out exactly what Knight's crime was, and it turns out it wasn't much.

In 1945 Knight wrote an essay about the magazine serialisation of Van Vogt's The World of Null A decrying the science, plausibility, etc. VV read the essay, stated that Knight will probably have a long career as a writer, and then took heed of some of Knight's criticism when he revised the story for book publication. Note that this was before VV's major works were published. Knight's essay was then republished, with other essays, in book form in 1956. This is when Knight supposedly destroyed VV's career but it strikes me as more likely that what caused the slide was that VV had already published most of his major novels and stories, and that tastes were changing.

If van Vogt's career was destroyed in 1956, why were his books, in new editions, all over the wire racks where I shopped in the 1960s? He also turned up in the SF Book Club in those years. So he kept making sales, at least in those years.

"If van Vogt's career was destroyed in 1956, why were his books, in new editions, all over the wire racks where I shopped in the 1960s? He also turned up in the SF Book Club in those years. So he kept making sales, at least in those years."

Well, Arthur, I did a bit of research. And it rather looks as if you were overstating things a tad.

Behold!.

I still struggle to understand quite the level of venom you hurl at Knight over his criticism. It's not like there is One True Way of reading a book, and all other interpretations are wrong. Knight's critical interpretation is entirely valid. And you are just as entitled to disagree with it. There's no need to beat the poor man up while you're at it.

Of all the things Dorothy Parker is remembered for, I doubt it's that one line.

And I've bitten my tongue long enough. I've been rebutting the criticism so far and ignoring the comments about the fiction, because the latter is clearly a lot down to personal taste. But Knight did write a number of things I enjoyed when I read them - and indeed still enjoy. First, the short story The Country of the Kind, then the novels The Man in the Tree and Humpty Dumpty: an Oval. Sure, some of his fix-ups didn't work so well. But I'll stand by the three named works til the death (and I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one).

Well, there you go. I never knew Preminger was also an actor.

Actually he's surprisingly amusing in the role. More so than George Sanders. I think, anyway.

Holden: er, not sure how scientific that poll you cite is, the number of participants, etc.

Interesting that 16% of the folks didn't know who Knight was (Clarion, SFWA, the anthologies notwithstanding).

Wonder how a poll comparing the literary legacies and overall familiarity re: Knight vs. van Vogt would come off...today and twenty years from now. I'm still laying my money on van Vogt.

But, as you say, reading tastes are highly subjective so I won't get into a long, fruitless debate over who is a better writer or created more fiction that will stand the test of time. We'll just have to let posterity do its slow work...

I do think it is interesting that Knight is being criticised for saying what we all have stated at one time or another on these boards - that sf deserves to treated intelligently, and shouldn't just be a bunch of adolescent fantasies.

Re: Message #49: ...and yet that's what Knight's own work amounts to, at least what I've read. Sophomoric and juvenile.

I just don't see him as a particularly convincing or credible critic, especially from what I've seen of his fiction. To me, he fails to live up to his own standards and, therefore, his opinions are of little relevance or interest.

Those who can do.
Those who can not become critics.

Let's read Lem about this situation -

If anyone is dissatisfied with science fiction in its role as an examiner of the future and of civilization, there is no way to make an analogous move from literary oversimplifications to full-fledged art, because there is no court of appeal for this genre. There would be no harm in this except that American science fiction, exploiting its exceptional status, lays claim to occupy the pinnacles of art and thought. One is annoyed by the pretentiousness of a genre that fends off accusations of primitivism by pleading its entertainment character and then, once such accusations have been silenced, renews its overweening claims. By being one thing and purporting to be another, science fiction promotes a mystification that, moreover, goes on with the tacit consent of readers and public. The development of interest in science fiction at American universities has, contrary to what might have been expected, altered nothing in this state of affairs. In all candor it must be said, though one risk perpetrating a crime laesae Almae Matris, that the critical methods of theoreticians of literature are inadequate in the face of the deceptive tactics of science fiction. It is not hard to grasp the reason for this paradox: if the only fictional works treating of problems of crime were like those of Agatha Christie, then to just what kind of books could even the most scholarly critic appeal in order to demonstrate the intellectual poverty and artistic mediocrity of the detective thriller? Qualitative norms and ' upper limits are established in literature by concrete works and not by critics' postulates. No mountain of theoretical lucubrations can compensate for the absence of an outstanding fictional work as a lofty model. The criticism of experts in historiography did not undermine the status of Sienkiewicz's Trilogy, since there was no Polish Leo Tolstoy to devote a War and Peace to the period of the Cossack and Swedish wars. In short, inter caecos luscus rex-where there is nothing first-rate, its role will be taken over by mediocrity, which sets itself facile goals and achieves them by facile means.

What the absence of such model works leads to is shown, more plainly than by any abstract discussions, by the change of heart that Damon Knight, both author and respected critic, expressed in Science-Fiction Studies #3. Knight declared himself to have been mistaken earlier in attacking books by van Vogt for their incoherence and irrationalism, on the ground that, if van Vogt enjoys an enormous readership, he must by that very fact be on the right track as an author, and that it is wrong for criticism to discredit such writing in the name of arbitrary values if the reading public does not want to recognize such values. The job of criticism is, rather, to discover those traits to which the work owes its popularity. Such words, from a man who struggled for years to stamp out tawdriness in science fiction, are more than the admission of a personal defeat-they are the diagnosis of a general condition. If even the perennial defender of artistic values has laid down his arms, what can lesser spirits hope to accomplish in this situation?

ps...if you think Knight was harsh, David Pringle calls VV one of the great embarrassments of sf.

Interesting citation from Lem, an author whose work, fiction or non-, has always (regrettably) slipped under my radar.

The most troubling segment was the one that went as follows:

"...if van Vogt enjoys an enormous readership, he must by that very fact be on the right track as an author, and that it is wrong for criticism to discredit such writing in the name of arbitrary values if the reading public does not want to recognize such values. The job of criticism is, rather, to discover those traits to which the work owes its popularity."

Eep. Let's hope that criticism has a higher function than that. While Knight might be willing to throw in the towel on that point, that's not MY p.o.v. As a critic and commentator it's my job to point out why most popular fiction is drek and to bring informed, intelligent readers' attention to under-rated or unknown writers and explain coherently WHY I believe these authors deserve to be read. Going along with a herd-like mentality is personally and aesthetically disagreeable on so many levels I fear I lack the time (and space) to do this point justice. The herd tells us that Dan Brown and Sidney Sheldon and __________ are peerless stylists, while close scrutiny reveals this to be bollocks.

Enough on that point, I'll turn the floor over to someone else...

Lem has been poorly treated by the English speaking market. The English version of most famous work, Solaris, is actually a translation of a translation (French) - no-one has ever bothered to translate the original work.

I think the key line is actually If even the perennial defender of artistic values has laid down his arms, what can lesser spirits hope to accomplish in this situation? Lem is saying that Knight attempted to treat sf on an artistic level but basically gave up in the face of market forces and, by extension, the fans - and who could blame him? 63 years after Knight wrote a serious critical essay about a sf writer he is still being condemned for it.

Back to the WTF comment in the OP. I don't know about this particular book from Wright but I think the long copyright protection period is a factor. Some of the estates left behind by authors want to generate income. For them, monetary inflow is the important factor. Thus we now have a growing number of authors releasing books, tributes, and sequels long after they've died. Spouses pass too and then it's sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, and who knows who else in charge of the estate that want to milk it for every last penny, ala the Hemingway nephew.

Now it's possible to have heirs to the estate that are removed in time from the author. Some estates are handled well. The Sturgeon estate for one. Others are not managed near so reverently.

"Others are not managed near so reverently."

The Lem quote is from an essay on Dick - the whole thing is online here A Visonary Among the Charlatans. (It's a very interesting essay - I should have to linked to it earlier in the PKD thread). From what I understand it's taken from an untranslated book of essays on the fantastic in literature, Fantastyka i futurologia.

Given the two new approved "sequels", are we seeing a rehabilitation of van Vogt? Are is it just a bit of canny marketing by the van Vogt estate? Personally, I don't hold with such works - a modern work based on one more than 50 years old is going to raise false expectations of that older work. Either that, or the new work is so faithful to the older work, it becomes entirely pointless as modern fiction...

Amazon says it is 320 pages, so not likely to be too faithful at that length...

bluetyson,

Null-A Continuum may well turn out to be worth reading, because it's written by the interesting John C. Wright. I haven't read a lot of Wright, but he has written a quite good, if very mannered, story set in William Hope Hodgson's Night Land universe, "Awake in the Night". Sorry, the linked story is only the first half or so of a novella - the whole thing was in the Dozois Best-of-the-Year anthology for that year, and was in the Night Lands I - Eternal Love anthology of several years ago.

He wrote another one of these stories for the Readercon 18 souvenir book. Corresponding with him then, I found that Hodgson seems to have had one of those seismic impacts on him - and so, I'm guessing that he might have a similar love for van Vogt.

I do agree that a 320 page van Vogt novel verges on a contradiction in terms.

OTOH, I've read Wright's The Golden Age and Phoenix Exultant and was considerably unimpressed.

I think Arthur has a good point--that the nuttiness of van Vogt's fiction worked against him with the more traditional SF crowd. Similarly, Dick and Ellison couldn't get into certain publications and anthologies because their work went against the grain of the SF establishment (Knight is definitely establishment, with all of the attendant faults). Most of Dick's stuff doesn't work (and remember, I'm a big fan) but those flares of genius, crazy insight still make him worth exploring for an adventurous reader. Arthur is making the same case for van Vogt and I think he's bang on.

As for these posthumous sequels, approved by the estate or not...grrr...

#59 I don't know if the van Vogt estate approached Anderson and Wright or if it was the other way around. I looked at some sales figures I have access to and his books have a sales bump this year for whatever reason. von Vogt has some good consistent sales numbers year after year. Not in the Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov realm but a lot better than most of the old SF authors. I guess he would be called a solid backlist author. I have no idea of the nature of the contracts on some of his earlier output so I don't know if he lost the revenue stream of royalties or not. Some authors did. They got a one-time payment and that was it no matter how well they sold.

dukedom, yes, if Wright can go to the sort of bizarro end of that novella as opposed to the schoolgirl panty fetishes in the recent fantasy trilogy, then sure, could be ok.

Schoolgirl panty fetishes? Do I want to know??

Just Like Pete Hamilton, then...

67

Probably not, and

68

No, not really like that at all.

Hamilton's novels all seem to be populated with feisty young girls. Not sure about their underwear, though...

I think Knight is a much better writer and critic than this thread would lead one to think. I'm a bit handicapped here because my Knight books are mostly not at hand, but a number of his stories were absolutely first-rate. "In the Country of the Kind", noted above, is as good as any I can think of on justice, punishment, art and sickness. "Extempore" is the equal of any other time-travel story, taking a very different approach from nearly all others. "Ticket to Anywhere", though not as good as "Extempore", encapsulates a certain adolescent alienation, longing, and rejection of things as they are, that's maybe at the heart of SF.

He also wrote a great many perfectly solid stories too, many snapping shut with nice plot twists, e.g., "Thing of Beauty" - there's no better fictional example of why we should RTFM, and it's from 1958 at that. Knight is a superior writer to van Vogt, I think.

As an editor of important anthologies for the New Wave, he has to rank with Ellison and Merril. How many of those R. A. Lafferty stories might we never have had without the Orbit series?

How will he be remembered? No idea, except for my general feeling that nearly everything about the genre will be forgotten, the good and the bad.

Duke: where are your Knight books? You say they're not at hand.

Do you have a basement like mine, patrolled by foot- long spiders, so dark and dingy it scares the piss out of you to go down there?

School girl panty fetishses? This thread is going to hell. Now we're talking about anime...

None of my school girl fantasies involve panties at all.

To try and ressurect the thread from the mire that it is in...

If I like PKD I should try Van Vogt, because they are about the same sort of things? And if I wanted to have a look at some of VanVogt's work, what are his best novels to start with?

#64
What has been published under the Van Vogt name in order to fleece money from SF fans... er, to publish new conceptualisations of a beloved SF author for a new generation? I remember Kevin J Anderson done a Slan sequel. Are there any other books posthumously published, or just the one, so far?

rojse #74,

It's not clear to me that the two are that much alike, though apparently PKD cited AEvV. In PKD, reality is generally in question; in AEvV, you know there's some reality, though you may never be quite sure what it is.

Anyway, arthurfrayn #15 above has a good list to start with.

For posthumous sequels, I believe there's just the Anderson Slan one and the upcoming Wright Null-A Continuum. I see there are 7 copies in LT'er hands already.

CliffBurns #72,

Something like that, but without the giant spiders (fortunately - I prefer my scary creatures confined to books, thank you). There are 30+ boxes and I don't know in which to look. The collection I wanted to see is Far Out. I do have In Deep - rats, the paperback cover just now unglued itself from the spine. The copy is 45 years old, no great surprise.

But it has great sentimental value, I bet...

# 76- I feel your pain. I have some old paperbacks that the paper has yellowed so much they're basically unreadable. Others have pages so brittle they crack when turned. And some that the glue has deteriorated and lost its adhesiveness. They really need to be tossed but I keep putting it off. For years now.

# 76- I feel your pain. I have some old paperbacks that the paper has yellowed so much they're basically unreadable. Others have pages so brittle they crack when turned. And some that the glue has deteriorated and lost its adhesiveness. They really need to be tossed but I keep putting it off. For years now.

That's a heckuva post, Arthur.

Thanks for the summation, re: both VV and Dick. A smart post. Bears re-reading...and so I will...

I'll just add in another plug for The Undercover Aliens, which is my favourite van Vogt. I also have the "spiced up" Beacon version, The Mating Cry - see here for my take on the difference between them.

The Isher books I find a bit too libertarian, but I have fond memories of Mission to the Stars (AKA The Mixed Men) - which were not at all spoiled by recently rereading one of the short stories on which the book is based in an old Brian Aldiss anthology.

Incidentally, for a complete bibliography of van Vogt see here. Warning: PDF file.

#77, #78,

Sentimental, sure. These old books are mostly readable, but you have to take care not to open them more than 45 degrees or so, and to pinch the spine. The paper's actually in decent shape, but the glue has dried out, I think.

"I'll just add in another plug for The Undercover Aliens, which is my favourite van Vogt. I also have the "spiced up" Beacon version, The Mating Cry ..."

It should just be added for people who don't live in Great Britain, that the alternate title to that novel is The House That Stood Still and actually, that's the novel's original title from the 50's. That is fun read (didn't read the dirty Mating Cry version, yet), but it's a little unusual for VanVogt, reading almost like a straight ahead detective novel.

Ah. I thought it was also published as The Undercover Aliens in the US (after it had published as The House That Stood Still). Mind you, neither titles makes much sense - there are on aliens in it, undercover or otherwise; and most houses are not known for their ability to move. Houses that do are known as caravans, or mobile homes.

I think the title might refer to the passage of time that the house in existence, but that doesn't exactly work either.
Maybe the title should really be "The House That Still Stood" ;)

Of course, there are no mating cries in it either.

Read Slan on the weekend. A fun, quick read, not much food for thought though. A good central idea - how normal people persecute Slans. 3.5/5.

The edition that I found at the library happened to have a forward by Kevin J. Anderson, which was of some interest. One of his initial points (so it was obviously of importance to him) was that A. E. Van Vogt was a slow writer, only publishing one book per year. He also done a predictable work-in about how he came to write Slan Hunter, but that was to be expected.

The question is, are SF Fans Slans?

That's what the fans of the 40s maintained. ;)

"One book per year"? Slow?!

Most of my current writers produce at 1 per year, but I understand that Asimov and Heinlein and Brunner and a lot of other writers from the golden age wrote 3+ novels and several short stories a year, then again novel then was about 300 page and now its 500. Brunner wrote close to 100 books in his career. and there were writers who wrote more.

I've read somewhere that, in the early years of his career (1950s), Robert Silverberg produced 50,000 words of material per week, about 3-4 novels per month by the standard 60,000 word length of the time. We don't realize that because it wasn't all SF - he wrote in all genres, apparently.

Mediocre though many of the 1950s novels are, they're still basically readable.

There's a certain energy to fast, seat of the pants writing. But it often leads to stylistic lapses, inconsistencies, poorly rendered passages, purple prose not distilled by careful editing. Dick's novels show the effects of being pounded out and people like Robert E. Howard and some of his pulp colleagues used to produce great reams of their work (at a penny a word they had to be prolific or starve to death). Hasn't Ray Bradbury said that 2,000 words a day is the target an author should set for themselves? And that's coming from The Man hisself...

So, Cliff, I've read you describe yourself as an "Author". Tell us, how many words per day do you shoot for? eh? Workwise, I mean. Not including the reams and reams of LT writing you produce each day. Do you do LT before, during, or after you watch movies and "work"? Actually, this might be better answered over in Art Is Life. I'll catch it there as well as here.

>92 dukedom_enough: - Silverberg wasn't much slower when he was producing his best books: in 1971 he produced 4 good sf books and 4 non-fiction books plus short stories, articles, etc.

>93 CliffBurns: - the more I re-read Bradbury the more I'm convinced he should have reduced his output to 1500 words a day - there are too many words in his work that are there for 'poetic' effect.

Back to VV - I think he is getting an easy ride here. If Heinlein is a bad writer with dodgy politics then VV is a bad writer with dodgy politics.

To be blunt, VanVogt is not the "go to guy" for political discussion. He has a number of odd concepts in that department.;)

Silverberg acknowledges that he has an unusual knack for just sitting down and knocking it out.

Gene: I've discussed my obsessive writing habits elsewhere--won't bother repeating the boring details. Let's just say I have virtually no life, no existence outside of writing. Pathetic really.

I watch movies in spasms--lately I've been on a bit of a binge with cinema (good and bad). I work during the day and unwind with a flick at night as a reward. Good time to get together with my family.

I dunno if Ray meant two thousand words of good quality, finished prose or just raw verbiage. I think he was recommending a regular writing routine, a philosophy I heartily endorse. The mind is a muscle and if you don't work with words on a daily basis, you lose skill and focus.

Did van Vogt ever regret or outright repudiate his early connection with Dianetics? He was an Auditor for a time, right? Did he stay with Elron and the gang to the bitter end or did common sense prevail?

Is there a definitive or at least balanced bio on van Vogt's life and work available?

doublepost

Yipe! Sorry...

92

In the In the Beginning Silverberg talks about writing fast and to order for magazines, etc.

One story an editor couldn't write a sequel to his own previous tale, so asked RS. 10,000 words. He did it in one day, thanks to Randall Garrett introducing him to speed.

That's a good van Vogt site, Arthur, interviews, etc. Folks should check out your links.

Ah, writing and speed. Phil Dick wouldn't have been the writer he was (good and bad) without it. Silverberg, Kerouac...bennies: the greatest boost to productivity since quills went obsolete...