The War Against the Rull

I'm surprised by how much I like this book. I was willing to discount it as an over written gosh-wow type of early SF, but it proves to be a well thought out and nicely crafted work. Not high art, but good solid SF with some very pleasing writing.

1.5/5

I've never read something that is so transparently a bunch of serialized short stories fashioned into a novel, nor have I read something so obviously made for an audience of 1940's teenage boys. My first impression of van Vogt has not been a pleasant one, though I suppose that's it's important for me to get some reading in from this age of SF for context to my other reading in the genre.

The War against the Rull is a collection of hastily pasted together short stories that originally didn't even have the same main character, Trevor Jamison, who seemingly can do no wrong whatsoever. Van Vogt was churning out these types of fix-ups in the 50's after his decade of original productivity in the 40's. In these stories humanity is in an show more endless war with a race of shape-shifting aliens called the Rull, who can take the place of humans easily, thus much of the conflict happens in human networks as Rull spies are discovered and thwarted. Surprisingly, the Rull are really only a part of half of these stories. The other main focus is another another alien race, the Ezwal, who are gargantuan bear-like creatures with six legs, three eyes, herculean strength, and telepathic powers. Jamison is the only human who knows that the Ezwal are telepathic, let alone intelligent, and tries to convince them and humanity of the truth throughout the stories. There are a lot of side tangents in these stories, one involving Jamison's son, one involving an alien species that eats electricity, and another with a failed assassination attempt on Jamison's life.

The end result of all of these side tangents is a 'novel' that is so disjointed and poorly framed that I couldn't even really consider it a cohesive work. Van Vogt does such a poor job of bringing the stories together that he might as well not even tried, and simply left the stories as they were. Most of these stories amount to nothing more than adventurous scenes of conflict intended as a power fantasy for adolescent boys. The women are casually thought of as nothing more than the sum of their looks with annoying emotions attached. The main character is so resourceful, witty, and competent that he looses all basis in reality. The writing is repetitive, dull, and unimaginative.

I've read that van Vogt often used his dreams as a starting point for his plot lines, and boy does it show. The first few stories, while not necessarily noteworthy, were at least understandable. I can't say the same for the last story, which devolves in structure to the point that I wasn't exactly clear what was going on. I'm honestly surprised that serialized pulp stories that are this incomprehensible were that successful.

The relationship between human and the Ezwal could've been interesting, but instead they end up being used a tool of the plot more so than a focal point of exploration. I was disappointed at how basis the main conflict between the Rull and humans was, which maybe at the time wasn't stereotypical, but now it certainly is. Not even worth the time to finish even though it was so short to begin with. show less

In this far-future novel, based on five related stories, humanity has been fighting a century-long war against the shape-changing Rull, and things are not going well.

Carson's World is a vital part of Earth's defense. It is inabited by large, blue creatures, with teeht and claws, called ezwals. Trevor Jamieson is the only human who knows that the ezwal are highly intelligent and telepathic. It's best for everyone, human and ezwal, if no one else knows this. The ezwal want all humans off their planet, so there is plenty of hatred, mistrust and dead bodies on both sides. For humanity, the only criterion to determine a civilization's intelligence is whether or not they will assist in defense against the Rull.

A lifeboat crashes on a very show more hostile jungle planet, carrying Jamieson and an adult ezwal. It's the sort of place where all sorts of disgusting and carnivorous creatures come out at night, and Jamieson's blaster is almost depleted. The ezwal would like nothing more than to tear Jamieson into lots of little pieces, but they end up having to work together to get off the planet.

A ship crash-lands in Alaska, carrying an adult and baby ezwal. The mother is murdered by a human in revenge for the carnage on Carson's World. The baby survives, and is hunted by humans all over the Alaskan landscape. It is rescued by Jamieson, and is willing to tone down its conditioned hatred of humans.

A Rull survey ship, and Jamieson, who seems to have nine lives, crash land near each other on a desolate mountain. Neither ship is going anywhere, so Jamieson uses this once-in-a-lifetime chance to conduct some psychological experiments on a captive Rull, to see what makes them tick.

This is a fine piece of space opera from science fiction's early days. It's got intelligence, weird alien planets, and lots of good writing. Nearly anything by van Vogt is recommended, and this is no exception. show less

This book was really just kind of boring. Sure, there was a fair amount of action, but it just didn't seem to grip. Add to that humanity's questionable morality in the book--you aliens better help us defeat the Rull or else--and this book just isn't one of van Vogt's best.

This novel was cobbled together from several short stories, and it shows. It suffers from having an uninteresting protagonist and seemed very old-fashioned, so I really couldn't be bothered to finish it.

My first DNF of the year.

A not very successful pulp sci-fi that seems *very* dated today. Van Vogt's characters are pretty thin, the story just okay.

this novel evolved from a series of stories published in "Astounding Science Fiction Magazine" between 1940 and 1950. Ace and Van Vogt put all of them together and published the result as a novel. What do you do to negotiate with a shape-changing race which has great hostility to humanity? You send in a telepath. Complications ensue.