The Weapon Shops of Isher

What starts off as a Second Amendment thought experiment veers off into speculation on time travel and political corruption.

Thousands of years in the future, an empire declares war on an underground society that supplies defensive weaponry to honest individuals. The outcome is to be decided by two people: your standard Immortal With Advanced Technology, and a typical Chosen One who is out seeking his fortune.

Van Vogt is a clumsy wordsmith, making for a tedious (though occasionally amusing) read.
"He watched the slender woman-shape move off into the shadows." "Green lights directly in front of him flashed unscintillatingly into red.". Stuff like that.

What does work is the sheer cynicism of the world that he has imagined. The Akira moment show more of the epilogue is a nice finish, but hardly a surprise. show less

Wish I had abandoned this one, but I kept waiting for it to turn around. The whole story is predicated on a series of inventions of incredible power that somehow haven't affected any other part of society. Guns with AI so sophisticated that they only fire in self-defense, but somehow there are still office buildings full of clerks? A machine that unerringly identifies morally upstanding people but the world government is run by a hereditary monarchy? It's entirely too ludicrous.

The weapon shops are the only recourse against the tyranny of the Isher empire although the weapons they sell can only work as a defence against physical attack on their owner.

I was a great fan of the author as a teenager - especially the Null-A books - so I must have read this before, but I had no memory of the story although the title sounded vaguely familiar. I expect I enjoyed it then, mainly because I was unaware of certain controversies it seems to be playing into. Now, not so much.

A great deal of fun. the people with the weapons are not the kind of gun owners we seem to find in American right wing politics, but quite civilized people intent on helping all to a happier life. I wish it had worked out so well as van Vogt visualized it.

If you don't already have strong libertarian leanings, this may not be the book for you. While my own politics are all over the place, reading this (in my very distant youth) was a revelation. It's my favorite van Vogt work (it must be, since I own two copies), and it's a fun read.

From the back cover:

"Imagine an empire of the far future, dictatorial, proud, all-conquering, whose citizens could defy it at will by merely entering a store and buying a gun! The guns would be super-weapons that the Empire couldn't duplicate or defeat--and the stores would be impregnable fortresses open to everyone except soldiers and policemen!"

This is one of Van Vogt's better books. I enjoyed this one. Amazing imagination. It has story structure flaws but I didn't let it ruin the experience.

I will read the second book in the series, "The Weapon Makers".

A quick read. Great Ideas, and a fantastic ending. Has all the flaws of the golden age.