his large volume is the first major presentation of A.E. van Vogt's short fiction since the Grand Master's death in 2000. Impressively assembled by editors Joe Rico and Rick Katze, aided by a large team of NESFA co-workers, and introduced by an essay from Hal Clement, this compilation of over two dozen stories serves admirably as both an introduction to those who have never sampled van Vogt's prose before and as a refamiliarization to those who have been away from his work for too long.
In "Black Destroyer," van Vogt's first sale, we meet the crew of the exploratory ship Space Beagle as they encounter a catlike killer named Coeurl. Two other voyages of the Beagle occur in "War of Nerves"—where the Nexialist-trained Elliott Grosvenor must battle single-handed against hypnotic intruders—and in "Discord in Scarlet," where an alien named Xtl, found in midgalactic space, begins to implement its breeding program using humans as a nutrient medium.
Several stories focus on time paradoxes, one of van Vogt's specialties. Films from the future find their way to the present day and cause some confusion in "Film Library." "The Ghost" describes the odd, fragmentary existence of an old man who can inadvertently slip through time. A far-future war has set up nodes throughout history to shanghai soldiers in "Recruiting Station." One man's desire to restore his segment of missing memory leads him into a labyrinth of causality in "The Search." And the hibernating star travelers in "Far Centaurus" eventually learn that the only way to escape an intolerable world they never made is to flee into the past.
Malicious aliens constitute another segment of van Vogt's fictions. The world of humanity lies empty and shattered in "The Monster" until star visitors bent on colonization make the mistake of resurrecting a sample man. In "Asylum," space vampires known as the Dreegh deem humans so many cattle—until they meet a protector known as a Great Galactic. For millions of years, an interdimensional invader has been trapped on Mars in "The Vault of the Beast," but now the creature seems to have figured out the perfect escape. In "The Rull," one man and one Rull, trapped together on an inhospitable planet, must wage a contest that will determine the course of the entire war between their races. And a prisoner on Planet Aurigae II plans an insidious switch with a seemingly unwitting human correspondent in "Dear Pen Pal."
Van Vogt mined many other themes as well. Aliens give mankind an intelligence test in "A Can of Paint." A sentient plant seeks to remake society in "The Harmonizer." Two dystopias—"The Great Judge" and "Future Perfect"—are undone by the actions of brave individuals. Nazi scientists are thwarted by the sacrifices of a lone genius in "Secret Unattainable." Must robotkind and mankind fight a war of extermination? Not if the robot leader chooses to accept "The Final Command." Diryl Dexter Craig, age 9, undergoes a deadly rite of passage in "The Sound." A conspiracy that stretches back in time to the year 3417 BC threatens the globe in "The Rulers." A naval contingent little reckons with the immensity of what they've woken when they tamper with a mysterious boulder in "Dormant." And, finally, "Don't Hold Your Breath" limns a certain type of human personality—the amoral, selfish survivor—who finds a niche even in the apocalypse.
The logic of dreams and the precision of art
Van Vogt still suffers today, it seems to me, from the famous attack on his work by critic Damon Knight in Knight's In Search of Wonder (1956). Seen as a ham-handed prosodist, ignorant of "real" science and given to fantastically abstruse plotting, van Vogt's popularity was supposed to stem from some kind of occult aura around his work, as if van Vogt himself were one of the mind-clouding supermen he liked to write about, luring readers into his ambit with gaudy yet shabby illusions. Well, a sympathetic and close reading of the stories in this current volume will reveal that this portrayal is an unfortunate sham.
Van Vogt knew precisely what he was doing in all areas of his fiction writing. There's hardly a wasted word in his stories: characters are delineated with sharp strokes, and actions are conveyed economically and with meticulous precision, forming striking visual images in the reader's mind. 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. In a volume this large, there's often a certain repetitiveness, but I doubt any reader will have the least smidgen of trouble keeping all these stories separate in his or her mind. Each tale contains a new angle, a unique slant, that makes it stand out.
True, van Vogt could unleash the occasional syntactically awkward formulation, such as this description of a crashing spaceship from "The Harmonizer": "Its speed as it struck the thick atmosphere was approximately colossal." But isn't the essence of poetry the forced enjambment of words and phrases not normally associated with each other? Van Vogt was seeking to achieve a kind of science-fictional poetry that would convey estrangement, excitement and delight. And when he was on target, as when in the same story he describes the functioning of an alien organism in clinical terms on the molecular level, he could achieve the same kind of brilliant infodumps a modern author like Charles Stross does.
To fully estimate the worth of van Vogt's fiction, it's necessary only to count his literary heirs, the most obvious being Philip K. Dick, who acknowledged his debt openly. But stories like "A Can of Paint" and "Dear Pen Pal" paved the way for the sardonic japes of Robert Sheckley, while the Space Beagle saga opened the gates for all the man-versus-monster tales that culminated in the film Alien (1979).
Van Vogt was also capable of a subtle symbolism. The identification between the emotionally wounded man and the strange alien power device in "The Great Engine" is very nicely done. His characters might be supermen or superwomen, but they often find that their biggest battle is for self-knowledge, not exterior power. And oftentimes, as in "The Enchanted Village," where a castaway must adapt or die, the universe holds the upper hand, illustrating humanity's negligible role in the cosmos—a lesson much anthropocentric, more literary SF is not brave enough to endorse.
