t the age of nine, Jommy Cross finds himself orphaned, despised and hunted by humanity. Like his murdered parents, he is a "slan," a member of a super-intelligent telepathic mutant race ostensibly lab-created by scientist Samuel Lann. Like all other slans, he faces brutal, unwavering racist hatred from the mass of "normal" humans who fear slan superiority. Government propaganda claims that slans steal and convert human infants, and that they seek to rule or exterminate homo sapiens. But as Jommy grows up, his determined investigations gradually uncover onion-like layers of deception around the slan myths.
For one thing, he discovers there is an entire race of slans without telepathy or the telltale hairlike head tendrils that denote a "true" slan. These tendril-less slans number in the millions, and they denounce true slans and humans alike as deceptive and murderous. To protect themselves, the tendril-less slans have built a vast secret organization bent on world domination. The true slans, meanwhile, remain so well hidden that even powerfully psychic Jommy can't find any concrete evidence of their existence.
At least one other true slan does exist, however--a girl slightly older than Jommy, tentatively preserved "for observation" by human dictator Kier Gray, despite the best murderous efforts of his rabidly anti-slan chief of secret police, John Petty. Like Jommy, Kathleen Layton is powerfully strong, brilliant, telepathic and in constant danger of death unless one or both of them can find a way to shift the public policy and public opinion of an entire planet.
Revenge of the "science wonks, wimps and nerds"
Slan suffers many of the maladies of Golden Age science fiction: indigestible chunks of exposition, similarly problematic chunks of technical supposition (mostly early atomic theory), and a slapdash, boyish writing style that jumps eagerly from one action sequence to the next, often leaving forgotten characters, plot lines and logical linkages lying haphazardly in the dust.
But none of this stopped A.E. van Vogt's first novel from becoming an instant classic upon its initial 1940 magazine-serial publication. SF fans were quick to empathize with Jommy, a persecuted loner surrounded by hateful, intolerant intellectual inferiors, but destined for power and glory due to his scientific savvy and superior brain. The catchphrase "Fans are slans!" quickly became a rallying cry for SF fandom, in particular for Claude Degler's infamous fan-separatist Cosmic Circle. Slan was a major part of the burgeoning semi-defensive sense of superiority among SF fans, the same attitude that persists in separatist fan slang terms like "mundanes" even today.
Fan hype and history aside, van Vogt's debut is still a fun light read with a lot of action. The disappointingly incomplete political maneuverings, however, come across as far better planned and plotted than Jommy's blatant wish-fulfillment quest for Others Of His Kind. There are bits and pieces of a fantastic novel here, but van Vogt will apparently have to settle for having written a famous one instead.
