A. E. van Vogt


Alfred Elton van Vogt was a Canadian-born science fiction author. His fragmented, bizarre narrative style influenced later science fiction writers, notably Philip K. Dick. He is one of the most popular and influential practitioners of science fiction in the mid-twentieth century, the genre's so-called Golden Age, and one of the most complex.

Early life

Alfred Vogt was born on April 26, 1912 on his grandparents' farm in Edenburg, Manitoba, a tiny Russian Mennonite community east of Gretna, Manitoba, Canada in the Mennonite West Reserve. He was the third of six children born to Heinrich "Henry" Vogt and Aganetha "Agnes" Vogt, both of whom were themselves born in Manitoba, but who grew up in heavily immigrant communities. Until age four, van Vogt and his family spoke only Plautdietsch at home.
For the first dozen or so years of his life, van Vogt's father, Henry Vogt, a lawyer, moved his family several times within western Canada, alighting successively in Neville, Saskatchewan; Morden, Manitoba; and finally Winnipeg, Manitoba. Alfred Vogt found these moves difficult, later remarking:
By the 1920s, living in Winnipeg, father Henry worked as an agent for a steamship company, but the stock market crash of 1929 proved financially disastrous, and the family could not afford to send Alfred to college. During his teen years, Alfred worked as a farmhand and a truck driver, and by the age of 19, he was working in Ottawa for the Canadian census bureau. He began his writing career with stories in the true confession style of pulp magazines such as True Story. Most of these stories were published anonymously, with the first-person narratives allegedly being written by people in extraordinary, emotional, and life-changing circumstances.
After a year in Ottawa, he moved back to Winnipeg, where he sold newspaper advertising space and continued to write. While continuing to pen melodramatic "true confessions" stories through 1937, he also began writing short radio dramas for local radio station CKY, as well as conducting interviews published in trade magazines. He added the middle name "Elton" at some point in the mid-1930s, and at least one confessional story was sold to the Toronto Star, who misspelled his name "Alfred Alton Bogt" in the byline. Shortly thereafter, he added the "van" to his surname, and from that point forward he used the name "A. E. van Vogt" both personally and professionally.

Career

By 1938, van Vogt decided to switch to writing science fiction, a genre he enjoyed reading. He was inspired by the August 1938 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, which he picked up at a newsstand. John W. Campbell's novelette "Who Goes There?" inspired van Vogt to write "Vault of the Beast", which he submitted to that same magazine. Campbell, who edited Astounding, sent van Vogt a rejection letter, but one which encouraged van Vogt to try again. Van Vogt sent another story, entitled "Black Destroyer", which was accepted. A revised version of "Vault of the Beast" would be published in 1940.
Van Vogt's first SF publication was inspired by The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. "The Black Destroyer" was published in July 1939 by John W. Campbell in Astounding Science Fiction, the centennial year of Darwin's journal. It featured a fierce, carnivorous alien, the coeurl, stalking the crew of an exploration spaceship, and served as the inspiration for multiple science fiction movies, including Alien.
Also in 1939, still living in Winnipeg, van Vogt married Edna Mayne Hull, a fellow Manitoban. Hull, who had previously worked as a private secretary, would act as van Vogt's typist, and be credited with writing several SF stories of her own throughout the early 1940s.
The outbreak of World War II in September 1939 caused a change in van Vogt's circumstances. Ineligible for military service due to his poor eyesight, he accepted a clerking job with the Canadian Department of National Defence. This necessitated a move back to Ottawa, where he and his wife would stay for the next year and a half.
Meanwhile, his writing career continued. "Discord in Scarlet" was van Vogt's second story to be published, also appearing as the cover story. It was accompanied by interior illustrations created by Frank Kramer and Paul Orban.
Van Vogt's first completed novel, and one of his most famous, is Slan, which Campbell serialized in Astounding September to December 1940. Using what became one of van Vogt's recurring themes, it told the story of a nine-year-old superman living in a world in which his kind are slain by Homo sapiens.
Others saw van Vogt's talent from his first story, and in May 1941, van Vogt decided to become a full-time writer, quitting his job at the Canadian Department of National Defence. Freed from the necessity of living in Ottawa, he and his wife lived for a time in the Gatineau region of Quebec before moving to Toronto in the fall of 1941.
Prolific throughout this period, van Vogt wrote many of his more famous short stories and novels in the years from 1941 through 1944. The novels The Book of Ptath and The Weapon Makers both appeared in magazines in serial form during this era; they were later published in book form after World War II. As well, several of the stories that were compiled to make up the novels The Weapon Shops of Isher, The Mixed Men and The War Against the Rull were also published during this time.

California and post-war writing (1944–1950)

In November 1944, van Vogt and Hull moved to Hollywood; van Vogt would spend the rest of his life in California. He had been using the name "A. E. van Vogt" in his public life for several years, and as part of the process of obtaining American citizenship in 1945 he finally and formally changed his legal name from Alfred Vogt to Alfred Elton van Vogt. To his friends in the California science fiction community, he was known as "Van".

Method and themes

Van Vogt systematized his writing method, using scenes of 800 words or so where a new complication was added or something resolved. Several of his stories hinge on temporal conundra, a favorite theme. He stated that he acquired many of his writing techniques from three books: Narrative Technique by Thomas Uzzell, The Only Two Ways to Write a Story by John Gallishaw, and Twenty Problems of the Fiction Writer by Gallishaw. He also claimed many of his ideas came from dreams; throughout his writing life he arranged to be awakened every 90 minutes during his sleep period so he could write down his dreams.
Van Vogt was also always interested in the idea of all-encompassing systems of knowledge —the characters in his very first story used a system called "Nexialism" to analyze the alien's behavior. Around this time, he became particularly interested in the general semantics of Alfred Korzybski.
He subsequently wrote a novel merging these overarching themes, The World of Ā, originally serialized in Astounding in 1945. Ā, or non-Aristotelian logic, refers to the capacity for, and practice of, using intuitive, inductive reasoning, rather than reflexive, or conditioned, deductive reasoning. The novel recounts the adventures of an individual living in an apparent Utopia, where those with superior brainpower make up the ruling class... though all is not as it seems. A sequel, The Players of Ā was serialized in 1948–49.
At the same time, in his fiction, van Vogt was consistently sympathetic to absolute monarchy as a form of government. This was the case, for instance, in the Weapon Shop series, the Mixed Men series, and in single stories such as "Heir Apparent", whose protagonist was described as a "benevolent dictator". These sympathies were the subject of much critical discussion during van Vogt's career, and afterwards.
Van Vogt published "Enchanted Village" in the July 1950 issue of Other Worlds Science Stories. It was reprinted in over 20 collections or anthologies, and appeared many times in translation.

Dianetics and fix-ups (1950–1961)

In 1950, van Vogt was briefly appointed as head of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics operation in California. Van Vogt had first met Hubbard in 1945, and became interested in his Dianetics theories, which were published shortly thereafter. Dianetics was the secular precursor to Hubbard's Church of Scientology; van Vogt would have no association with Scientology, as he did not approve of its mysticism.
The California Dianetics operation went broke nine months later, but never went bankrupt, due to van Vogt's arrangements with creditors. Very shortly after that, van Vogt and his wife opened their own Dianetics center, partly financed by his writings, until he "signed off" around 1961. In practical terms, what this meant was that from 1951 through 1961, van Vogt's focus was on Dianetics, and no new story ideas flowed from his typewriter.

Fix-ups

However, during the 1950s, van Vogt retrospectively patched together many of his previously published stories into novels, sometimes creating new interstitial material to help bridge gaps in the narrative. Van Vogt referred to the resulting books as "fix-ups", a term that entered the vocabulary of science-fiction criticism. When the original stories were closely related this was often successful — although some van Vogt fix-ups featured disparate stories thrown together that bore little relation to each other, generally making for a less coherent plot. One of his best-known novels, The Voyage of the Space Beagle was a fix-up of four short stories including "Discord in Scarlet"; it was published in at least five European languages by 1955.
Although Van Vogt averaged a new book title every ten months from 1951 to 1961, none of them were new stories. All of van Vogt's books from 1951 to 1961 were fix-ups, or collections of previously published stories, or expansions of previously published short stories to novel length, or republications of his books under new titles. All were based on story material written and originally published between 1939 and 1950. As well, one non-fiction work, The Hypnotism Handbook, appeared in 1956, though it had apparently been written much earlier.
Some of van Vogt's more well-known work was still produced using the fix-up method. In 1951, he published the fix-up The Weapon Shops of Isher. In the same decade, van Vogt also produced collections and fixups such as The Mixed Men, The War Against the Rull, and the two "Clane" novels, Empire of the Atom and The Wizard of Linn, which were inspired by Roman imperial history, specifically the reign of Claudius.
After more than a decade of running their Dianetics center, Hull and van Vogt closed it in 1961. Nevertheless, van Vogt maintained his association with the overall organization and was still president of the Californian Association of Dianetic Auditors into the 1980s.

Return to writing and later career (1962–1986)

Though the constant re-packaging of his older work meant that he had never really been away from the book publishing world, van Vogt had not published any wholly new fiction for almost 12 years when he decided to return to writing in 1962. He did not return immediately to science fiction, however, but instead wrote the only mainstream, non-sf novel of his career.
Van Vogt was profoundly affected by revelations of totalitarian police states that emerged after World War II. Accordingly, he wrote a mainstream novel that he set in Communist China, The Violent Man ; he said that to research this book he had read 100 books about China. Into this book he incorporated his view of "the violent male type", which he described as a "man who had to be right", a man who "instantly attracts women" and who he said were the men who "run the world". Contemporary reviews were lukewarm at best, and van Vogt thereafter returned to science fiction.
From 1963 through the mid-1980s, van Vogt once again published new material on a regular basis, though fix-ups and reworked material also appeared relatively often. His later novels included fix-ups such as The Beast , Rogue Ship, Quest for the Future and Supermind. He also wrote novels by expanding previously published short stories; works of this type include The Darkness on Diamondia and Future Glitter.
Novels that were written simply as novels, and not serialized magazine pieces or fix-ups, were very rare in van Vogt's oeuvre, but began to appear regularly beginning in the 1970s. Van Vogt's original novels included Children of Tomorrow, The Battle of Forever and The Anarchistic Colossus. Over the years, many sequels to his classic works were promised, but only one appeared: Null-A Three. Several later books were originally published in Europe, and at least one novel only ever appeared in foreign language editions and was never published in its original English.

Final years

When the 1979 film Alien appeared, it was noted that the plot closely matched the plots of both Black Destroyer and Discord in Scarlet, both published in Astounding magazine in 1939, and then later published in the 1950 book Voyage of the Space Beagle. Van Vogt sued the production company for plagiarism, and eventually collected an out-of-court settlement of $50,000 from 20th Century Fox.
In increasingly frail health, van Vogt published his final short story in 1986.

Personal life

Van Vogt's first wife, Edna Mayne Hull, died in 1975. Van Vogt married Lydia Bereginsky in 1979; they remained together until his death.

Death

On January 26, 2000, A. E. van Vogt died in Los Angeles from Alzheimer's disease. He was survived by his second wife, the former Lydia Bereginsky.

Critical reception

Critical opinion about the quality of van Vogt's work is sharply divided. An early and articulate critic was Damon Knight. In a 1945 chapter-long essay reprinted in In Search of Wonder, entitled "Cosmic Jerrybuilder: A. E. van Vogt", Knight described van Vogt as "no giant; he is a pygmy who has learned to operate an overgrown typewriter". Knight described The World of Null-A as "one of the worst allegedly adult science fiction stories ever published". Concerning van Vogt's writing, Knight said:
About Empire of the Atom Knight wrote:
Knight also expressed misgivings about van Vogt's politics. He noted that van Vogt's stories almost invariably present absolute monarchy in a favorable light. In 1974, Knight retracted some of his criticism after finding out about Vogt's writing down his dreams as a part of his working methods:
Knight's criticism greatly damaged van Vogt's reputation. On the other hand, when science fiction author Philip K. Dick was asked which science fiction writers had influenced his work the most, he replied:
Dick also defended van Vogt against Damon Knight's criticisms:
In a review of Transfinite: The Essential A. E. van Vogt, science fiction writer Paul Di Filippo said:
In The John W. Campbell Letters, Campbell says, "The son-of-a-gun gets hold of you in the first paragraph, ties a knot around you, and keeps it tied in every paragraph thereafter—including the ultimate last one".
Harlan Ellison wrote, "Van was the first writer to shine light on the restricted ways in which I had been taught to view the universe and the human condition".
Writing in 1984, David Hartwell said:
The literary critic Leslie A. Fiedler said something similar:
American literary critic Fredric Jameson says of van Vogt:
Van Vogt still has his critics. For example, Darrell Schweitzer writing to The New York Review of Science Fiction in 1999 quoted a passage from the original van Vogt novelette "The Mixed Men", which he was then reading, and remarked:

Recognition

The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 14th Grand Master in 1995. Also in 1996, van Vogt received a Special Award from the World Science Fiction Convention "for six decades of golden age science fiction". That same year, he was inducted as an inaugural member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
In 1946, van Vogt and his first wife, Edna Mayne Hull, were Guests of Honor at the fourth World Science Fiction Convention.
In 1980, van Vogt received a "Casper Award" for Lifetime Achievement.
The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 14th Grand Master in 1995. Great controversy within SFWA accompanied its long wait in bestowing its highest honor. Writing an obituary of van Vogt, Robert J. Sawyer, a fellow Canadian writer of science fiction, remarked:
It is generally held that the "damnable SFWA politics" concerns Damon Knight, the founder of the SFWA, who abhorred van Vogt's style and politics and thoroughly demolished his literary reputation in the 1950s.
Harlan Ellison was more explicit in 1999 introduction to Futures Past: The Best Short Fiction of A. E. van Vogt:
In 1996, van Vogt received a Special Award from the World Science Fiction Convention "for six decades of golden age science fiction". That same year, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in its inaugural class of two deceased and two living persons, along with writer Jack Williamson and editors Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell.
The works of van Vogt were translated into French by the surrealist Boris Vian, and van Vogt's works were "viewed as great literature of the surrealist school". In addition, Slan was published in French, translated by Jean Rosenthal, under the title À la poursuite des Slans, as part of the paperback series 'Editions J'ai Lu: Romans-Texte Integral' in 1973, this edition also listing the following works by van Vogt as having been published in French as part of this series: Le Monde des Å, La faune de l'espace, Les joueurs du Å, L'empire de l'atome, Le sorcier de Linn, Les armureries d'Isher, Les fabricants d'armes, and Le livre de Ptath.

Works

Novels

YearTitleSeriesNotesAlternate titles
1946SlanOriginally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction, September – December 1940.
1947The Weapon MakersIsherSignificantly revised version of a novel originally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction, February – April 1943.
Revised again in 1952.		One Against Eternity
1947The Book of PtathOriginally appeared in Unknown, October 1943.
Two Hundred Million A.D.
Ptath
1948The World of ĀNull-ARevised and shortened version of a novel originally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction, August – October 1945.
Revised again in 1970.		The World of Null-A
1950The House That Stood StillThe Mating Cry
The Undercover Aliens
1950The Voyage of the Space BeagleFix-up of four short stories, originally published 1939 – 1950.Mission: Interplanetary
1951The Weapon Shops of IsherIsherFix-up of three short stories, originally published 1941 – 1949.
1952The Mixed MenFix-up of three short stories, originally published 1943 – 1945.Mission to the Stars
1953The Universe MakerExtensively rewritten and expanded version of the short story "The Shadow Men".
1954The Pawns of Null-ANull-AOriginally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction, October 1948 – January 1949.The Players of Null-A
1957The Mind CageExtensively rewritten and expanded version of the short story "The Great Judge" in Astounding Science Fiction, October – November 1946.The Three Eyes of Evil
1959The War Against the RullFix-up of six short stories, originally published 1940 – 1950.
1960Earth's Last FortressNovella, originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942.Anthologized as "Masters Of Time" in the van Vogt collection Masters Of Time.
1962The Wizard of LinnGodsOriginally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction, April – June 1950.
1962The Violent ManNon-sf; a political thriller.
1963The BeastSubstantially revised fix-up of three short stories, originally published 1943 – 1944.Moonbeast
1965Rogue ShipFix-up of three short stories, originally published 1947 – 1963.
1966The Winged Man Originally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction, May – June 1944. Greatly expanded by van Vogt for book publication.
1967The ChangelingNovella, originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, April 1944.
Previously anthologized in the van Vogt collection Masters Of Time.
1969The SilkieFix-up of three short stories, originally published 1964 – 1967.
1970Children of Tomorrow
1970Quest for the FutureFix-up of three short stories, originally published 1943 – 1946.
1971The Battle of Forever
1972The Darkness on Diamondia
1973Future GlitterTyranopolis
1974The Man with a Thousand Names
1974The Secret GalacticsEarth Factor X
1977SupermindFix-up of three short stories, originally published 1942 – 1968. The 1965 story "Research Alpha", minimally revised to form chapters 23-36 of this novel, was credited on original publication to van Vogt and James H. Schmitz.
1977The Anarchistic Colossus
1979Renaissance
1979Cosmic Encounter
1983ComputerworldComputer Eye
1984Null-A ThreeNull-A
1985To Conquer KiberUnpublished in English. Published in French as A la conquête de Kiber and in Romanian as Cucerirea Kiberului

Also: