Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Pawns of Null-A by A.E. van Vogt The Pawns of Null-A by A.E. van Vogt. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 6605e6f2e8a64e0e • Your IP : 116.202.236.252 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. The Pawns of Null-A by A.E. van Vogt. I doubt that our literary tastes are genetically programmed. Probably, chance events are equally important in influencing our choices. Be that as it may, at age 13 I became a passionate reader of science fiction stories. The triggering event was the birth of a Swedish science fiction magazine, "Häpna!" . (The name means "Be amazed!", no doubt a reference to the magazine "Astounding Science Fiction" .) The first issue in March 1954 contained some riveting stories. In one of them, "Repulsion Factor" by Charles Eric Maine, a scientist has invented teleportation: a physical object is disassembled in a transmitter and sent as information to a receiver where it is reassembled (just as in Star Trek). A murderer uses this device to create a copy of himself by using two receivers, intending to let "his copy" take the rap. - In addition to being an exciting story, it made me thoroughly confused over the real nature of identity and consciousness. (Cf. "The Mind's I" by Hofstadter and Dennett.) It also contained the first installment of a novel by A. E. van Vogt, "Slan" , which described the ruthless persecution of a genetically engineered race of human telepaths. (It may have been inspired by the fate of the European Jews, even though it was written as early as 1940.) - In subsequent issues of Häpna! , van Vogt was a frequent contributor, and I always enjoyed his original stories, often with an unexpected twist at the end. The cover of the first issue of Häpna! in 1954. Note the innovative space suit heat radiators. Reality half a century later: assembly of the International Space Station. That same year I read "Destination Universe" , a collection of short stories, in Swedish. I soon graduated to reading van Vogt's stories in English, at first with some difficulty. I enjoyed such classics as "The Voyage of the Space Beagle" (which much later formed the basis for the movie "Alien" ) , and "The Weapon Shops of Isher" , along with works by Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Robert Heinlein and many others. What set van Vogt apart from the rest was his unfettered imagination, the grandeur of his vision, and his predilection for assigning superhuman powers to his heroes, such as telepathy, immortality, encyclopedic knowledge, teleportation, superior mental capabilities, etc. It sometimes seemed as if he had too many ideas for the scope of his stories, and there are many loose ends in his works. To a timid teenager, it was hard to resist throwaway lines such as: ". made it necessary for Robert Hedrock, Earth's one immortal man, . to make sure . " , or "The seesaw would end in the very remote past, with the release of the stupendous temporal energy he had been accumulating. He would not witness but he would aid in the formation of the planets." ("The Weapon Shops of Isher); "'There is only one such expert aboard', said Grosvenor coldly" ("The Voyage of the Space Beagle" - how often have I had to suppress similar sentiments in committee meetings :-) ); "When he found himself suddenly back on Earth in another man's body, it was more than he had expected" (the backside blurb of "The Man with a Thousand Names"); "I suggested that they turn their attention to other galaxies" ("The War Against the Rull"). My father was especially struck by the cover in the center. It reminded him of the final days of the Third Reich. When I found "The World of Null-A" in a bookshop, I knew that I was in for a good read. "Could just this one man block a cosmic conspiracy?" said the blurb. As usual with van Vogt, the main character, Gilbert Gosseyn had been endowed with superhuman powers - in this case an extra brain that allowed him to achieve the teleportation of objects, including himself. On the other hand, he suffered from amnesia and had no idea who he was or what his purpose was. The plot centered on his struggle to find out. An interesting device was that the story was set in an environment 600 years in the future, where society was built on the principles of General Semantics. There were numerous allusions to this "science", including a reference to "Korzybski Square". Evidently, training in General Semantics was very beneficial in helping a person withstand the shock of being instantaneously transported from Earth to Venus at the whim of some unknown manipulator. Among the actors is a "Games Machine, made up of 25,000 electronic computers". - Wow! (Irony intended!) My father used to make disparaging remarks about my choice of literature. (However, in my Grandfather's memoirs, at age 18 "he only smiles mildly when the conversation turns to Schiller or Goethe.". ) Still, I caught him reading both "The World of Null-A" and its sequel "The Pawns of Null-A". Today, at age 13, my son Christofer devours Japanese Manga comics magazines. Perhaps I should not be too harsh on him :-) The allusions to "the science of General Semantics" piqued my curiosity. I found out that Alfred Korzybski really existed and had written a book called "Science and Sanity" . Evidently, van Vogt was an early admirer of Korzybski. Later he developed an interest in scientology, but was quickly disillusioned. Although some of Alfred Elton van Vogt's admirers like to claim that he had to be an extraterrestrial to be able to write such books, he really was an author of flesh and blood. He was born in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1912, became a fulltime writer in 1941, and moved to Los Angeles in 1944. He died there in 2000, a victim of Alzheimer's disease. A E van Vogt. The author AE van Vogt, who has died aged 87, spearheaded a golden age of science fiction - along with such writers as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. In his early writing, van Vogt displayed a wild talent, creating stories of vivid imagery and sudden, dream-like twists of plot and perspective that found an appreciative audience in a genre trying to shake off its image of rockets and ray guns. Encouraged by editor John W Campbell, van Vogt brought his interest in psychology and language to traditional science-fiction themes such as alien contact, interstellar war, time travel and its paradoxes, immortality and the superhuman. Although critics often found his plots complex, others saw him stretching the possibilities of the field while retaining the sense of wonder vital to imaginative fiction. AE van Vogt was born in Canada, and educated at var ious schools in Manitoba, graduating to the University of Ottawa in 1928. His first story sales were to "true story" confession magazines in the early 1930s while he was working as a census clerk and representative of Maclean Trade Papers. It was here that he honed a unique style, based on his reading of John W Gallishaw's The Only Two Ways To Write a Short Story, which included what van Vogt called "a hang-up" - some piece of missing information which the reader's imagination had to supply. Later, he developed a system to cope with story problems: he forced himself to wake up every 1 hours to think about a solution, and found that his subconscious would often have the problem resolved by morning. It was after a period of writing plays for Canadian radio that van Vogt rediscovered his early love of science fiction pulps, and, in 1939, he began submitting stories and serials to Astounding Science Fiction. Of his 38 novels, his earliest are still regarded as classics. His first, Slan, dealt with a persecuted race of human-bred mutants and attempts to bring peace between "normals" and their physical and mental superiors; The Weapon Shops Of Isher mixed future politics, immortality and galactic-scale space opera; The World of Null-A, and its sequel The Pawns of Null-A, introduced Alfred Kotzybski's general semantics - a system through which the higher levels of the mind could be accessed via non-Aristotelian (or null-A) teaching - into a galaxy-spanning political intrigue; the four stories that made up The Voyage Of The Space Beagle revolved around "nexialist" scientist Elliot Grosvenor, and how he and the crew of an intergalactic spacecraft coped with a variety of alien attackers. One sequence in this tale is a remarkable foreshadow of the movie, Alien, produced 36 years later. When, in 1948, The World Of Null-A was published in book form, it was the first SF magazine serial to appear in hardcover from a major publisher (earlier titles had appeared from specialist houses). In France, it was translated by surrealist Boris Vian and created a market for science fiction. However, van Vogt's interest in disciplines that would focus latent talent led him to dianetics, the memory auditing system developed by fellow SF writer L Ron Hubbard, which became the cornerstone of scientology. Although not interested in the mystical/religious aspects of scientology, van Vogt maintained the Los Angeles Hubbard Dianetic Centre from 1950 until 1961, partly financing the gesture by gathering together and reworking earlier stories into novels. He also worked on his only non-SF novel, The Violent Man (1982), about communist China. At the invitation of editor Frederick Pohl, he then returned to science fiction, producing a string of well-received stories for the magazine If. However, while some novels, notably The Silkie and The Battle Of Forever, were well-paced and well-written, van Vogt's fiction over the next two decades rarely achieved the critical acclaim his earlier work had earned. Some of his later novels only appeared in France, where he was championed by Jacques Sadoul, the editor at J'ai Lu, although many of his earlier novels remain in print. In later years, van Vogt suffered from Alzheimer's disease. His first wife, the writer E Mayne Hull, died in 1975. He is survived by his second wife, Lydia Brayman. A.E. van Vogt Books In Order. Alfred Elton van Vogt was a bestselling science fiction author from Canada who is best known for his bizarre fragmented narrative style. One of the most influential and popular practitioners of the Golden Age of science fiction, his writing was also one of the most complex. A.E. van Vogt was born in 1912 in Manitoba, and grew up in a small Russian Mennonite community. He was the third child of Heinrich and Aganetha Vogt, both of whom were born in Manitoba and spoke Dutch at home. His father was a lawyer and moved the family around several times while the young Vogt was a child. They lived in a variety of places from Neville and Morden before they finally settled down in Winnipeg. Vogt found these moves difficult as he would assert that he felt like a ship without an anchor. Because of the 1930s depression in North America, his family could not afford to take him to college and as a teen he worked as a truck driver and farmhand before he found a job at the Canadian Census Bureau. He would go to the University of Ottawa during this time and graduated in 1928. He began writing in the true confession style in the 1930s while working at the census office, during which he also worked for the Maclean Trade Papers. While doing his confession style writing, he happened on “The Only Two Ways To Write a Short Story” by John W. Gallishaw, which significantly impacted and honed his unique writing style. During the 1930s, he wrote a ton of plays for Canadian radio and soon rediscovered his love for pulp science fiction writing. In 1939 he began writing and submitting serials and stories to “Astounding Science Fiction.” During this time, he wrote thirty-eight novels starting with “Slan” that was about a persecuted race of human bred mutants and the attempts to foster peace between the normal and their mental and physical superiors. He also did write the classic fix up series “The Weapons of Isher” that combined galactic scale space opera with immortality and future politics. “The Null-A” series which is one of his most popular series was an introduction to the general semantics system by Alfred Korzybski. The system worked on the theory that higher levels of consciousness could be tapped into through non-Aristotelian thinking hence the term (null-A). The series of novels in null-A is set in a galaxy full of political intrigue. He would then write “The Voyage Of The Space Beagle” about Elliot Grosvenor, a nexialist scientist who together with his crew fought and made alliances with various space races to fight off a series of alien attacks. The latter would be the inspiration for “Alien” the movie which was made about three decades after its publication. During the 1950s, Vogt was not as prolific as he was during his earlier years as an author. He began retrospectively patching many of his previously published short narratives into novels. He would add a little more information to bridge the gaps in the stories. Vogt called his new creations fix ups, a term that would soon enter the lexicon of science fiction. One of his best-known fix-ups was “The Voyage of the Space Beagle” that was a combination of four stories made into one novel that he published in 1950. In the ten years between 1951 and 1961 he did not write any new books. He instead concentrated on his collections of previously published short stories which he combined or expanded into new novels. The Weapons of Isher which Vogt published in 1951 is one of his most popular works though he would also publish other works during the same period. His other fix ups included the likes of “The War Against the Rull” and “The Mixed Men.” He also published “The Wizard of Linn” and “Empire of Atom” that was inspired by the Roman imperial history just like Asimov’s “Foundation” series. A.E. van Vogt’s “The World of Null-A” is a classic fantasy tale about the use of general semantics that posits that the human nervous system can identify and alter reality. The lead in the novel is Gilbert Gosseyn, a man that can teleport short distances as long as he has his locations memorized and is precise enough. He lives in a world that for those with superior understanding, is a utopia of sorts. Gilbert has the mental control to rule his fellow human beings but he first needs to be approved by a giant testing machine to prove that he indeed possesses such powers. He soon learns that his memories are not as accurate as he thought they were and when he goes on a quest to discover his identity learns that he actually has extra bodies. Given his several bodies, he is immortal as they can be activated when he dies. He also learns that a large Galactic empire is planning to conquer Venus and Earth and that a huge human civilization exists outside the Solar system. The good news is that he possesses extra brain matter and with proper training he can move mass with only his mind. The 1956 published “The Pawns of Null-A” was originally published as “The Players of Null-A” in “Astounding Stories.” It builds on the concepts from the first novel of the series and is a continuation of the story of the lead character Gilbert Gosseyn. In this novel, Venus is in peril as an evil galactic tyrant is on a campaign to conquer half of a galaxy that he is yet to control. His secret weapon is that he has on his side people with skills seminar to those Gosseyn possesses. However, they may be better given that they can also see through time. The latter ability is not that strong but it can give them the edge they need to win the battles in space. The Null-Aer’s also have to deal with a shadowy and mysterious creature known as “the Follower” that has the power to port Gosseyn out of his body and into another. The Follower ports his body into that of an incompetent Prince who is under the control of the galactic tyrant. This means that as long as Gosseyn is in the body of the Prince, he does not have access to the second brain and his most effective powers. A.E. van Vogt’s “Null-A Three” continues the adventures of Gilbert Gosseyn who just saved the Solar system from disaster. But he is now facing his biggest challenge ever as he fights with the earliest civilization ever on the cosmos. He woke up to find that his body can communicate with another of his other bodies that were activated by the threat of an attack of an immense space fleet. The attacking fleet is made up of primordial ancestors of the human race from another Galaxy that has been fighting mutants just as old for eons. The leader of the space fleet is an unhinged youth that has several of the same powers that Gosseyn possesses. He needs to school the young man on how to behave in a Null-A fashion if they are to save the Earth from a cabal of businessmen and gangsters that are determined to ensure the Games Machine never regains control of their world. They also need to find the reasons for the endless wars and stop the political intrigues stoked by Enro the Red who is greedy for power. One Response to “A.E. van Vogt” I think ‘Voyage of the Space Beagle’ inspired the entire Star Trek series/movies and the character Spock. A. E. van Vogt. Alfred Elton van Vogt was born on a farm in Edenburg, a Russian Mennonite community east of Gretna, Manitoba. Early in his career he wrote for true confession pulp magazines like True Story, but in the late 1930s he began writing science fiction, which he was more interested in. His first published SF story, "Black Destroyer" was published in 1939, and is considered to be one of the first works of the Golden Age of science fiction. In 1941 he left his job at the Department of National Defence to become a full-time writer, and he went on to write a large number of short stories. In 1944 he moved to Hollywood, California. In the 1950s he briefly became involved in L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics projects. Although he left Dianetics, he claimed that Hubbard's followers continued to harass him, and he stopped writing for a few years. In the 1960s Frederik Pohl convinced him to start writing again, and he wrote novels (as opposed to short stories that were later developed into novels) until his death in 2000.