Science fiction writer. Born near Winnipeg, Canada,
April 26, 1912. Died Los Angeles, January 26, 2000, aged
87.
His stories were mostly written in a pulp magazine style,
and set in a world of super-heroes and absurd fantasy. Nonetheless,
A.E. van Vogt's ingenuity and fertile imagination made him
one of the foremost figures of the so-called Golden Age
of science fiction, along with Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein,
Arthur C. Clarke and others.
"A.E. van Vogt helped define science fiction,"
says Paul Levinson, president of the Science Fiction and
Fantasy Writers of America, "by taking it from the
Flash Gordon and bug-eyed monster genre it was in the 1930s
to the more profound level it is on today, where it considers
and debates such issues as the meaning of life."
Like many writers of epic space adventure, his early life
was simple. Van Vogt ("Van" to his friends) was
born to Dutch parents on a Canadian farm. His family later
moved to Winnipeg, where - daunted by the city pace - he
would lose himself in books, reading two a day. In 1926
he noticed a new magazine, Amazing Stories, which covered
the relatively new science fiction genre. "I grabbed
up my copy, paid over my 25 cents - and thereafter for several
years each month devoured every word printed in the magazine.
I mean every."
Despite this, he began his career writing for romance magazines.
In 1939, however, he sold the story "Black Destroyer"
(now regarded as a classic of space fiction) to the magazine
Astounding Science Fiction. As edited by John W. Campbell,
Astounding had just entered its Golden Age, as it gradually
re-invented the genre.
When World War II began, van Vogt was rejected by his local
draft board due to his failing vision, but took a clerical
job with the Department of National Defence. In the evenings,
he would write his first novel, Slan, originally serialised
by Astounding in 1940. Slan - about a telepathic mutant,
targeted for death by humans - covers many of his recurring
themes: the tenacity of life, the need to cooperate for
survival, and an optimism that all lifeforms can work together.
Twenty years later, readers of Astounding (by then renamed
Analog) voted it the third best science fiction novel ever
written - after Asimov's Foundation trilogy and the collected
novels of H.G. Wells.
The success of Slan led to a contract with Astounding,
making him part of Campbell's "stable" of writers
and allowing him to write full-time. Van Vogt moved to Los
Angeles in 1944.
It has been said that van Vogt wrote "like a man caught
in a dream", composing far-fetched but intricate plots
on an epic scale for books such The Weapon Makers (1946),
The Changeling (1956) and Master of Time (1950). Even he
found his stories unpredictable, claiming that he was unable
to map out a plot in advance.
Not that these stories are aimless; his post-war work,
in particular, explored human behaviour and philosophy.
His interest in general semantics, inspired by the books
of Alfred Korzybsky, led to The World of Null-A (1945),
set in a nation governed by non-Aristotelian values. A popular
(if controversial) success, it proved incomprehensible to
some readers, who were subsequently drawn to Korzybsky in
an effort to understand van Vogt. A sequel, The Players
of A, followed in 1948.
Van Vogt's fascination with alternative theories and ideas
was recognised by another science fiction writer, L. Ron
Hubbard, who went to some effort to interest him in the
healing system of Dianetics. Initially sceptical, van Vogt
was converted to the system when it cured his wife, writer
Edna Mayne van Vogt, of headaches from which she had suffered
for some years.
In no small way, it changed their lives. For eight years,
the van Vogts ran the Dianetics centre in California, helping
to support it with collections of his short stories. Eventually,
they went broke responding to criticisms from the medical
establishment. Though Dianetics was incorporated into Hubbard's
Scientology belief system, the van Vogts did not become
Scientologists, steering clear of any religious or mystical
aspects.
In this time, he wrote far less, and his writing method
became more conscious and ordered. He would eventually write
novels like Cosmic Encounter (1980), Computer Eye (1983)
and a third Null-A novel, Null-A Three (1985). His autobiography,
Reflections of A.E. van Vogt, was published in 1975.
During the eighties, he won a claim that the film Alien
(1979), scripted by Dan O'Bannon, stole its plot from his
book The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950). Indeed, while
none of his books were filmed, his influence could be seen
in more than a few Hollywood blockbusters, as well as countless
published stories. While his name might not have lasted
as long as Asimov's or Clarke's, he shaped the worlds of
science fiction as much as anyone - elevating a scorned
genre to the level of serious literature.
Edna died in 1975. Van Vogt is survived by his second wife,
Lydia, and her two children from a previous marriage.
