Quote:
Originally Posted by Badandy
Dr. Drib: I saw "Slan" is in Kindle format. It's really worth reading, eh?
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Yes, as long as you understand what you are getting.
A. E. Van Vogt was one of the "Golden Age" writers that emerged under the editorship of John W. Campbell in Astounding magazine. He once stated in an article that his writing technique was to toss in something new and change direction every 800 words. This required him to be astonishingly inventive, which he could be, but also led to complicated clockwork plots that could collapse into incoherence under their own complexity.
Slan is one of his more straight-forward tales. Jommy Cross is a Slan. Slans are a mutant offshoot of humanity, feared and distrusted by normals, and killed on sight when found. They are stronger, faster, smarter, and telepathic. Popular belief has them originally created by machine, through the efforts of a scientist called Samuel Lann, and a contraction of his name gives Slans their name.
Jommy's father was a scientist, rumored to have made a great invention that might tip the balance in favor of the Slans, and Jommy's mother warns him he might someday have to kill Kier Gray, the dictator of humanity. Jommy's mother is killed, leaving him an orphan struggling to survive and fulfill his destiny.
This being a Van Vogt novel, there are wheels within wheels, and Jommy winds up confronting not only normal humans, but another breed of Slans on his way to achieving his goal.
Van Vogt was enormously popular in the 50's and 60's, and while his work is not always coherent, it has sense of wonder in full measure. Start with Slan. If you like that, the Weapon Shops stories, the Empire of the Aton stories, and the Null-A stories are others to look at.
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Dennis