recommended reading

I'm supposed to be working on the novel right now, but I've got writer's block. Trying to link up an entirely new wodge of characterization and action with a previously-written chunk of exposition is harder than I thought it'd be. Plus I'm trying to figure out how to get my protagonists into the bad guy's fortress without, say, going up to the front door and knocking (which Main Character No. 1 was planning to do). Dramatic writing is tough sometimes, you know?

So instead I'll give you a book review. Or rather, I'll break with tradition and give you an author review.

I just finished reading Transgalactic by A.E. van Vogt, which was not a single story, but several: two novels from the Mutant Mage series (The Empire of the Atom and The Wizard of Linn), a couple of stories from The War Against the Rull series, and Mission to the Stars, a stand-alone novel. So instead of reviewing each and every tale, I'll just tell you about A.E. van Vogt and his writing, and how they struck me.

Now, in any discussion of writing, there's two bits of writer-lingo you need to know: "planning" and "pantsing." I had never heard of these terms before I entered the blogsphere. I never even bothered to ask anyone what they meant. The sentiment was there, and the context, and I gradually deciphered both. "Pantsing," as near as I can tell, means wading into your story without only the most meager idea of what you're about—flying by the seat of your pants, as it were. Perhaps you've got a skimpy outline (or no outline at all), but you've done no preparation, taken no notes, nothing. You just dive right in and see where the story goes. "Planning," as you've already guessed, is the exact opposite: taking time to meticulously plan your story, outline it, map it, shape it, mold it, develop your characters, create a detailed setting, and set the story down accordingly.

Van Vogt and I are pretty similar. We're pantsers, mostly. Van Vogt would get an idea, knock out a beginning, look it over, nod, and continue on with it. He never bothered to go through beforehand and outline everything. I can tell van Vogt pantsed because of what he usually wound up doing to his stories: he retconned them into full-length novels and even novel series (what he called "fix-ups"). A lot of the early tales he wrote about bands of intrepid spacemen coming across nasty monsters in the middle of space were collated and grouped into one single tale, The Voyage of the Space Beagle. The same thing happened with the stories which make up The War Against the Rull.

This didn't happen with everything van Vogt wrote. He did some pretty good stand-alone novels, like Slan in 1940. (Well, he was going to write a sequel, but the poor sap was stricken with Alzheimer's disease and died before he could finish the first draft. His wife and Kevin J. Anderson went ahead and finished it, though, and it was published in 2007 as Slan Hunter.)

It's interesting to see this kind of approach in science fiction. I mean, traditionally, sci-fi writers are not only writing for fun and profit, but to make some kind of commentary on the human condition. All you have to do is read the first chapter of Starship Troopers (I'm twelve chapters in, actually) and you'll see just how strongly Robert A. Heinlein felt about duty, military service, war, and patriotism.

With van Vogt it's more subtle. He's not quite so blatant in his advancement of anthropic commentary, but there are certain facets of human civilization which deeply interest him, and they manifest strongly in his work. He had a thing for totalitarianism. Dictatorships and monarchies fascinated him to the point that some considered him a closet apologist. The Empire of the Atom and The Wizard of Linn revolve around a technologically advanced but culturally retarded civilization based on Earth, thousands of years after nuclear apocalypse and interplanetary war have almost annihilated the human race. Humankind lives in great cities and primitive villages, worships "the atomic gods" in huge temples, and governs itself with a tenuous and iron-fisted oligo-monarchy closely resembling the Roman Empire. Ancient spaceships from Earth's golden age still remain, but no one knows how they work; temple scientists are still able to operate the great machines, but their basic principles are lost to the ages. When colonies on Venus and Mars rebel against the ruling Earth government, the Lord Leader embarks thousands of spearmen, archers and horse cavalry in the giant spaceships. They fly to the other planets, and fight primitive wars on their hostile surfaces. Dissenters and rebels are uniformly executed; political rivals are sabotaged, betrayed, poisoned, exiled; and there is no end to the scheming, backstabbing, backbiting, and guile of the ruling families of the Empire of Linn.

Unto this chaos is born Clane, a mutant (his mother strayed too near one of the temples wherein the atomic gods were worshipped). His deformities prevent him from ever attaining the seat of power; indeed, he would have been killed outright had he not been the grandson of the Lord Leader himself. Instead, Joquin, a clever adviser to the Lord Leader, takes the young Clane under his wing, and fosters the boy's genius-level intellect. When the Lord Leader dies and a war of succession breaks out, Clane remains safely in the background, pursuing scholarly and scientific studies. Clane is too smart for his own good, but is able to disguise his gifts beneath mutation and shyness. He discovers the science behind the atomic machinery in the temples and aboard the spaceships, and then divines something else even more sinister: humanity was not wiped out by a nuclear war, but an alien race powerful beyond belief. What's worse, this alien race is rebuilding, rearming, and will soon return to claim Earth and her colonies. Clane, and Clane alone, can stop them, if he can ward off intrigue, betrayal, scheming, conspiracy, and barbarian invasions long enough to weaponize the technology of the ancients.

The series is sort of like I, Claudius meets The War of the Worlds. And it is freakin' awesome.

These were van Vogt's interests: power struggles, imperialism, totalitarian states, dictatorial societies, and political intrigue (with a good dash of exobiology thrown in). Such makes for engaging reading, particularly in the context of science fiction. Van Vogt's style is pleasant as well: he never minces words or proselytizes. He is direct, and just descriptive enough to give you the essential details (and let your imagination do the rest). There is poetry in his prose (particularly in delineating the cold beauty and vastness of space). He is a master of suspense, and can throw in quite a few twists and turns in a plot, leaving you unsure of what disaster or obstacle will overwhelm his characters next.

I have a soft spot for van Vogt. For one, he was unappreciated in his time: he won few awards, his critics were many and vocal, and he was overshadowed by the more famous names in the biz. I expect my lot will be the same (in fact, I prefer it that way).

But more importantly, I think both Arthur Elton van Vogt and A.T. Post write for the same reasons: not to make a point, not to silence critics, not to bewail the follies of the human race...just for fun. I know what I like and I write about it. So there.

I'd recommend the man to anyone who had some free time to be wowed in.