A. E. Van Vogt and the World of Null-A

felt keen excitement attracting vibrant minds and turning them to the pursuit of higher human purpose. IF A.E. VAN VOGT had written story of his own life, he would perhaps have started with this line. In sense, it could very well have served as his epitaph. Van Vogt spent much of his life as professional science fiction writer, but he also had number of other passionate interests, including general semantics. He wrote several novels that used general semantics principles to arm his protagonists in their struggle against chaos, barbarity, and tyranny. Many IGS members, including myself, were first attracted to general semantics through those novels. Van Vogt excites my interest not only as science fiction writer but also as man of ideas and of greater importance, I believe, as an artist who mobilized and directed his readers' interest and emotions, and stirred the unspeakable level with consummate purposefulness. When I encounter writers of such charismatic appeal, in any field, I often become as interested in them and their lives as I do in their work. Using Korzybski's term, Van Vogt dismissed most biographies as elementalism, or a sketchy life history. He left mere fragments of his own life and method, mostly his 1975 autobiographical Reflections of A.E. van Vogt and handful of interviews that followed. From the resources available, one can describe van Vogt as writer who thoughtfully crafted his emotional impact on his readers and acquainted them with his principles and agenda. In that regard I found that van Vogt approached life systematically and methodically, rather than instinctively or spontaneously. Indeed, he apparently crafted his own life as carefully as he did his stories. Van Vogt used his powers to not only entertain but at the same time to convey philosophy of purposeful human evolution. He built stories around these and other principles of life that he held dear. His work peaked during the golden age of science fiction (centering on John Campbell), which also gave rise to other such stars as Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke, and like them, his writing shaped visions of human evolutionary potential through fictionalized science. The Evolution of Writer Alfred Elton van Vogt was born on April 26, 1912, on his grandfather's farm in Canada to Dutch speaking family. His father practiced law, and as his career developed the family moved in series of steps to Winnipeg, then city of 250,000. Van Vogt was shy and withdrawn by nature, and these dislocations seemed to have troubled him. He fell behind in school and had to repeat grade. When the stock market crash made it impossible for Alfred to attend college, he withdrew to his room and read for six months--fiction, history, psychology, and science. In 1931, he obtained temporary job as census bureau statistician. Curiously, census statistics fit with his emerging holistic view of society and led to the idea of an intelligent computer system far beyond the conventional thinking of the day. (1) He also picked up an idea, from Scottish-Canadian friend, that the Scots, not the British, actually ruled the empire. (2) From this came the idea of small, well-educated, behind-the-scenes cabal of social leaders. About this time, van Vogt began developing his writing method. At age 20, he sold his first confessional-type story to True Stories. He also wrote plays for Canadian radio, and articles for trade journals, newspapers, etc. In 1938, he picked up copy of Astounding and found story that fired his imagination. (3) The story told of men in an Arctic outpost who maintained their composure in the face of overwhelming and deadly odds and joined together to defeat an alien adversary far more capable than any of them individually. This planted the seeds of van Vogt's fundamental philosophy of life: For humankind to succeed in the universe, they would have to overcome ego and work selflessly and cooperatively to benefit the whole of human society--no Lone Ranger superheroes need apply. …

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