donch@teklabs.UUCP (Don Chitwood) (08/10/85)
I just finished the latest A.E. Van Vogt Null-A novel (damned if I can remember the name of it.), copyright July l985. The first two, The Worlds of Null-A and Pawns of Null-A, are two of my all-time favorites, particularly since they introduced me to the field of General Semantics. With this one, I'm disappointed, largely because he comes up with a pretty good conceptual followup to the first two, but he bungles the story with his difficult writing style. In this latest novel, it was apparent to me that many years had gone by since the last one was written. The feel of the characters is just too modern. Their language has lots of contemporary slang. My biggest difficulty with the book was the jumping-around style van Vogt affects. From the very beginning, I had to re-read sections to discover that we were now on earth or in a spaceship or etc. He makes lots of assumptions, rather Gosseyn does, that fly in the face of General Semantics thinking. Hmm, since I wanted this to be a non-spoiler and I don't have the book in front of me to excerpt examples, this is about the extent of my comments. In summary, he blew it. Makes me mad. Don Chitwood Teklabs Tektronix, Inc.
rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) (08/11/85)
[] I can't think of anything AEVV has written in recent years that he didn't blow. If anyone can enlighten me, please do so for I have given up on the author of the Null-A books and the first book I remember staying up all night to finish, The House That Stood Still. I got stuck after 76 pages of Children of Tomorrow and haven't been able to touch him since. AEVV certainly was formative for me in the middle '40s but I figured him as over the hill worse even than Doc Smith was near the end. Please tell me where I'm wrong. Master-reads are hard to find. -- "It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg