The strongest is the first, featuring vampires from space! (Had it been zombies, this story would be in vogue right now). The other two are fine stories but are clumsily linked by a plot based on “Great Galactic” overseers monitoring or inflicting interventions influencing human evolution (not at all close to the league of Clarke’s “C A Fix-up novel consisting of:Īll three are fine stories but assembled this way eats away at them. It reads like an author who has quickly and haphazardly pieced together unrelated stories to get a book to market.moreĪ Fix-up novel consisting of: Asylum (1942) The Proxy Intelligence (1968) Research Alpha (1965) All three are fine stories but assembled this way eats away at them. Supermind does not rank among Van Vogt’s enjoyable books. While horribly dated, some are quite enjoyable. I have several of these thin pulp books on my bookshelf authored by Van Vogt. Van Vogt comes up short in this area most of the time. They also incorporated human emotion, human heroism, and human frailties into their tales. Bradbury, Asimov, and even the technically oriented Heinlein developed greater characters and greater settings for their tales. More refined readers of today expect more. This was acceptable in the pulps of the 1940s and 1950s. Van Vogt wrote action oriented stories with thin characters. While many names from that era like Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov are recognized by most people today, Van Vogt has faded from the notice of even most science fiction fans. Van Vogt is one of the more prolific writers of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. While it is long for a short story, it is well paced with no wasted words or actions. However, she retains her essential humanity and makes conscious decisions not to harm anyone. In the case of the young typist, it does corrupt her to some degree because she enjoys her omniscience.
In most stories of this sort, we see illustrated the old maxim of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. The characters are interesting and complex. RESEARCH ALPHA – even in this fix up book – is a great stand alone story and reveals what a great teller of short stories A.E. In Supermind, she is that at times, but at other times hopelessly weak and indecisive for no explicable reason. Van Vogt may have developed the character of Patricia in his original story as a strong willed, self sufficient woman. Here, it is a mishmash of the original with a great deal of obviously injected and incongruous new material that makes it disjointed and hard to follow. The PROXY INTELLIGENCE might have well been a decent stand alone story. The story was well written except where obviously new material was injected into it to link it and transition it to the second phase of the story. I would like to read ASYLUM as a stand alone story because its elements of intergalactic vampires coming to Earth to take over has great appeal to me.
Here, it is a mishmash of the original with a great deal of obviously SUPERMIND, being a "fix-up" was an uneven reading experience.
SUPERMIND, being a "fix-up" was an uneven reading experience.
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