A.E. van Vogt More than Superhuman (1971)
As I may have mentioned, van Vogt can be unusually chewy at times with intense, disorientating text which demands the reader's full attention, the pay off being - when he gets it right - a genuinely weird and atmospheric narrative unlike that of any other writer, carrying the same sense of something profound you get with those dreams in which some world changing revelation is forgotten as soon as you wake. Unfortunately, this collection is mostly just plain chewy.
Here we have six short stories following the superhuman theme - an obsession which informed much of van Vogt's writing, to be fair - although, two of the stories are just a couple of pages, meaning this is more like an assemblage of four novellas. I already read Humans Go Home! in The Gryb and unfortunately didn't find it any more comprehensible second time around. The Reflected Men is a little more convincing but is about twice as long as it needs to be, and dating from the late sixties to early seventies, much of this lot suggests some mumbled conversation about what women really like coming from the room next door. I don't think Alfred had much going on in the trouser department at this later stage of his career, and you can tell he's not happy about it, hence all those stories wrestling with his needs as a sexual being and the frigidity or otherwise of those damn women with their big ol' titties all wobbling up and down 'n' shit. It's not so much that he comes across as the Bernard Manning of science-fiction, but that it's a little uncomfortable watching an older man struggle with certain assumptions of his generation, even realising something doesn't add up, but never quite able to see the way through; and van Vogt is more or less a waste of time when he's not writing to his strengths. Keeping my attention affixed to the pages upon which Humans Go Home! had been printed was therefore a little like trying to hammer nails into concrete.
Thankfully Research Alpha more or less redeems the entire collection, keeping it fucking weird with a serum which flings patients off along many thousands of years of their own future evolution, and so sending me off to the internet just to check it wasn't something which had ended up filmed as an episode of The Outer Limits. It wasn't, but it's a collaboration with James H. Schmitz who was apparently noted as having a knack for writing female characters, thus compensating for one of his co-writer's weaknesses. So that's James H. Schmitz added to the list.
As I may have mentioned, van Vogt can be unusually chewy at times with intense, disorientating text which demands the reader's full attention, the pay off being - when he gets it right - a genuinely weird and atmospheric narrative unlike that of any other writer, carrying the same sense of something profound you get with those dreams in which some world changing revelation is forgotten as soon as you wake. Unfortunately, this collection is mostly just plain chewy.
Here we have six short stories following the superhuman theme - an obsession which informed much of van Vogt's writing, to be fair - although, two of the stories are just a couple of pages, meaning this is more like an assemblage of four novellas. I already read Humans Go Home! in The Gryb and unfortunately didn't find it any more comprehensible second time around. The Reflected Men is a little more convincing but is about twice as long as it needs to be, and dating from the late sixties to early seventies, much of this lot suggests some mumbled conversation about what women really like coming from the room next door. I don't think Alfred had much going on in the trouser department at this later stage of his career, and you can tell he's not happy about it, hence all those stories wrestling with his needs as a sexual being and the frigidity or otherwise of those damn women with their big ol' titties all wobbling up and down 'n' shit. It's not so much that he comes across as the Bernard Manning of science-fiction, but that it's a little uncomfortable watching an older man struggle with certain assumptions of his generation, even realising something doesn't add up, but never quite able to see the way through; and van Vogt is more or less a waste of time when he's not writing to his strengths. Keeping my attention affixed to the pages upon which Humans Go Home! had been printed was therefore a little like trying to hammer nails into concrete.
Thankfully Research Alpha more or less redeems the entire collection, keeping it fucking weird with a serum which flings patients off along many thousands of years of their own future evolution, and so sending me off to the internet just to check it wasn't something which had ended up filmed as an episode of The Outer Limits. It wasn't, but it's a collaboration with James H. Schmitz who was apparently noted as having a knack for writing female characters, thus compensating for one of his co-writer's weaknesses. So that's James H. Schmitz added to the list.
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