A.E. van Vogt Lost: Fifty Suns (1972)
I've now reached the point of owning so many van Vogt paperbacks that I have to spend at least five minutes inspecting each new, unfamiliar title found in Half-Price just to make sure it isn't one of the ones I already have under a different name. So far as I can work out, I think there are about five or six which I'm still to read - which is impressive for an author I initially dismissed as worthless after struggling with Away and Beyond back in the before times. That said, there are still a good number of his short story collections I'm yet to read, albeit short story collections most likely containing a couple of things I've already read through van Vogt subsequently welding them to other short stories and having the resulting Frankenbook published as a novel. The somewhat lengthy Lost: Fifty Suns, for example, was eventually stitched together with related material to form the novel Mission to the Stars, as I read it, or The Mixed Men, as seems to be its more popular title.
I found Mission to the Stars a little underwhelming - not without redeeming features but nothing special - which is sadly equally true of both Lost: Fifty Suns, the short story, and this collection as a whole. The main problem is that it all seems very uneven. The Timed Clock is okay, but leans a little too heavily on multiple twist endings the approach of which can be seen from many miles away, and - as with The Confession and The Rat and the Snake - doesn't quite read like the work of Alfred Elton, lacking the usual atmosphere, jarring angular sentences, or even any of his customarily familiar themes; and The Rat and the Snake stands suspicious comparison with his wife's writing, although I haven't found anything online to support the possibility of it being one of her efforts. The Barbarian is enjoyable, but worked just as well in Empire of the Atom, leaving Ersatz Eternal - which didn't leave much of an impression - and The Sound of Wild Laughter featuring characters from The Secret Galactics and which is another of van Vogt's slightly puzzling examinations of sexual inequality. The same views were expressed quite clearly in The Violent Man, but for some reason he never quite managed to get the subject working in any of his science-fiction novels, usually leaving us with a series of faintly troublesome mumblings about women turning frigid immediately following marriage. The frustrating thing is that while he probably doesn't quite qualify as a feminist pioneer, van Vogt's views on sexual inequality seem entirely reasonable in comparison with those of his contemporaries, but were often poorly expressed, as they are here, perhaps through a reluctance to terrify his mostly male audience. Although, given the number of female characters featured in this collection I can't help wonder if it might not have been assembled as one for the ladies, so to speak.
Oh well. His heart was in the right place, I guess.
I've now reached the point of owning so many van Vogt paperbacks that I have to spend at least five minutes inspecting each new, unfamiliar title found in Half-Price just to make sure it isn't one of the ones I already have under a different name. So far as I can work out, I think there are about five or six which I'm still to read - which is impressive for an author I initially dismissed as worthless after struggling with Away and Beyond back in the before times. That said, there are still a good number of his short story collections I'm yet to read, albeit short story collections most likely containing a couple of things I've already read through van Vogt subsequently welding them to other short stories and having the resulting Frankenbook published as a novel. The somewhat lengthy Lost: Fifty Suns, for example, was eventually stitched together with related material to form the novel Mission to the Stars, as I read it, or The Mixed Men, as seems to be its more popular title.
I found Mission to the Stars a little underwhelming - not without redeeming features but nothing special - which is sadly equally true of both Lost: Fifty Suns, the short story, and this collection as a whole. The main problem is that it all seems very uneven. The Timed Clock is okay, but leans a little too heavily on multiple twist endings the approach of which can be seen from many miles away, and - as with The Confession and The Rat and the Snake - doesn't quite read like the work of Alfred Elton, lacking the usual atmosphere, jarring angular sentences, or even any of his customarily familiar themes; and The Rat and the Snake stands suspicious comparison with his wife's writing, although I haven't found anything online to support the possibility of it being one of her efforts. The Barbarian is enjoyable, but worked just as well in Empire of the Atom, leaving Ersatz Eternal - which didn't leave much of an impression - and The Sound of Wild Laughter featuring characters from The Secret Galactics and which is another of van Vogt's slightly puzzling examinations of sexual inequality. The same views were expressed quite clearly in The Violent Man, but for some reason he never quite managed to get the subject working in any of his science-fiction novels, usually leaving us with a series of faintly troublesome mumblings about women turning frigid immediately following marriage. The frustrating thing is that while he probably doesn't quite qualify as a feminist pioneer, van Vogt's views on sexual inequality seem entirely reasonable in comparison with those of his contemporaries, but were often poorly expressed, as they are here, perhaps through a reluctance to terrify his mostly male audience. Although, given the number of female characters featured in this collection I can't help wonder if it might not have been assembled as one for the ladies, so to speak.
Oh well. His heart was in the right place, I guess.
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