With his interest in the superhuman theme, science fiction author A.E. van Vogt anticipated and/or inspired several comic book superhero stories.
While Superman took over comics, the Canadian-born A.E. Van Vogt pioneered small Superman stories in the science fiction pulps.
Examples of van Vogt’s exploration of such wish-fulfillment characters include Jommy Cross in Slan (1940), William Leigh in Asylum (1942), and Peter Holroyd in The Book of Ptath (1943). Gilbert Gosseyn in The World of Ā (1945), Barbara Ellington in Research Alpha (1965), Steve Hanardy in The Proxy Intelligence (1968), and Nat Cemp in The Silkie (1964).
Their powers were justified with relatively convincing double-talk in van Vogt’s insistent, dreamlike prose.
Here’s our introduction to the superhero Silkie from Worlds of IF (July 1964): “Nat Cemp, a class C Silkie, awakened in his selective fashion, and perceived with the receptors that had been asleep that he was now quite close to the ship which he had first sensed approaching an hour before.
“Momentarily, he softened the otherwise steel-hard chitinous structure of his outer skin, so the area became sensitive to light waves in the visual spectrum. These he now recorded through a lens arrangement that utilized a portion of the chitin for distance viewing.
“There was a sudden pressure in his body as it adjusted to the weakening of the barrier between it and the vacuum of space. He experienced the peculiar sensation of the stored oxygen in the chitin being used up at an excessive rate— vision was always extremely demanding of oxygen. And then, having taken a series of visual measurements, he hardened the chitin again. Instantly, oxygen consumption returned to normal.
“What he had seen with his telescopic vision system upset him. It was a V ship.”
“Many of van Vogt’s novels have as protagonist a man of unusual powers — a superman,” observed Alan Nicoll. “Typically, the superman is superior because of what he has learned — Nexialism, General Semantics, Finite Logic, and so on — but he may also have unusual or unique physical attributes as well (Slan, The World of Null-A, The Silkie). It often happens that the superman learns as the novel progresses, gaining greater powers.”
Van Vogt’s career was inspired by a story that Hollywood filmed, more than once, The Thing.
“Van Vogt had been galvanized by the publication of (John W. Campbell’s novella) Who Goes There?, half of which he read standing up at a newsstand, and he based many of his hallucinatory plots on his dreams,” wrote Alec Nevala-Lee in his excellent pulp literary biography Astounding.
Van Vogt immediately proceeded to inspire others.
“One of SF’s grandest old men, van Vogt (1912-2000) made history with the first story he sold,” wrote Ray Olsen. “Editor John W. Campbell featured it on the cover of the genre-changing Astounding Science Fiction in July 1939, attracting future SF titans and mavens including … collegian Harlan Ellison. That story was Black Destroyer.”
Van Vogt’s story of the menacing cat being from a dying world, Coeurl, would in turn inspire films such as Alien.
“When Slan, a four-part serial by A.E. Van Vogt, began in the September 1940 issue of Astounding, the past mediocrity of most mutant fiction was forgotten,” noted The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. “The novel came to be recognized as a classic. Van Vogt was the first author seriously to explore the sociological implications of a mutant race attempting to survive among normal humanity.”
“Probably the most noted stories (in the area of genetic engineering) were written by James Blish between 1942 and 1955 and collected together in The Seedling Stars (1956),” the Visual Encyclopedia reported. “A.E. Van Vogt’s The Silkie (1964) echoes Blish in the genetic manipulation of human embryos to suit their adult form for life underwater and in airless environments.”
Silkies can change into three forms — Earth-dwelling, ocean-dwelling, and space-dwelling — and possess various super senses. Their “logic of levels” is a psychological power that enables them to manipulate other beings by accessing unconscious mental processes, and they can also employ energy offensively or defensively.
Van Vogt’s narrative style has been described as fragmented and bizarre, but it worked for many readers. Here’s a passage that’s typical of Van Vogt’s often dream-like writing: “A shark swam lazily out of the jungle of waving fronds and as lazily, or so it seemed, came toward him, turned on its side and, mouth open, teeth showing, slashed at him with its enormous jaws.
“Cemp impressed a pattern on an energy wave that was passing through his brain going toward the beast. It was a pattern that stimulated an extremely primitive mechanism in the shark: the mechanism by which pictures were created in the brain.
“The shark had no defense against controlled over-stimulation of its picture-making ability. In a flash, it visualized its teeth closing on its victim and imagined a bloody struggle, followed by a feast. And then, sated, stomach full, it imagined itself swimming back into the shadows, into the underwater forest in this tiny segment of a huge spaceship cruising near Jupiter.
“As the overstimulation continued, its pictures ceased to connect with body movements at all. It drifted forward and finally bumped, unnoticing, into a coral embankment. There it hung, dreaming that it was in motion. It was being attacked through a logic related to its structure, a level that bypassed its own gigantic attack equipment.”
About Author
