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Pendulum
FIRST EDITION, DAW=sf Books #316 (UE1423), (c) December 1978. Paperback original, so stated, “A DAW Books original, Never Before in Paperback.” Original $1.75 cover price.
158 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
About the author
A.E. van Vogt
611 books485 followersAlfred Elton van Vogt was a Canadian-born science fiction author regarded by some as one of the most popular and complex science fiction writers of the mid-twentieth century—the "Golden Age" of the genre.
van Vogt was born to Russian Mennonite family. Until he was four years old, van Vogt and his family spoke only a dialect of Low German in the home.
He began his writing career with "true story" romances, but then moved to writing science fiction, a field he identified with. His first story was "Black Destroyer", that appeared as the front cover story for the July 1939 edition of the popular Astounding Science Fiction magazine.
van Vogt was born to Russian Mennonite family. Until he was four years old, van Vogt and his family spoke only a dialect of Low German in the home.
He began his writing career with "true story" romances, but then moved to writing science fiction, a field he identified with. His first story was "Black Destroyer", that appeared as the front cover story for the July 1939 edition of the popular Astounding Science Fiction magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 13, 2018
Pendulum collects six previously unpublished short works by A.E. van Vogt, along with a non-fiction essay detailing his thoughts at witnessing the launch of Apollo Seventeen and one story from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that he wrote in collaboration with Harlan Ellison. None of the stories compared to his classic, seminal works of prior decades in my opinion, though one of the stories is The First Rull. The Apollo essay is interesting from an historical context, not the least of which is because of the surprise he exhibits at seeing people of color and women in the crowds witnessing the launch. It's not a bad collection, but doesn't contain any of his best work.
partially-read
June 21, 2026"Human Operators" (1971) - I was watching the last couple episodes of Armored Trooper VOTOMS (great series btw) which contains an extremely obvious riff on 2001's HAL death sequence. "Actually, this reminds me of an Outer Limits episode" went my friend, and we watched it, only to discover it was based on a van Vogt story that I own. Co-written by van Vogt and Harlan Ellison, it follows a man living alone aboard a self-aware starship as its repair-slave, leading a stunted life of alternate deprivation and torture. Initially uncomprehending of Ship's dependence on him, his understanding rapidly develops when he is commanded to impregnate the slave of another starship. The story has echoes from "I Have No Mouth", with a tortured human living inside a massive machine that hates, yet is dependent on him, and both stories develop a thread of sympathy for the machine. Structurally, it's a bit more interesting since we're discovering the truth of the situation along with the protagonist, but the more upbeat ending of "Operators" is probably not going to stick as strongly in my memory. Ship is terse and hostile, until the end, when his operator enters the "intermind" room where Ship's various subpersonalities converse, revealing a human depth of feeling to the machine, and its soliloquies are quite stirring. Despite being the villain of the story, Ship's situation is tragic and thought provoking, especially his willingness to isolate himself from his peers, rather than allow repair to his most vulnerable areas. The adaptation was very good, with a few minor changes to heighten drama, like the operator witnessing the death of his father, rather than inferring it. Great story.
February 26, 2021
I've already read a collection of A. E. van Vogt's short stores (or "fix-up novel" if you will),
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
. While I enjoyed its episodic nature, I got really tired of its idea of Nexialism (a kind of super science) that often basically functioned as a Deus ex machina. When I came upon this collection I thought I give him another try. While I have to admit that I was in the mood for something classic and not too demanding, the latter may actually be the reason why I couldn't really get into it. To put it bluntly, the stories collected in Pendulum just felt a bit too non-consequential.
The titular story was really the main reason why I picked up this collection. Revolving around themes of culture, language, and time-travel, it really should have been exactly my kind of thing. You know, this does sound like Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life", right? Unfortunately, when the story was suddenly over it had me wondering what this was all about (and not in the good kind of way). This doesn't go anywhere, does it? Did I miss something?
I liked the atmosphere of the second story, "Footprint Farm". A meteor hit on the eponymous farm and it's owner gets somewhat obsessed with it. He really doesn't realize how weird it is that his underage daughter is, well, working her ass off ever day (and night, as it turns out) to dig it up. In the end it becomes clear that aliens made her do what she did. Again, the consequences of this first-contact scenario could have been explored further, but it was entertaining enough.
"Living with Jane" made me wonder what it is with science-fiction and telepathy. The premise was kind of interesting. Science is now able to build androids that function as exact duplicates of a human being (externally as well as internally). Parents deploy these androids in case of their absence, most interestingly in case of divorce or death, in order to establish a stable environment for the child. Unfortunately, it turns into a mediocre the robots are taking over storyline that revolves crucially around the daughter's telepathic abilities. Given how she does have very progressive ideas about the human-robot relationships, the execution of the story ended up being rather underwhelming. To be honest, in the time it took me to read this I should have rewatched The Terminator.
"The first Rull" focuses on a member of an alien race that apparently is featured in other stories as well. They lost a ship that somehow ends up on Earth. In order to prevent them from reverse-engineering their anti-gravity drive they send the story's main protagonist to sabotage the Earthling's endeavors of figuring out what the ship is doing. The Rull are shape-shifters and the protagonist assumes the identity of a student at the university which holds the ship. Although I do like the setup, encounters with other human beings end up being pretty dull. Maybe in 1978 ideas of a commune and sending out its women to sleep with the professor to push its male members through the physics exams was kind of shocking (probably not), I'm pretty sure there would have been more interesting ways to explore the first contact scenario.
Finally, "The Human Operators" may have been my favorite story of the collection. It's a bit of a mystery story as we are thrown into this kind of strange setting where we have a boy whose only interaction is with the spaceship for which he is doing repairs. The story is narrated by the boy himself and in present tense. There are no other human beings and he is regularly undergoing torture by the ship for no apparent reason. The only other person he talks about is his dad, who was killed by the ship when the boy turned 14 years old, but who gave him a cryptic message about "98 chances" and how "vicious [not sure if that's the right translation] means smart". I also quite liked the eventual resolution. So, a story well done.
Rating: 2.5/5
The titular story was really the main reason why I picked up this collection. Revolving around themes of culture, language, and time-travel, it really should have been exactly my kind of thing. You know, this does sound like Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life", right? Unfortunately, when the story was suddenly over it had me wondering what this was all about (and not in the good kind of way). This doesn't go anywhere, does it? Did I miss something?
I liked the atmosphere of the second story, "Footprint Farm". A meteor hit on the eponymous farm and it's owner gets somewhat obsessed with it. He really doesn't realize how weird it is that his underage daughter is, well, working her ass off ever day (and night, as it turns out) to dig it up. In the end it becomes clear that aliens made her do what she did. Again, the consequences of this first-contact scenario could have been explored further, but it was entertaining enough.
"Living with Jane" made me wonder what it is with science-fiction and telepathy. The premise was kind of interesting. Science is now able to build androids that function as exact duplicates of a human being (externally as well as internally). Parents deploy these androids in case of their absence, most interestingly in case of divorce or death, in order to establish a stable environment for the child. Unfortunately, it turns into a mediocre the robots are taking over storyline that revolves crucially around the daughter's telepathic abilities. Given how she does have very progressive ideas about the human-robot relationships, the execution of the story ended up being rather underwhelming. To be honest, in the time it took me to read this I should have rewatched The Terminator.
"The first Rull" focuses on a member of an alien race that apparently is featured in other stories as well. They lost a ship that somehow ends up on Earth. In order to prevent them from reverse-engineering their anti-gravity drive they send the story's main protagonist to sabotage the Earthling's endeavors of figuring out what the ship is doing. The Rull are shape-shifters and the protagonist assumes the identity of a student at the university which holds the ship. Although I do like the setup, encounters with other human beings end up being pretty dull. Maybe in 1978 ideas of a commune and sending out its women to sleep with the professor to push its male members through the physics exams was kind of shocking (probably not), I'm pretty sure there would have been more interesting ways to explore the first contact scenario.
Finally, "The Human Operators" may have been my favorite story of the collection. It's a bit of a mystery story as we are thrown into this kind of strange setting where we have a boy whose only interaction is with the spaceship for which he is doing repairs. The story is narrated by the boy himself and in present tense. There are no other human beings and he is regularly undergoing torture by the ship for no apparent reason. The only other person he talks about is his dad, who was killed by the ship when the boy turned 14 years old, but who gave him a cryptic message about "98 chances" and how "vicious [not sure if that's the right translation] means smart". I also quite liked the eventual resolution. So, a story well done.
Rating: 2.5/5
October 16, 2013
Allegedly new stories from van Vogt for this volume, although The Human Operators was published in F&SF in 1971 and one of them is not a story but a report of his witnessing an Apollo rocket launch. All very interesting, but not really what it says on the tin.
The Pendulum
A project to create sea-life diversity by convection inadvertently awakens eight billion humanoids sleeping beneath the sea from a previous civilisation who are also in telepathic communication with a slow-thinking Dutchman aboard the project ship. van Vogt’s attempts to inject humour are hit and miss. this is not so much SF as allegorical fantasy, since the scientific elements fall apart under the slightest degree of scrutiny.
The Male Condition
Aliens, nicknamed Tinkers, have eradicated anger from the human psyche and in the process also eradicated the concept of rape and rapists. A psychologist feels that he needs to re-experience the male urge to rape in order to be able to record it for study purposes and posterity.
NB. The Tinkers are only visible to women. Most men believe that the Tinkers have left earth and women are just pretending or hallucinating when they claim that Tinkers are present.
I’m not sure there is any point to this tale, although sadly, if there is one, it has probably been overshadowed by van Vogt’s innate sexism. He has always seen men and women to be of different species. They are described so in this tale. One could have imagined that, by 1978, he might have become aware that feminism had been around for quite some time. the settings and characters seem oddly dated, and again, van Vogt attempts to inject inappropriate humour at some points, which just does not work.
Living with Jane
Sometimes AEVV’s writing leaves one annoyed and excited at the same time. Here, the central character is a young girl, Jane, whose parents are divorced. In these circumstances, Jane explained to her grandmother, androids are employed to replace any missing parents, thus ensuring the emotional security and development of the child.
Things get complicated however, since Jane’s father is trying to defeat a takeover of the world by a cabal of high-level androids. van Vogt’s trademark logical hero is employed to outwit the androids with the help of his daughter who has evolved a technique of ‘noticing’ which achieves the same result as telepathy.
The First Rull
van Vogt returns to one of his inimical alien races from ‘The War Against The Rull’ and a time when the Rull were not known. A Rull spy has infiltrated a college on Earth in order to recover an abandoned Rull spacecraft which has been discovered by humans.
Entertaining and filled with VV’s trademark twists and turns.
Footprint Farm
The child of a divorced couple becomes obsessed with digging in a part of a farm where a meteor fell. For van Vogt this is a simple, pastoral tale, unusually straightforward.
The Non Aristotelian Detective
The practices of Null-A (Non Aristotelian thinking) are well-known to readers of VV’s Null-A novels, if not entirely understood. A Null-A detective advertises for ‘cold’ cases to solve and is given the details of an unsolved murder by a police lieutenant. As the Lt discovers, Non-A thinking is to do with semantics, semiotics, the meaning of ‘meaning’ and the concept of ‘the map is not the territory’.
Using his Null-A techniques the detective quickly solves the case and explains to the lieutenant how he did so.
In an odd way, it all makes perfect sense.
The Human Operators (with Harlan Ellison) (F&SF, Jan 1971)
One of the best stories in this volume, it tells of a group of rogue ships which have enslaved individual humans within them to take care of them and perform maintenance duties. It is quite a melancholy tale, and tinged with a certain claustrophobia, since there is no way of knowing (in common with the human slaves) what human society is like outside of this system.
Ultimately though, there is an odd yet beautifully poetic ending.
The Pendulum
A project to create sea-life diversity by convection inadvertently awakens eight billion humanoids sleeping beneath the sea from a previous civilisation who are also in telepathic communication with a slow-thinking Dutchman aboard the project ship. van Vogt’s attempts to inject humour are hit and miss. this is not so much SF as allegorical fantasy, since the scientific elements fall apart under the slightest degree of scrutiny.
The Male Condition
Aliens, nicknamed Tinkers, have eradicated anger from the human psyche and in the process also eradicated the concept of rape and rapists. A psychologist feels that he needs to re-experience the male urge to rape in order to be able to record it for study purposes and posterity.
NB. The Tinkers are only visible to women. Most men believe that the Tinkers have left earth and women are just pretending or hallucinating when they claim that Tinkers are present.
I’m not sure there is any point to this tale, although sadly, if there is one, it has probably been overshadowed by van Vogt’s innate sexism. He has always seen men and women to be of different species. They are described so in this tale. One could have imagined that, by 1978, he might have become aware that feminism had been around for quite some time. the settings and characters seem oddly dated, and again, van Vogt attempts to inject inappropriate humour at some points, which just does not work.
Living with Jane
Sometimes AEVV’s writing leaves one annoyed and excited at the same time. Here, the central character is a young girl, Jane, whose parents are divorced. In these circumstances, Jane explained to her grandmother, androids are employed to replace any missing parents, thus ensuring the emotional security and development of the child.
Things get complicated however, since Jane’s father is trying to defeat a takeover of the world by a cabal of high-level androids. van Vogt’s trademark logical hero is employed to outwit the androids with the help of his daughter who has evolved a technique of ‘noticing’ which achieves the same result as telepathy.
The First Rull
van Vogt returns to one of his inimical alien races from ‘The War Against The Rull’ and a time when the Rull were not known. A Rull spy has infiltrated a college on Earth in order to recover an abandoned Rull spacecraft which has been discovered by humans.
Entertaining and filled with VV’s trademark twists and turns.
Footprint Farm
The child of a divorced couple becomes obsessed with digging in a part of a farm where a meteor fell. For van Vogt this is a simple, pastoral tale, unusually straightforward.
The Non Aristotelian Detective
The practices of Null-A (Non Aristotelian thinking) are well-known to readers of VV’s Null-A novels, if not entirely understood. A Null-A detective advertises for ‘cold’ cases to solve and is given the details of an unsolved murder by a police lieutenant. As the Lt discovers, Non-A thinking is to do with semantics, semiotics, the meaning of ‘meaning’ and the concept of ‘the map is not the territory’.
Using his Null-A techniques the detective quickly solves the case and explains to the lieutenant how he did so.
In an odd way, it all makes perfect sense.
The Human Operators (with Harlan Ellison) (F&SF, Jan 1971)
One of the best stories in this volume, it tells of a group of rogue ships which have enslaved individual humans within them to take care of them and perform maintenance duties. It is quite a melancholy tale, and tinged with a certain claustrophobia, since there is no way of knowing (in common with the human slaves) what human society is like outside of this system.
Ultimately though, there is an odd yet beautifully poetic ending.
December 28, 2008
Many times it seems like van Vogt is writing faster than his own brain can follow. His stories have a rushed, damn-the-torpedoes pace as though trying to outrun critical analysis. And sometimes he combines two unrelated conceits/premises into a single story. I was curious how his style would transfer to short story format, and the result is that I'm still unimpressed.
The best of the bunch was "The Human Operators", which had the most conventional of styling. Oddly, the involvement of Harlan Ellison may have acted as a control rod.
"The Non-Aristotelian Detective" may or may not be the beginning of his obsessions with General Semantics.
"The Launch of Apollo XVII" appeared to be a firsthand account of the author's own experience. It's very factual and unembellished, and I'm curious where else it might be reprinted.
The best of the bunch was "The Human Operators", which had the most conventional of styling. Oddly, the involvement of Harlan Ellison may have acted as a control rod.
"The Non-Aristotelian Detective" may or may not be the beginning of his obsessions with General Semantics.
"The Launch of Apollo XVII" appeared to be a firsthand account of the author's own experience. It's very factual and unembellished, and I'm curious where else it might be reprinted.
July 7, 2012
Pendulum - 2/5
The Male Condition - 1/5
Living with Jane - 4/5
The First Rull - 2/5
Footprint Farm - 2/5
The Non-Aristotelian Detective - 1/5
The Human Operators - 4/5
The Launch of Apollo XVII - 2/5
This being a collection of later works, it's no surprise that you're repeatedly nailed over the head with Non-Aristotelian Logic. Someone might be able to make a good story out of it, but A.E.'s attempts fell significantly short. Still a few gems in here, though.
The Male Condition - 1/5
Living with Jane - 4/5
The First Rull - 2/5
Footprint Farm - 2/5
The Non-Aristotelian Detective - 1/5
The Human Operators - 4/5
The Launch of Apollo XVII - 2/5
This being a collection of later works, it's no surprise that you're repeatedly nailed over the head with Non-Aristotelian Logic. Someone might be able to make a good story out of it, but A.E.'s attempts fell significantly short. Still a few gems in here, though.
March 28, 2020
A collection of short stories from A. E. Van Vogt. It is not my taste. The only story I really enjoyed was co-written for Harlan Ellison. He writes for a different audience than me, someone who wants to figure things out, not escape into a story. Flat characters, seems to be written by a socially awkward person for other socially awkward people.
October 4, 2014
A mixed bag of Vogt. As always brim full of great ideas but clumsily executed, and his approach to female characters is again somewhat disconcerting – and not in a good way. Human Operators is by far the best story.
August 17, 2024
Disappointed the cover of this one had nothing to do with any of the stories as it was the main reason i picked it up. One good story, the human operators, was written in collaboration with Harlan Ellison, and the rest are mediocre to bad. A.E. Van Vogt’s portrayal of women and his main characters thoughts of them is sexist and insulting to say the least. My first Van Vogt with a couple more on the shelf so i’ll give him another go somewhere down the road.
Love this badass cover though.
Pendulum: 1/5
The Male Condition: 2/5
Living with Jane: 2/5
The First Rull: 3/5
Footprint Farm: 3/5
The Non-Aristotelian Detective: 3/5
The Human Operators: 4/5
The Launch of Apollo XVII: 3/5
Love this badass cover though.
Pendulum: 1/5
The Male Condition: 2/5
Living with Jane: 2/5
The First Rull: 3/5
Footprint Farm: 3/5
The Non-Aristotelian Detective: 3/5
The Human Operators: 4/5
The Launch of Apollo XVII: 3/5
February 16, 2026
Maybe my score is low because I don't generally enjoy short story compilations. Crafting a good short story is a hard skill to master and this collection is an example of how easy it is to write bad nonsense.
Most of the tales here are silly, bordering psychedelic and rushed like they were just proofs for bigger ideas. Not a good introduction to van Vogt.
Three stars because "The Human Operators" is actually really good and worth the read alone. And the non-fiction piece "The Launch of Apollo XVII" is an interesting time capsule of America's weird attitude toward science (complete with a multi-paragraph treatise that displays the casual racism of whites of the time).
Most of the tales here are silly, bordering psychedelic and rushed like they were just proofs for bigger ideas. Not a good introduction to van Vogt.
Three stars because "The Human Operators" is actually really good and worth the read alone. And the non-fiction piece "The Launch of Apollo XVII" is an interesting time capsule of America's weird attitude toward science (complete with a multi-paragraph treatise that displays the casual racism of whites of the time).
February 26, 2022
Cold War SF
August 13, 2023
My first Van Vogt book and probably my last. Some science fiction stands the test of time (Clarke, Asimov, Dick and some of the great dystopian stories) but these stories really don't. The science isn't interesting enough to carry the dated views - any story centred around a planned rape isn't acceptable now, and really wasn't then either.
I was going to give up after the first couple of stories, but there was just enough to keep me pushing through. I was glad to have done so for "Footprint Farm" which is the only story I would recommend.
I was going to give up after the first couple of stories, but there was just enough to keep me pushing through. I was glad to have done so for "Footprint Farm" which is the only story I would recommend.
January 8, 2009
Its a collection of short stories, and there is only one good one in the volume. The rest are a demonstration of the worst triats of Vogt - sexism and wild psychology.
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June 21, 2009Science Fiction
June 1, 2015
1984 grade C
short stories
short stories
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