The Worlds of A.E. van Vogt

by A.E. van Vogt

The celebrated author of "The Weapon Shops of Isher", "Slan", and "The Universe Makers" brings to this collection the same unforgettable concepts and the same surprises that have put him among the top names in science fiction. This representative collection of 15 stories portrays van Vogt in all his moods, in every stage of his development from 1937 to 1971. Here, in one volume, are the thought provoking Worlds of A.E. van Vogt.


The Replicators
The First Martian
The Purpose
The Earth Killers
The Cataaaaa
Automaton
Itself!
Process
Not the First
Fulfillment
Ship of Darkness
The Ultra Man
The Storm
The Expendables
The Reflected Men

Genres: Science Fiction, Anthologies, Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Alfred 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 edtion of the popular "Astounding Science Fiction" magazine.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection contains the same dozen stories as his 1968 collection The Far-Out Worlds of A.E. van Vogt, and adds three new ones, The Storm (from 1943, part of The Mixed Men), The Expendables (from 1963, part of his Centaurus sequence), and The Reflected Men (from 1971, also included in More Than Superhuman.) Van Vogt's collections tended to overlap a lot, but this is a pretty good one. It has some stories from all phases of his career; the Golden Age Astounding early ones, the secondary markets like Marvel Stories and Other Worlds of the early 1950s, and his return to the field at the behest of Frederik Pohl for Worlds of Tomorrow, If, and Galaxy in the 1960s. These aren't his best works in so far as polished prose or nuanced character but present his big-idea concepts and wide-flung imagination well.

[Denis · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first got interested in reading science fiction, I worked at discovering all of its leading authors. At first, I was mostly interested in the "Campbell Golden Age" era writers. When coming upon names such as Heinlein, Asimov, Clark and Sturgeon, I would often start with a collection of short stories to see if I liked the "voice," or the style of the author's writing. When the name van Vogt came up, quite often, I pick up a copy of "The Worlds Of" for it seemed a good cross-section of his work over a rather long career. I initially found this guy to be the strangest of them all: Often he does write clunkily, with carelessness, his work seems first draft and totally off the top of his head... but yet he is extremely creative, original, and at times, clever. He has such a personal style that you can not help but be intrigued, if not endeared. He encompasses the genre of old school pulp that does not take itself too seriously. True, most of his stories did not always age very well but this makes them a true sci-fi time-capsule find.

[P. Still Water · Rating 3 out of 5]

Le monde des A

Jeu d'échec cosmique, conflits galactiques, souvenirs et identités truqués, humanité gouvernée par une machine des jeux... sont quelques uns des éléments de ce roman inclassable.
Le cycle du non A, probablement l'œuvre la plus originale de Van Vogt est devenue un grand classique de la SF des années 50, qui suscita à sa sortie autant d'enthousiasmes que violentes critiques.

[Harpoon · Rating 2 out of 5]

All of these stories had some interesting ideas, but none was completely satisfying. I have not read any of his novels and hope that those are more coherent.

[Danny]

Wow!

[Chinook]

Only The Cataaaa