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The Voyage of the Space Beagle
One of the great original classics of modern SF returns!
An all-time classic space saga, The Voyage of the Space Beagle is one of the pinnacles of Golden Age SF, an influence on generations of stories. An episodic novel filled with surprises and provocative ideas, this is the story of a great exploration ship sent out into the unknown reaches of space on a long missio
Paperback, 215 pages
Published
July 8th 2008
by Orb Books
(first published 1936)
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Written in 1939, The Voyage of the Space Beagle reads like the prototype for Star Trek. A multinational crew of scientists and the military embark on a ten-year mission to explore the galaxy, seeking out new aliens and almost being killed by them (they even have 'shields).
Grosvenor, our protagonist, is in many ways reminiscent of Mr. Spock: both are awkward, intelligent men mistrusted by their emotional shipmates because of their cool rationality. He also shares the standard characte...more
Grosvenor, our protagonist, is in many ways reminiscent of Mr. Spock: both are awkward, intelligent men mistrusted by their emotional shipmates because of their cool rationality. He also shares the standard characte...more
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I always hate to write about these venerable SF classics, because very frequently I end up being disappointed by them. I know that I can't hold genre fiction from the 1950's up to the same standards as current-day genre fiction, but...
Well, hold on. Actually, I can and I am. Maybe I just feel guilty about pointing out the various flaws, especially because back in the day, this was cutting-edge stuff. Sure, it's filled with cardboard characters (almost all male of course) that e...more
Well, hold on. Actually, I can and I am. Maybe I just feel guilty about pointing out the various flaws, especially because back in the day, this was cutting-edge stuff. Sure, it's filled with cardboard characters (almost all male of course) that e...more
Pop culture is often dismissed as simply low culture – in contrast to the high art of opera or classical music or abstract expressionism. And there’s good reason: As long-ago scifi author Theodore Sturgeon once pointed out, “Ninety percent of everything is trash.”
A simple tour through the cable channels, or spin of the radio dial, will prove Sturgeon right, and in the mass of modern pop culture it’s much harder to filter out the signal from the noise. In classical music, for example, t...more
A simple tour through the cable channels, or spin of the radio dial, will prove Sturgeon right, and in the mass of modern pop culture it’s much harder to filter out the signal from the noise. In classical music, for example, t...more
"Alien, el octavo pasajero" bien podría basarse en uno de los cuentos de este volumen. Quizás lo haya sido, inconscientemente.
El viaje del beagle espacial presenta una serie de cuentos que relatan las aventuras que un grupo de científicos experimentan cuando salen a explorar el universo más allá de donde cualquier hombre ha llegado (claro antecendente de Star Trek) en busca de vida extraterrestre.
En dos de los cuentos el punto de vista de la narración es a través d...more
El viaje del beagle espacial presenta una serie de cuentos que relatan las aventuras que un grupo de científicos experimentan cuando salen a explorar el universo más allá de donde cualquier hombre ha llegado (claro antecendente de Star Trek) en busca de vida extraterrestre.
En dos de los cuentos el punto de vista de la narración es a través d...more
To van Vogt, the universe is a violent place and teaming with life. The Space Beagle is a scientific exploration ship sent out from Earth to go where no man has gone before and study all that it finds. The alien beings that are encountered are invariably hostile or if they aren't their efforts to communicate their friendship inadvertedly cause much harm.
The book has an episodic nature that arises from the fact that it was forged from four seperate short stories that he reworked into ...more
The book has an episodic nature that arises from the fact that it was forged from four seperate short stories that he reworked into ...more
I was in a used bookstore today and saw some vintage sci-fi so I got in the mood for some. I've had this book forever so it's about time I got to it.
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This was my first book from Van Vogt and it turned out to be exactly what I needed to scratch my vintage sci-fi itch. Aliens, spaceships, science, technology, space exploration. It had everything. It is a bit unfortunate that the "phasers" in this story happen to be called vibrators - gave it a kind of a homoerotic feel - ...more
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This was my first book from Van Vogt and it turned out to be exactly what I needed to scratch my vintage sci-fi itch. Aliens, spaceships, science, technology, space exploration. It had everything. It is a bit unfortunate that the "phasers" in this story happen to be called vibrators - gave it a kind of a homoerotic feel - ...more
Van Vogt collected three short stories together into a novel. It reads well, though. As you'd suspect, the Space Beagle is an exploratory space ship that runs into several different first contact scenarios. One is a very interesting failure to communicate. The other two have a lot in common; extreme power, immortality, war & stagnation. All have a lot of action & are tied together by a new breed of scientist, one who ties together the various specialties. There is a strong theme of 'the le...more
I read this undistinguished piece of space opera when I was about 15. I can't say that I was a terribly discerning reader in those days - basically I read any SF I got my hands on, and enjoyed most of it - but there was one episode that managed to shock even my unreflective teenage self. I don't remember all the details, but it went something like this. The eponymous ship is several million light-years from home when it's attacked by a mysterious disembodied entity. It turns out that the aggress...more
One of my favorites among the many novels of Van Vogt I have read is this classic. The story, like that told in The World of Null-A, has as its protagonist a superhero. In this case it is a genius scientist who is a Nexialist (one skilled in the science of joining together in an orderly fashion the knowledge of one field of learning with that of other fields). As a Nexialist, Dr. Elliott Grosvenor, is continually endeavoring to unite the disparate, sometimes warring, factions of scientists on...more
I have just started reading old, classic science fiction. I have an old pretty well beat up 1970 version (so old that it still has an ad for Kent cigarettes in the middle of it). I also have a thing for really cool sci-fi cover art, so when I'm buying these things, I look for the cover art to see if it's entertaining. I was surprised to find out, was very likely the basis for one of my favorite movies ever, Alien. It is divided up into four stories, all of them tied together by the fact that ...more
A. E. van Vogt, The Voyage of the Space Beagle (Astounding, 1950)
The cover of the ebook trumpets this as "the novel that inspired Alien." And, to be fair, van Vogt sued Ridley Scott and co. and won. Okay, you can see the resemblances to the film if you turn your head and squint just right... but that Beagle did more than influence (roughly) the folks who developed the film is, in the final analysis, hogwash.
Voyage of the Space Beagle (the ship named, of course, afte...more
The cover of the ebook trumpets this as "the novel that inspired Alien." And, to be fair, van Vogt sued Ridley Scott and co. and won. Okay, you can see the resemblances to the film if you turn your head and squint just right... but that Beagle did more than influence (roughly) the folks who developed the film is, in the final analysis, hogwash.
Voyage of the Space Beagle (the ship named, of course, afte...more
If Darwin's Beagle had had a quarter of the problems the Space Beagle has, then we would all still be creationists.
This is a good book. However, it suffers from a couple problems. First off, it's really a melding of four short stories, not a proper novel, so there's very little exposition between the four different plots, and frankly, this book could've used an additional 100 pages or so (a rare criticism from me, as usually books are too long) because for an exploration ship, we d...more
This is a good book. However, it suffers from a couple problems. First off, it's really a melding of four short stories, not a proper novel, so there's very little exposition between the four different plots, and frankly, this book could've used an additional 100 pages or so (a rare criticism from me, as usually books are too long) because for an exploration ship, we d...more
This book was lots of fun! I would compare it to watching reruns of Dr. Who (the ones from the 70s and 80s) or the original star trek. Yes, the target audience expected different things of science fiction when this was written than the average reader of today, but if you keep that in mind "Voyage of the Space Beagle" is well worth the read. Please understand that this is a "fixup", an almalgamation of four previously published short stories and some of the transitions are ...more
This is one of my childhood favorites that I return to time and time again. It is an attempt to bring the voyage of Darwin's ship Beagle into the space age along with introducing a new holistic science. The modern struggle of science specialists to be able to see the big picture and how everything interrelates is a constant theme. It is amazine to me that this book (actually a compilation of magazine short stories) started life in 1939. The educated guesses of space travel are very fun. At this ...more
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Golden age novel that's essentially a handful of short stories that were jammed together into an episodic novel. It's an interesting read from a historical perspective, as there are a few chapters that clearly served as an inspiration for the xenomorphs of the Aliens movie franchise.
This book is really a series of short stories about the travels an incidents encountered by the ship Space Beagle as it journeys to another galaxy. The strange thing is tthhat the stories just run together, they do not have separate titles. Oh well, interesting read none the less.
Some great aliens and sci-fi moments, but the cast is so flat and uninteresting, including the hero, that you don't really care when the ship is in danger.
A big deal when it came out, it now reads like a badly written season of Star Trek.
A big deal when it came out, it now reads like a badly written season of Star Trek.
Space Beagle is a fun and sometimes exciting read, particularly if you love classic space opera. It shows its age in terms of technological foresight. But the "office politics" among Van Vogt's hero-scientists, who generally fail to achieve a Platonic ideal of scholarly collaboration even as aliens try to slaughter them, is as real as yesterday.
This is where the term "Nexialist" first appeared. Defined as a scientist who has studied and works in several disciplines simultaneously, especially education. Wonder what the government would do if i put that down as my occupation?
Excellent, heady science-fiction from the "Golden Age", a collection of related stories about a scientific expedition send out to explore alien world. Includes what many feel is the basis for the movie Alien.
I read this when I was still a kid and I loved the fact that the hero was a scientist whose "specialization" was generalization. He was the one who saw the whole picture, instead of just a narrow slice.
One of the first sf novels I read (7th grade). The novel is really a collection of short stories/novellas featuring the same ship and crew--sort of a prototype for Star Trek.
Another classic science-fiction. Intrepid space travelers battle many strange and dangerous alien life-forms. One of the stories was the basis for the Alien movies.
A disappointing novel cobbled together from several short stories with to much soft science and softer philosophy to be entertaining.
Interesting collection of tales of alien contact. Mostly deals with the science of Nexialism, which integrates all science knowledge.
For all that this is such a small book it made me lose track of time so it was engrossing. I was dissatisfied with the last creature they encountered - he reminded me of the first but dumber in one respect.
Spoiler.
While the first creature had no control over his food supply - atmospheric changes caused a certain plant to die so those eating the plants whom coerl eats became scarce. But the last creature caused his own demise by hunting down his food supply. If he wa...more
Spoiler.
While the first creature had no control over his food supply - atmospheric changes caused a certain plant to die so those eating the plants whom coerl eats became scarce. But the last creature caused his own demise by hunting down his food supply. If he wa...more
Very old fashioned, but still some interesting ideas
Really good stuff. Killed me as a kid. Pretty good still.
Alien the movie came from this book
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Alfred Elton van Vogt (April 26, 1912 – January 26, 2000) 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.
More about A.E. van Vogt...
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