A. E. van Vogt, The Hare Krishna Movement, And Me

I am working on writing my second novel and when I'm not doing that I'm re-reading or listening to audio books of classic Science Fiction, trying to reverse engineer what makes them great or at least good, with the goal of adding these good qualities to my own writing. The latest author to be studied is A.E. van Vogt, specifically the novels Slan and The World Of Null A. On rereading these novels after so many years I find parallels between the worlds in them and my experiences with the Hare Krishna movement.

Slan

I read Slan in high school. It is the story of a young boy, Jommy Cross, who is a member of a race of mutants called Slans. These mutants, the next stage in human evolution, have superior intelligence, superior endurance (because they have two hearts), and the ability to communicate telepathically. This last ability is accomplished with tendrils coming out of their heads, making them easy to tell apart from normal humans. The Slans have been hunted to near extinction by ordinary humans, and after Jommy's mother is killed Jommy vows to destroy Kier Gray, the leader of the humans.

One reviewer described Slan as follows:

"The first, perhaps the most widely read, and perhaps the best of his novels, Slan is set in a far-future post-catastrophe world in which a mutant human species (of supermen) is attempting to survive the 'final solution' that has been decreed for them by normal humans. Since an analogy with the position of the Jews in the Third Reich is obviously intended, the ironic thing is that in this story there actually is a secret world-wide conspiracy, and the Slans actually do control the world in much the same way as is imagined about the Jews by students of The Protocols of Zion. Thus van Vogt's use of what Blish has called the 'extensively recomplicated plot,' or of what others have called the 'pyrotechnic' story or the 'kitchen-sink technique,' tends to lead to confusion even in the more simply constructed of his novels".

I did feel confused reading that novel. van Vogt introduces a new idea every few pages. One of them is the idea of Slans that don't have tendrils and can pass as human. I'm not sure what role they play in the story.

Anyone who feels he is being persecuted by those who aren't as good as he is will identify with Jommy Cross. Of course, that is always a large number of people. If the phrase White Genocide has a special meaning for you, you'll enjoy reading Slan.

The World of Null-A

The novel The World Of Null-A also has people with special abilities, but they are ordinary humans who have been given training to integrate the cortical and thalmic regions of their brains. This training is based on the science of General Semantics. If you don't know what that is, the novel won't teach you much. In college I attempted to read Science and Sanity (the book by Count Korzybsky that introduces the subject) and couldn't make much of that either.

Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics

Suffice it to say, your brain has a thalmus, or more animalistic part, and a cortex, or more human part. Null-A training teaches you to make them work together effectively. In the future it will also teach you to do things like fight with superhuman strength by cutting off signals to the fatigue centers in your brain.

What is that training like? I couldn't tell you. In the novel there is a Games Machine in a City of the Machine. Each year there is a competition judged by this machine to find out who has the best trained minds. The very best get to live on Venus, a Null-A utopia. Those not quite qualified to do that get important jobs on Earth, including ruler of the planet. You need to travel to the City of the Machine to take this test. A.E. van Vogt never imagined the Internet, so the idea of taking the test in your own home never occurred to him. Although the novel takes place hundreds of years in the future, people still smoke, there are still printed newspapers, and all electronic devices still have vacuum tubes. At one point in the story the hero rents a voice recorder for a week. It costs him four dollars. The idea that anyone would buy such a device never occurred to van Vogt. On the other hand, there are robot planes and something called an atomic cutter seems to be an ordinary household item.

The hero must fight an emperor of a galactic empire that spans hundreds of thousands of worlds. Everyone on those worlds is human. They have starships and a device called the Disruptor (which also uses vacuum tubes) but never developed Null A. The empire isn't described much, and what description there is isn't that interesting.

The novel doesn't tell you much about the Games, either. On the first day the applicant must define Null-A, Null-N, and Null-E, by writing the definitions down on a piece of paper and feeding that paper into a slot where it will be read and interpreted. (No computer terminals, no Internet). This gives the author a chance to do some exposition without really explaining anything. The hero never gets to take any more tests than that, so we can only imagine what they must be like.

As for the definitions: Null-A is non-Aristotelian logic. Null-N is non-Newtonian science. Null-E is non-Euclidean geometry.

The second and third have no place in the story. Null-A consists of multi-valued logic and knowing the difference between the map and the territory. Apparently, Aristotle's logic has been holding back humanity for hundreds of years. Considering the high opinion Ayn Rand had of Aristotle (she uses some of his laws as book titles in Atlas Shrugged) there may be something to this. How a multi-valued logic works is never explained.

So the hero of the story, Gilbert Gosseyn, goes to the City of the Machine to compete in the Games with the idea of emigrating to Venus. His wife Patricia has died recently and he's been doing intensive training in Null A. He gets to the City and finds out that during the Games there will be no police protection for anyone. Contestants form groups to protect each other. When he attempts to join such a group he finds out that he is not who he thinks he is, and that in fact all of his memories are false. His dead wife turns out to be the daughter of President Hardie, still very much alive, and never married to him.

The way this is revealed is amusing. A device that everyone seems to own (unlike voice recorders) is a lie detector. This is not today's polygraph machine. Instead it is an electronic gadget, with vacuum tubes, that is intelligent, self aware, and capable of having conversations (although it cannot volunteer information not specifically asked for). It can look inside a person's brain and determine not only if a person believes something, but if that belief is true. The lie detector determines that Gosseyn really believes that he is Gilbert Gosseyn and is married to Patricia Hardie, but it isn't so. Who he really is, the machine cannot say.

Philip K. Dick would use the idea of false implanted memories in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? but van Vogt got there first.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Fortunately, Gosseyn has Null-A training so he is much better equipped to deal with this revelation than you or I would be. (Of course, it is quite possible his memory of that training is also false, so he only thinks he has it. Philip K. Dick would have gone there; van Vogt does not).

Since he cannot account for who he is he is evicted from his hotel. He'll have to spend the thirty days of the Games sleeping in the park.

At this point the novel reads more like a hard boiled detective story than Science Fiction. Gosseyn meets a dizzy dame who turns out to be Patricia Hardie. He meets some tough guys who seem to be advance men for a galactic empire that will invade Venus. He gets killed by the bad guys and finds himself in a new body, on Venus this time. He finds out he has something extra in his brain. He finds out that the bad guys have been extorting the Games machine so they can replace the Null-A trained leaders of Earth with their own, untrained people. Conquering the Null A utopia that is Venus is the first step in their conquest. Because of the Venusians' trained minds, their millions are a bigger threat to the invading forces than Earth's billions. And of course Gilbert Gosseyn, with his extra brain matter, is the biggest threat of all. Or he will be, if he ever figures out what is going on.

Lots of breathless adventures follow.

I was fascinated with this novel when I read it in college. I couldn't make sense of the plot, but as a college student I was comfortable with the idea of people smarter than myself and I gave credit to van Vogt (and Count Korzybsky) for being such. I also read the sequel The Players Of Null-A, but I didn't think much of that one.

The Players of Null-A

Back to the present. For the past week I've been listening to The World Of Null A as an audio book. (Somebody uploaded it to You Tube. There are many audio books on You Tube, all violating someone's copyright, and nobody does anything). Hearing the story without having to read it, I was finally able to follow it all the way through.

Which brings me to the Hare Krishna movement.

I am in no way blaming A.E. van Vogt for my involvement with the Hare Krishna movement. I did that on my own. What I am saying is that the appeal of cults and the appeal of van Vogt's early novels are similar.

The obvious example of this is the Church of Scientology. I can easily imagine someone encountering Dianetics for the first time and thinking the E-meters are much like the Null-A training that Gosseyn alledgedly had. I never found Scientology appealing, though. I knew who John Campbell was, and also that L. Ron Hubbard had started out as a Science Fiction writer. In the edition of Dianetics in the college library Hubbard describes Campbell as an atomic scientist. He was no such thing. He was perhaps the greatest and most influential Science Fiction editor ever, and a pretty fair author of same (he even has a Lunar crater named after him) but he was no scientist. I don't think he even had a college education.

Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

So basically I was inoculated against Dianetics and never took it seriously. A.E. van Vogt was not so fortunate. He ran his own Dianetics center for awhile, but had quit Dianetics by the time I was in college (the late 1970's). The problem with Dianetics is that it presented itself as Science, but it didn't really hold up as Science. It read like the paranoid ideas of a lunatic. The author believed that every child born survived an attempted abortion done by its mother. The phrase "attempted abortion" is used so often in the book that it is given the abbreviation "AA". So the idea of being clear of engrams didn't appeal to me.

I had no such defense against Krishna Consciousness, although at the time I thought I had. I was an atheist, and had no interest in religion.

The story of how I got interested in Krishna Consciousness is in my book, The Life And Times Of Bhakta Jim. The short version is that I met a guy who had a sister living in the Detroit temple. We both became friends with the same woman, and somehow that led me to read about Krishna. As it turned out, the Western Illinois University library had a complete set of books published by the Hare Krishna movement, so I had plenty to read.

The Life And Times Of Bhakta Jim

According to Srila Prabhupada, Krishna Consciousness is Science, and History. In Krishna Book (technically not the actual title, but that's what Krishna devotees call it) he states:

"We therefore request everyone to take advantage of this great transcendental literature. One will find that by reading one page after another, an immense treasure of knowledge in art, science, literature, philosophy and religion will be revealed, and ultimately, by reading this one book, Krishna, love of Godhead will fructify".

Krsna: The Supreme Personality of Godhead: v. 1

It would be more accurate to describe Krishna Book as a very elaborate mythology which has no more basis in historical fact than the Lord of the Rings. However, the story of Krishna is compelling reading and I ate it up. Afterwards I read everything about Krishna I could get my hands on, not just the movement books but others as well. Then one day I visited the Evanston temple, met a most remarkable woman among the devotees, and began an involvement with the movement that would go on for over two years. The whole sad story is in my book.

There were many Hare Krishna beliefs I did not accept at the time. The astronomy described in the Hindu scriptures was just wrong. The accounts of events in the scriptures did not seem like things that really happened. On the other hand, their core beliefs about the soul were intriguing. I didn't judge their scriptures using the same standard I used to judge Dianetics, and I don't think it is fair to any religion to judge it by those standards.

So how is the Hare Krishna movement like a van Vogt novel?

The first similarity will be found in the immense self esteem of the author. If you're going to start any kind of movement you need to have a good opinion of yourself, especially if that good opinion is not widely shared. Read van Vogt's introduction to the revised edition of The World Of Null A. He clearly has a high opinion of himself and his work. He also feels unfairly persecuted, mostly by critics like Damon Knight.

Srila Prabhupada thought that distributing his books was the greatest welfare work for mankind. Back in the seventies they were mostly sold in airports. The devotee would hand someone a book and ask for a donation. Many of the books wound up in trash bins. The devotees would buy the discarded books from the janitors and try to sell them again. Anyone looking at this activity would think it was a dumb way to win hearts and minds or raise funds, but Srila Prabhupada thought that anyone who came in contact with these books even for a moment might have his life changed. Even though the books were translations of existing Hindu scriptures where he only provided commentary, he thought of them as his own books.

The second similarity is the practice of training to control one's own mind. In Null A the practitioner seeks to integrate his cortex and thalmus by training. Psychology is an exact science. You can go to a psychiatrist and have him take a picture of your brain, and based on what that picture shows he can treat you. By Null A training you can arrive at a superior kind of sanity.

In the Hare Krishna movement there is also training. The devotee seeks to rise above the three modes or gunas (goodness, passion, and ignorance). Like in the world of Null A there are castes based on what guna predominates in your mind. The mode of ignorance is dominant in animals and in those that are not much better than animals. These would be the laboring class. The mode of passion is suitable for the ruling class. The mode of goodness is for the priestly class. Those who have trancended these modes are the enlightened ones, like van Vogt's Venusians.

The practice for transcending these gunas involves following four regulative principles (no meat eating, no gambling, no unregulated sex, and no intoxication) and training the mind by listening to the sound of chanting Krishna's names two or more hours per day. This wasn't something Srila Prabhupada invented. It is normal Hindu practice, though not one performed by most Hindus.

The third similarity is the promise of Utopia. In Null A, Venus is a Utopia. It is a world without crime and without want where everyone does what is needed, even resisting an alien invasion. Living there is to be prized even above being a ruler of Earth.

The Hare Krishna movement believed that being a devotee living in a Krishna Conscious society was as good as living with Krishna in the spiritual world. Their scriptures speak of kings so righteous that in their realms no parents ever experienced the death of their children. Devotees take this seriously.

Persecution is a big theme in van Vogt novels, and back in the seventies the Hare Krishna movement had various insulting names for those not in the movement. The ones that gave us the most grief we called demons. The ones that were easy to get donations from were called slows. The ones that came to the temple ever Sunday night but weren't serious about following the rules we called fringees. The ones we felt neutral about we called karmis (which means those who work for the fruits of action, or karma).

I left the Hare Krishna movement in 1979 after being deprogrammed. It took three days for people who had once belonged to cults like Hare Krishna was in the 1970's to convince me that I was trapped in thought patterns that prevented me from thinking for myself. I wonder what van Vogt would have thought of deprogramming. I know he wrote a book The Violent Man whose plot involved brainwashing. I was impressed enough with that book that I mailed it to a friend that I had helped deprogram. (Remember how I had met a remarkable woman on my first visit to the Evanston temple? She was the one). The book might have started her to think that I was too nerdy to be good husband material. but she would have figured that out in any case.

The Violent Man

A.E. van Vogt's works don't age well for me; I am too aware of their flaws. I believe that they influenced many people who went on to become better writers than he was. Cordwainer Smith and Philip K. Dick might be two examples. Philip K. Dick wrote an excellent story called The Golden Man which is like the mirror image of Slan. In this story, a mutant becomes the next stage in human evolution, not by having superior intelligence, superior endurance, or telepathy, but simply by being attractive to women. This creature has no intelligence to speak of, or any qualities humans admire in themselves, but it can see a few minutes into the future and thus take action to avoid being captured, and its golden skin has the power to arouse desire in human women and make them willing mothers to its offspring. As the story ends, it is likely that creatures like it will replace the human race.

The Golden Man

The story was definitely a reaction to Slan. Dick wrote:

"Here I am saying that mutants are dangerous to us ordinaries, a view which John W. Campbell, Jr. deplored. We were supposed to view them as our leaders. But I always felt uneasy as to how they would view us. I mean, maybe they wouldn't want to lead us. Maybe from their superevolved lofty level we wouldn't seem worth leading. Anyhow, even if they agreed to lead us, I felt uneasy as where we would wind up going. It might have something to do with buildings marked SHOWERS but which really weren't".

There was a movie made from The Golden Man titled Next, about a man who can see a short distance into the future. I didn't see it, but it sounds like Hollywood took a neat idea from a Dick story and did its own thing with it, ignoring the original point to the story. Hollywood tends to do that, and not just to Dick. Read Farewell To The Master by Harry Bates, which had a very different ending from The Day The Earth Stood Still, the film based on it.

Farewell to the Master

This brings me to my own novels, which were influenced by all the Science Fiction authors I've read, including van Vogt, as well as my experiences in the Hare Krishnas. My first novel is Shree Krishna And The Singularity, a story of the first conscious machine and its search for self realization, a search that will involve a future version of the Hare Krishna movement. There are van Vogtian elements in that story, but done with a more straightforward plot and a sense of humor which is entirely absent in van Vogt's works.

There are novelists, van Vogt being one example, who make a big sensation with their very first novel. My own novel has shown no signs of doing that, at least not so far.

Shree Krishna And The Singularity

Having said that, I'm not too unhappy with how it turned out.