The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Just finished reading "The Voyage of The Space Beagle" by A.E. Van Vogt, published by Manor Books back in 1976.
Yes, Van Vogt's "The Voyage of The Space Beagle" is one of the books in my "Great Re-Reading of all the Favorite Books from my Younger Days" Project.
I originally bought "The Voyage of The Space Beagle" when it first appeared on the shelves of the new arrivals section in the Science Fiction section near the font door of Michele's Bookstore in the Brywn Marr Shopping Center in Jacksonville, North Carolina. [It closed a few years after we moved to Jacksonville, Florida. I remember being intrigued by the cover art and the synopsis on the back cover of the paperback book because it promised a story of interstellar exploration.
"The Voyage of the Space Beagle" is an example of space opera sub-genre, the novel is a "fix-up" compilation of four previously published stories:
"Black Destroyer" (cover story of the July 1939 issue of Astounding magazine—the first published science fiction story by A. E. van Vogt) (chapters 1 to 6)
"War of Nerves" (May 1950, Other Worlds magazine) (chapters 9 to 12)
"Discord in Scarlet" (cover story of the December 1939 issue of Astounding magazine—the second published science fiction story by A. E. van Vogt) (chapters 13 to 21)
"M33 in Andromeda" (August 1943, Astounding magazine, later published as a story in the book M33 in Andromeda (1971)) (chapters 22 to 28)
As the novel begins, Coeurl is prowling his desolate planet looking for food. The arrival of beings in a spaceship, beings who can be his food, inspires ravenous hunger.
The beings are humans on a scientific expedition. They are curious about this vaguely cat-like alien and carefully bring the caged alien into their ship. On board, the alien proceeds to kill as many of the humans as it can, and to take over the engine room. The ship is saved only after one of the crew, the Nexial Science department head Elliot Grosvenor, devises a plan to trick Coeurl into stealing a lifeboat. The alien is fooled into following the ship instead of returning to his own planet, and commits suicide rather than be destroyed.
The Space Beagle is a ship staffed with nearly a thousand men, travelling from Earth on a deep exploration mission through our Milky Way galaxy and beyond it. The crew intend to spend four or five years travelling before eventually returning to Earth, but only half of these exploration missions return. Grosvenor is the first Nexial scientist to be sent on this type of mission, in hopes that his integrated knowledge of all sciences may improve the odds for survival.
The attrition rate may be understandable, not only because of internal politics but also because the number of dangerous alien races seems particularly high. It's mentioned that 50% of all interstellar and intergalactic missions failed to return. While Grosvenor is coping with a rival science department head, the ship must cope with what appears to be a mental attack from telepathic aliens. Grosvenor has to invent a way to communicate with the aliens, who are actually friendly and peaceful, and tell the Riim to quit sending these confusing telepathic images—or else the captain will steer the spaceship into a star to keep it out of the hands of the scientists fighting him for control.
The humans have barely settled their dispute over who will be director of the mission when they meet another alien. Ixtl (as it calls itself) has been marooned in intergalactic space for an immeasurable amount of time. This tough, strong alien has survived unprotected in space, and one of the crew calls it a "blood-red devil spawned out of a nightmare." When the crew traps the alien Ixtl and brings it into the ship to be examined, Ixtl moves freely through the ship, walking at will through bulkheads, decks and everything but the dense outer shell of the ship. Ixtl kills some crew members and takes others as host incubators for its eggs. The humans' only hope is to follow Grosvenor's plan: to evacuate the ship and irradiate it. Ixtl escapes the radiation to drift once again in intergalactic space, unaware that the humans have returned to their ship.
On arrival at the next galaxy, M31, the crew becomes aware of the Anabis, a planet- changing alien which modifies planets so that they will be covered with dense jungles of living plants and animals. The alien, in the form of a gaseous cloud suffusing the entire galaxy, then envelops the planet and consumes all the life. It wishes, driven by the tropism of hunger, to follow the humans' spaceship to their own galaxy and graze there. Grosvenor devises a plan to trick it into following them in the direction of an impossibly distant galaxy until it starves; then the humans will return to their own galaxy in about five years. He applies all the persuasions of his Nexialist training, and not only is given his way, but begins a successful series of lectures teaching the Nexialist methods to his fellow scientists, including the department head who used to be his rival and enemy.
Van Vogt's fictional Nexialism is interesting because it requires different fields of science to work together to expand scientific horizons and find innovative solutions - something that does currently exist nowadays, but there is still some resistance to the idea in scientific fields.
I also found the mention that the entire crew of the Space Beagle, all men, are given doses of chemicals in their daily food to effectively chemically castrate them - something that was done to gay men during this time in human history 1930s-1960s as punishment for their crime of "homosexuality" and their is a rather odd few paragraphs where Grosvenor is steering a meal conversation about the attributes of women, very odd, as if Van Got had to add it for the editor. Again, at this time, there were moral codes in American entertainment and publishing and "homosexuals" could not been portrayed in a positive light if hinted at in written literature and an all male crew would have hinted at homosexuality during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.
And as fans of the original "Alien" movie that was released back in 1979, Van Vogt successfully sued and received a settlement from Fox Studios for copyright infringement on his novella, "Discord in Scarlet." There are very strong similarities between the story and the movie. Van Vogt received a settlement of around $40,000.00 if I am remembering correctly.
A classic science fiction novel that ends on a potential hopeful note, but implies that the crew of the Space Beagle may be on an endless voyage.
Strongly Recommended!
Five Stars!
https://www.amazon.com/Voyage-Space-B...
Yes, Van Vogt's "The Voyage of The Space Beagle" is one of the books in my "Great Re-Reading of all the Favorite Books from my Younger Days" Project.
I originally bought "The Voyage of The Space Beagle" when it first appeared on the shelves of the new arrivals section in the Science Fiction section near the font door of Michele's Bookstore in the Brywn Marr Shopping Center in Jacksonville, North Carolina. [It closed a few years after we moved to Jacksonville, Florida. I remember being intrigued by the cover art and the synopsis on the back cover of the paperback book because it promised a story of interstellar exploration.
"The Voyage of the Space Beagle" is an example of space opera sub-genre, the novel is a "fix-up" compilation of four previously published stories:
"Black Destroyer" (cover story of the July 1939 issue of Astounding magazine—the first published science fiction story by A. E. van Vogt) (chapters 1 to 6)
"War of Nerves" (May 1950, Other Worlds magazine) (chapters 9 to 12)
"Discord in Scarlet" (cover story of the December 1939 issue of Astounding magazine—the second published science fiction story by A. E. van Vogt) (chapters 13 to 21)
"M33 in Andromeda" (August 1943, Astounding magazine, later published as a story in the book M33 in Andromeda (1971)) (chapters 22 to 28)
As the novel begins, Coeurl is prowling his desolate planet looking for food. The arrival of beings in a spaceship, beings who can be his food, inspires ravenous hunger.
The beings are humans on a scientific expedition. They are curious about this vaguely cat-like alien and carefully bring the caged alien into their ship. On board, the alien proceeds to kill as many of the humans as it can, and to take over the engine room. The ship is saved only after one of the crew, the Nexial Science department head Elliot Grosvenor, devises a plan to trick Coeurl into stealing a lifeboat. The alien is fooled into following the ship instead of returning to his own planet, and commits suicide rather than be destroyed.
The Space Beagle is a ship staffed with nearly a thousand men, travelling from Earth on a deep exploration mission through our Milky Way galaxy and beyond it. The crew intend to spend four or five years travelling before eventually returning to Earth, but only half of these exploration missions return. Grosvenor is the first Nexial scientist to be sent on this type of mission, in hopes that his integrated knowledge of all sciences may improve the odds for survival.
The attrition rate may be understandable, not only because of internal politics but also because the number of dangerous alien races seems particularly high. It's mentioned that 50% of all interstellar and intergalactic missions failed to return. While Grosvenor is coping with a rival science department head, the ship must cope with what appears to be a mental attack from telepathic aliens. Grosvenor has to invent a way to communicate with the aliens, who are actually friendly and peaceful, and tell the Riim to quit sending these confusing telepathic images—or else the captain will steer the spaceship into a star to keep it out of the hands of the scientists fighting him for control.
The humans have barely settled their dispute over who will be director of the mission when they meet another alien. Ixtl (as it calls itself) has been marooned in intergalactic space for an immeasurable amount of time. This tough, strong alien has survived unprotected in space, and one of the crew calls it a "blood-red devil spawned out of a nightmare." When the crew traps the alien Ixtl and brings it into the ship to be examined, Ixtl moves freely through the ship, walking at will through bulkheads, decks and everything but the dense outer shell of the ship. Ixtl kills some crew members and takes others as host incubators for its eggs. The humans' only hope is to follow Grosvenor's plan: to evacuate the ship and irradiate it. Ixtl escapes the radiation to drift once again in intergalactic space, unaware that the humans have returned to their ship.
On arrival at the next galaxy, M31, the crew becomes aware of the Anabis, a planet- changing alien which modifies planets so that they will be covered with dense jungles of living plants and animals. The alien, in the form of a gaseous cloud suffusing the entire galaxy, then envelops the planet and consumes all the life. It wishes, driven by the tropism of hunger, to follow the humans' spaceship to their own galaxy and graze there. Grosvenor devises a plan to trick it into following them in the direction of an impossibly distant galaxy until it starves; then the humans will return to their own galaxy in about five years. He applies all the persuasions of his Nexialist training, and not only is given his way, but begins a successful series of lectures teaching the Nexialist methods to his fellow scientists, including the department head who used to be his rival and enemy.
Van Vogt's fictional Nexialism is interesting because it requires different fields of science to work together to expand scientific horizons and find innovative solutions - something that does currently exist nowadays, but there is still some resistance to the idea in scientific fields.
I also found the mention that the entire crew of the Space Beagle, all men, are given doses of chemicals in their daily food to effectively chemically castrate them - something that was done to gay men during this time in human history 1930s-1960s as punishment for their crime of "homosexuality" and their is a rather odd few paragraphs where Grosvenor is steering a meal conversation about the attributes of women, very odd, as if Van Got had to add it for the editor. Again, at this time, there were moral codes in American entertainment and publishing and "homosexuals" could not been portrayed in a positive light if hinted at in written literature and an all male crew would have hinted at homosexuality during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.
And as fans of the original "Alien" movie that was released back in 1979, Van Vogt successfully sued and received a settlement from Fox Studios for copyright infringement on his novella, "Discord in Scarlet." There are very strong similarities between the story and the movie. Van Vogt received a settlement of around $40,000.00 if I am remembering correctly.
A classic science fiction novel that ends on a potential hopeful note, but implies that the crew of the Space Beagle may be on an endless voyage.
Strongly Recommended!
Five Stars!
https://www.amazon.com/Voyage-Space-B...
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