The Weapon Shops of Isher / Gateway to Elsewhere

by A.E. van Vogt, Murray Leinster

The Weapon Shops of Isher - 179 pp

By the year 4784, the Empire of Isher ruled the universe and an impetuous willful girl ruled the empire. Into this epoch, the most scientifically powerful period humanity ever knew, a time-staggering bombshell was tossed. It came in the form of a man from today, a victim of a conflict which was as old as that empire and which now threatened to be the end of both Isher and its worlds.

Gateway to Elsewhere - 139 pp

Tony Gregg was just an ordinary everyday American until the day he came into possession of an old Barkut coin. He knew that it was more than just a collector's curio because there was no such place on any map of Earth, past or present. He learned then that it could be used as a key - a key to a GATEWAY TO ELSEWHERE.

318 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

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 is an Ace Double edition from 1954; the two novels are printed back-to-back and in opposition to each other, each with its own cover and each starting with page one. (The format is called tête-bêche.) It's one of the longest of the Double books; Leinster's novel is 139 pages and van Vogt's is a whopping 179. The novels are nothing alike thematically. Leinster's story, which is new to me, is a light-hearted romp about a man who finds a key to the fourth dimension and finds himself embroiled in an Arabian Nights fantasy where he opposes djinns in order to win the heart of a beautiful slave girl. It's the closest thing to genre fantasy that I can recall reading by Leinster. It's a funny, feel-good, happy story for the most part, a slightly expanded version of Journey to Barkut from the January 1952 issue of Startling Stories. The Weapon Shops of Isher is a fix-up novel of three novellas: The Seesaw and The Weapon Shop from 1941 and 1942 issues of Astounding SF and the titular story from a 1949 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. It's a true classic of the genre, a winner of the Libertarian Prometheus Hall of Fame Award and has been cited as important and influential by everyone from the NRA to Stephen King. I thought that it gets a little hard to follow at times, but I can think of few other books that have sparked more debate and conversation in science fiction fandom over a very long number of years. It's a very serious, thought-provoking book no matter what the readers' personal beliefs are, and I'm glad I re-read it. I'll rate this edition at four stars; three for Barkut and five for Isher and meet in the middle, just as the Doubles were designed.

[John Peel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The lead book in this pairing is "The Weapon Shops of Isher", one of A.E. van Vogt's most famous stories, but the real gem is Murray Leinster's "Gateway to Elsewhere". "Isher" is typical van Vogt - about four books worth of plot, and half a book of explanations. It's an interesting ride, but you don't quite know how you got to the destination. "Elsewhere" is simply a hoot and a half - an unhappy American gambles his future on following a mystical coin and ends up in a world that starts in the Arabian Nights and twists back through science. It's filled with delicious characters and some very bizarre plot twists. A great read all around.