The Expendables

by A.E. van Vogt

The alien was deadly, dangerous and inhuman—but he was not the most feared enemy on the ship! Lesbee recognized that his plan to take control of the ship had been discovered. But what other options did he have? What else could he do? And then, of course, there were the aliens that they all had to deal with.

42 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 9, 2023

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

[Zen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fairly dry and boring experience. Even by AEV-V's standards. Basically just too much damned "Now stop the story and just let ME explain" stuff going on.

And there was barely any story going on there. 90% of the story takes place in an undescribed room. Thus, there is no sense of place. Or characters. Or even much of intrest going on.

It was only the talk of AEV-V's typical pseudo-scientific that kept me listening. Oh well, YAWN!

I only got through this only because I listened to it as an audiobook. Still had to do it in 2 parts. It was only 1 hour and 30 minutes long but I still fell asleep halfway through it.

Soooo, even though I love slagging AEV-V as an overrated hack, I think I'll just give it a rest for a while.

[Forked Radish · Rating 3 out of 5]

First published in 1963. Relatively interesting, but otherwise, not too celeritous.