The Lost Planet (Lost Starship #6)

by Vaughn Heppner

“We are fast approaching the Ezwal Star System,”

Homage to Van Vogt's classic "The War Against the Rull" published as a book in 1959 from chapters in Astounding. The Ezwal was an intelligent carnivore, appearance somewhat similar to what Luke Skywalker faced on the Snowy Hoth in Empire Strikes Back.(large, furry, six-limbed with diamond-shaped open mouth full of teeth and an insatiable appetite for human flesh.

but closer to the ancient Rull Empire end.” The captain drummed his fingers on the table.

Again, Homage to Van Vogt's classic "War Against the Rull," The Rull were a sapient insect having a lenticular body with preying mantis stick-like appendages. They fought humans over the same viable planets, but they were adept at human mind control through special written symbols that grabbed a person's mind looping it into an unbreakable pattern, trapping them into stasis so the physically weaker Rull could then attack. The whole of this series displays Heppner's interest in mind control, intelligence, and the abilities differing between "races" and species, much as Van Vogt introduced in his seminal work in Astounding in 1959.