A.E. van Vogt: Science Fantasy's Icon

In the early 1970's van Vogt and Jack Williamson co-authored two outlines for proposed stories for the "Star Trek" television series; they were paid, but the outlines were eventually rejected.(van Vogt Questionnaire, 1975) Van Vogt has had one short story produced on the "Night Gallery" television series and at least one cassette tape of one of his novels produced with actors, sound effects and music. An original movie script written by van Vogt, which was not produced, is now the published novel, Computerworld. It is ironic that living in the film capital of the world van Vogt never had a theatre movie made from one of his stories during his lifetime. In a 1995 letter to me, Lydia van Vogt stated that she thought several of van Vogt's stories could be made into movies, in part, because of their special effects possibilities.

A. E. van Vogt is given credit for originating the term, "fix-up novel"; i. e., a novel made up of previously published short stories and with added material, such as transitions.(Wolfe, 41)

With better than average innate intelligence, van Vogt produced multileveled stories which some persons found difficult to read; he has been an idea author in the SF genre, even avant-garde. Forrest J. Ackerman, who was van Vogt's agent for over forty years, told me he thought that van Vogt often presented more ideas in his stories than just about anyone else.(Interview, 1994) Van Vogt's stories are for thinking readers. Van Vogt lived more years in the United States than in Canada, but he was considered by some to be SF's greatest writer who was born and raised in Canada.(Colombo, 36) A 1995 National Library of Canada science fiction and fantasy exhibition in Ottawa included van Vogt's work.