The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. Van Vogt [1950]
Orb Books
215 pages
Reader Response by Matt H. [v 1.21] from Reading Odyssey
Rating: Highly recommended
Story and Setting
The “Space Beagle” is a huge, spherical intergalactic spaceship. Like its ancient namesake of Charles Darwin fame, its mission involves gathering information on new, undiscovered life forms. The ship is immensely well provisioned with scientific laboratories, equipment and weapons, and has a crew of over a thousand carefully selected men. The crew is organized in two roughly equal parts - scientists and military men. The scientists range from every conceivable discipline -- physics and metallurgy to psychology and history. These two groups, military and scientific are of roughly equal influence and authority. The leaders of the scientists is Dr. Hal Morton. Later his rival, a more passionate man, Kent, the head of the chemistry department, comes to power.
Soon after beginning the exploration of a strange planet, the crew encounters an extremely dangerous alien presence. The situation quickly devolves and becomes a life or death struggle involving the fate of the entire ship and its crew. This is the first in a series or perilous encounters with increasingly horrible and powerful alien adversaries. In these battles, the aliens will prove their deadly guile and intelligence as well as display unreal defenses and weapons, both physical and mental.
Aboard the ship a mid level functionary of the new, and little understood science of Nexialism is Elliot Grosvenor. He will become central to the crew’s battles with the aliens. But Grosvenor must not only fight the aliens, he must deal with political instability and maneuvering among the crew. In the final struggle, he must use all his scientific brilliance, reasoning power and understanding of human psychology as well as the revolutionary methods of Nexialism. He must also resort to extreme but necessary measures. The Space Beagle faces a foe that could devour all life in the universe!
Critical Reader Appraisal
This book starts with a bang. We are dropped straight into the POV of a terrifying alien -- prowling, desperately seeking to feed. It instantly and irresistibly draws you into the world of the Space Beagle, its crew and its mission. The narrative technique is slick, the writing vivid, clear and easy. And you soon realize some substantial ideas are being served up along with the fun and excitement. They don’t seem like philosophical asides, but they fit with the plot and are part of it. The pretty gripping action continues to the end with only very minor flagging points. It wraps up grandly with the most consequential outcome imaginable and with the virtual apotheosis of the once measly underling, Elliot Grosvenor.
The shifting POV is what gives this book its pace and special reading fun. You see that both the men and the monsters have numerous tricks up their sleeve as well as some weaknesses and propensity to error. Knowing the motivation of the beasts is key to their horror. They don’t just feed on flesh, they feed on death itself -- the process of death or cessation of id. The “Coeurl” is a fearsome, powerful, elegant cat-like beast. But the Ixyl is truly a hideous devil, with horribly grisly reproductive needs. It floats in the inconceivable emptiness of intergalactic space, waiting… You really want to scream “Hey, don’t do that!” when the crew foolishly starts messing with it.
For me and within this text, the overall idea of Nexialism is appealing. Its best parts are its combination of disciplines -- scientific sleuthing and deduction, and most of all its willingness to shatter paradigms and face unlikely and unlikable conclusions. The association with direct mind control and an assertion of the benignity of this is not so great though, nor is the ends-justify-means flavor. Of course the dictum – “for the good of the greatest number” has problems. Since the Enlightenment we have realized that pure majoritarianism can easily become oppressive. Nevertheless, Nexialism saves the day handily and niftily in this story and I felt inclined to admire it. Also wonderful is the way abstract science is applied to solve no-time, life-or-death emergency situations. But as the story shows, not only brain power is required – physical courage, sacrifice and coolness under pressure are also essential.
At the start, quite a few characters are introduced as well as a somewhat complex political situation shipboard. It requires a bit of effort. It helps a little that they are referred to as “the chemist”, “the geologist”, etc. Among the human characters only Grosvenor and Kent are significantly developed, but some others are partially.
Grosvenor fights many separate but simultaneous wars in each of the four stories – the attacking aliens, the ship’s bureaucracy, his crew-mates psychologically, politically and even physically. But he is just quietly and unassumingly far too good. He has everything wired in every sense of the word. There is a theme of scientific territoriality in the book, as other departments try to muscle-out the protagonist and take over his lab space. There’s a little bit again of the disguised god motif. For, though only slyly apparent, Grosvenor’s progress is basically from untouchable to a kind of god. He has out-thought and outfought a succession of ever more powerful super-beings. He has completely dominated the crew and seized their minds directly. He has calmly saved the ship and universe four times!
Kent is a nasty antagonist and he plays dirty. He is jealous, impulsive, emotional and violent. In fact, he could lead to the ruin of the Space Beagle or even of the entire cosmos. But, observes one of the characters -- groups usually favor the passionate and irrational leaders over the better ones. This rang true, among several other observations and iconoclastic nougats of wisdom. His potential redemption in the final scene shows a merciful bent. He certainly seemed to deserve a harsher fate.
Delivered as individual episodes, the four, similar conflict stories of the book have no plot-twist connection. I was hoping there might be one. They are of course connected in that Grosvenor and Nexialism saves the day in each case. But a link between the episodes is perhaps something left unfulfilled on the wish list. The second episode featuring the effects of remote hypnosis was perhaps the least comprehensible. Even so, the mental journeys Grosvenor took to the Bird people’s home world were weird and wonderful. Occasionally the narrative had me confused, such as the exact reason for the crew infighting during the second attack. There is also a stiffness and sterility to the environment aboard the Space Beagle, a certain clinical creepiness that includes Grosvenor himself. One could add that the crew members who are killed are perhaps a bit prop-ish. The writer does a moderately good job at fudging when scientific backing is needed – when technology becomes central to the plot. Some of it still almost strayed occasionally into fake-science-as-plot-device territory.
For me, even with the somewhat repeating, though ultimately unrelated four invasion stories, overall the unity of the book is maintained. Of rather, the virtues of the book so outshine those faults, that they bestow on it a unity regardless. The impression left is of a thrilling story, with fitting and unobtrusive philosophical themes interwoven. The only thing even more important than the sum effect of that, is the sheer greatness of the monsters!
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