One of my favorite science-fiction authors is A.E. (Alfred Elton) van Vogt, whose most significant works were published from the late 1930s through the early to mid-1940s, though his literary oeuvre extended through the mid-1970s. Though the period of his greatest influence and productivity coincided – to an extent – with that of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, he never attained the continued and ongoing impact of those contemporaries, because of a significant, lengthy, and ironically deliberate gap (alas, alas!) in his literary career, the inevitability of changes in literary style and cultural fashion that parallel and challenge the career of any writer in any genre, and to be admitted, a diminution in the impact and power of his later works.
And still; yet still… The quality of his early body of work far exceeds that of anything written by Isaac Asimov (who’s vastly overrated anyway), and easily challenges if not altogether exceeds the writings of Robert Heinlein, in terms of the way his writing engenders feelings of wonder and astonishment. Certainly that’s what I felt when I first read “Asylum”, and, “The Weapon Shop”, both published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1942, in the early 1980s. Not in the original magazine, of course! Instead, I discovered them in Volume 4 (covering 1942) of Asimov and Greenberg’s Isaac Asimov Presents the The Great SF Stories. (Okay, yeah, this dates me!!)
And with that, as I’ve read and accumulated (where will I put them all??!) science fiction books and magazines over the years, I’ve come to wonder why Ballantine never issued a volume for the Classic Library of Science Fiction entitled Classic Science Fiction – The Best of A.E. van Vogt. (It would’ve been the 14th work in the series!, which was published between 1974 and 1995.) Well, DAW books published The Book of van Vogt (8 stories) in 1972, and, Pocket Books released The Best of A. E. van Vogt (12 stories), one of the 7 books in that publisher’s The Best of … series, the release of all of which was limited to 1976. Maybe the absence of an A.E. van Vogt anthology from Ballantine’s series was attributable to issues of copyright, the advice of van Vogt’s literary agent, or even a decision by the author himself.
However, the “second” Best of A.E. van Vogt – yet another “best of”! – appeared as two volumes published by Sphere Books, in England, in 1979, one of their seven science fiction anthologies under that heading released between 1974 and 1979. The van Vogt anthology, originally published by that company as a single volume in May of 1974, was divided into two paperbacks of roughly equal length (appropriately, Volumes I and II) five years later.
The cover art of both paperbacks is by the Peter Elson, both books sharing variations of the the same general theme: a massive spaceship (massive, because of the visual “feeling” imparted by the perspective from which the craft are viewed, or the miniscule size of features such as windows, ports, or antennae) in shades of gray, green, and blue, is set against a weirdly pinkish hued background, floating motionlessly, or moving at the most minimal speed. The strange thing is, somehow, the pinkish toned background really works.
Here’s the front cover of Volume I…
…and the simple back cover…
And, the stories in the anthology:
Contents
(This volume ISBN 0 7221 8726 2)
(First published in Great Britain by Sphere Books Ltd as part of a single volume, 1974; 0-7221-8774-2 (978-0-7221-8774-6))
“Vault of the Beast”, Astounding Science Fiction, August, 1940
“The Weapon Shop”, Astounding Science Fiction, December, 1942
“The Storm”, Astounding Science Fiction, October, 1943
“Juggernaut”, Astounding Science Fiction, August, 1944
“Hand of the Gods”, Astounding Science Fiction, December, 1946
“The Cataaaaa”, Fantasy Book, Volume 1, Number 1, July, 1947
“The Monster”, Astounding Science Fiction, August, 1948
Bibliography – The Science Fiction Books of A.E. van Vogt
Here are two versions of the above volume’s cover art, both from the late Isaac Wilcott’s (a.k.a. Isaac Walwyn’s) Sevagram site.
This image appears at Isaac’s catalog entry for The Best of A.E. van Vogt: Volume 1…
…while this image is linked at the same page, under “wallpaper“, specifically because it’s – pretty big – !! – wallpaper. The image – a half-tone print – appearing at Sevagram reveals a significant vertical crease about one third the way “in” from the print’s left edge, suggesting that the original had been folded within a hardcover book. For the purpose of this post I did some digital editing to remove the fold and stray printing defects, to enable a fuller appreciation of Elson’s imagination and originality, let alone his aesthetic sense.
Hope you like it.
So. Could the anonymous ship be the “Space Beagle”, just prior to embarking on her mission of interplanetary exploration? This I do not know, since no title is associated with the painting in Volume I, or, at Sevagram. Regardless, the odd color combination – very dark green to medium green with wavy stripes of light green – actually works very well for the spaceship, especially and strangely when juxtaposed against this un-named world’s pale pink sky and coastal metropolis in many hues of violet. But, the most interesting aspect of the spacecraft is its bulbous, whale-like, almost rotund shape, lending it the appearance of a gigantic (and it truly is gigantic) sea creature. The nautical resemblance goes further from the four antennae along its body suggesting the masts of a sailing ship. The single best describing the thing: Massiveness.
If Peter Elson’s artistic inspiration arose from a nautical theme, it works: A gigantic craft now floating in an alien atmosphere will shortly rise, to float in, and through, space.
References and What-Not…
Peter Elson, at…
… Peter Elson Science Fiction Illustrator
… Wikipedia
… WinterMute71
… The Worlds of Peter Elson (via Wayback Machine)
“The Best of A.E. van Vogt” (1974 Sphere Edition), at…
… Internet Speculative Fiction Database
