Science Fiction Book Review: Slan by A. E. Van Vogt

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AE Van Vogt was one of those authors who most science fiction fans have at least heard of, but I haven't read much of his work, except for his famous "Weapon Shop" stories many years ago. I sometimes buy job lots of vintage books though, and one of his most famous works recently came my way. Originally serialised in a magazine in 1940, it was published in book form a few years later. The edition I've got is from 1951. Slan is a novel set centuries in the future, about a conflict between the human race and "Slans" - a race of people who are mentally and physically superior to humans, and who also have telepathic abilities. The only way to tell slans from humans by sight is that they have small tendrils growing from their heads, so they wear wigs and hats to disquise themselves. The dictatorship that controls the Earth has a long-standing policy of eliminating all slans. There was a slan dictatorship centuries earlier, and humans see slans as a threat to their survival. The slans that are still alive after centuries of persecution live a fugitive existence. At the start of the novel, a young slan called Jommy Cross has to go on the run after his mother is killed by the dictatorship's security service. Falling into the hands of an unscrupulous old lady, Jommy is forced to live as a thief for the next few years, but also manages to use his superior intellect and telepathic power to furnish himself with a full education. His objective is to survive long enough to recover an invention of his dead father, who hoped this invention would help to bring about peace between slans and humans. Another young slan is Kathleen Layton, who has lived her whole life in the government's place, under the dubious protection of the dictator Kier Gray, who is supposedly keeping her alive for study purposes. Gray is very good at shielding his true thoughts from telepaths though, and his true motives aren't made clear until the end of the story. Kathleen's position is just as precarious as Jommy's though, since some members of the government want her dead whatever Gray says. As he gets into his teens, Jommy manages to retrieve his father's invention (a sort of atomic disintegration beam) and establish an independent life for himself, gathering resources, learning how to hypnotise the people around him, and equiping himself with various useful inventions for travel and self-defence. He even ends up with a bulletproof car that can fly, along with a stolen spaceship. His main aim now is to contact other slans, but he can't find any trace of the slan organisation that he assumes must exist. He does find out about an alternate type of slan who lack the tendrils in their hair (and therefore aren't telepathic). Unfortunately, the tendrilless slans have a fanatical hatred of regular slans, and try to kill Jommy the first time he tries to make contact with them. Human civilisation is in a stagnant state in this future time, they haven't even achieved orbital space travel, but Jommy learns that the tendrilless slans have a highly militarised secret organisation that has established a colony on Mars. They're also planning an attack on Earth. Jommy has to find a way to stop the tendrilless slans, contact his own kind if possible and evade the government's attentions. His ultimate aim is peace between slans and humans, but all factions seem to regard each other with a paranoid level of distrust which makes peace seem impossible. Meanwhile, Kathleen escapes from the palace and tries to survive while seeking other slans. There's a lot of action in this novel. It often has an episodic feel, with new develpments coming out of nowhere, but it never gets boring. It's widely regarded a classic, but I wouldn't go that far. I will say it's an entertaining read, and the somewhat open-ended conclusion leaves room for speculation about what happens next.