A.E.VAN VOGT and KEVIN J. ANDERSON,
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Van Vogt published SLAN in 1940 - a melding of Bambi with Superman, it often appears in lists of Golden Age classics. Forty years later, Van Vogt's step-son realised that the conclusion of the novel, where telepathic, superhero, Slan Jommy Cross is ready to form a triumvirate with his girl-friend and her father to run the world, might not be as conclusive as it seems. For a year Van Vogt worked on until his dementia was realised and his papers went into storage. After he died in 1990 his widow, Lynda, persuaded Kevin J. Anderson to review Van Vogt's script and consider completing it; she knew Anderson's reputation from his work on the Herbert family's Dune franchise. Some internal analysis suggests that this is now more Anderson than Van Vogt, but that is not necessarily a bad thing - the man who gave us the word "fix-up" to describe how so much SF has been put together might not have written a story as tightly plotted as SLAN HUNTER. In Van Vogt's future, normal humans with unthinking hatred have persecuted the telepathic Slans (humans with tendrils growing through their hair with which they communicate) almost to extinction. SLAN itself starts with Jommy Cross being orphaned in a city street where everyone's hand is against him. He escapes by riding on the back of John Petty's car, who, in an incredible coincidence, is head of the secret police. Now, in the sequel, John Petty is the eponymous SLAN HUNTER and Anderson starts his story with an amazing reversal of traditional story telling: - this one begins And with one bound they were captured. What had seemed to be Jommy Cross's victory has actually put the Slans in the hands of their worst enemy. Anderson continues with Van Vogt's braiding of stories, adding one new character and story line, so this one opens with a mother arriving at a maternity clinic full-term, only to discover the horror engendered in the doctors when she is delivered of a Slan baby. In keeping with that earlier Bambi-style, her husband is killed while she escapes with the child. Anderson also expands on the earlier book's competing Slan cultures - the contention between the "true Slans" and the "tendrilless Slans". It does not help their strategic planning, though, that various leaders are chasing the same girlfriend, whom they will threaten with pistols and fleets of rocket-ships at different times. Van Vogt had one guiding rule in writing: - at every turn of the story, no matter what the protagonist manages to do, things only get worse. Although the SLAN HUNTER introduction takes that to its logical limit, Anderson is not true to that principle as the book continues and introduces what seems to be his own trope in writing, especially in the last third of the book: - no matter what happens, events start to tie up. Events which just seemed to have happened are revealed to have been done on purpose - usually by one of the villains - and characters who seemed to have no relation to one another are revealed to be closely related, sometimes even after death! Reading SLAN and then SLAN HUNTER (do read both) I found them closer in synch than some on-line critics (start at ICSHI: The A. E. Van Vogt Information Site). In fact, I have only one question: Van Vogt in his last days talked of a SLAN trilogy, so given the closures that Anderson has manipulated for SLAN HUNTER, how will he make everything even worse that one last time?
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© L J Hurst 2007