Van Vogt was not a horror writer, though, and he was ahead of his time in other ways. The struggle to gain recognition for “Nexialism”, a holistic theory of science, among the ship’s officers is an important plotline of the novel, as it leads to battles and mutinies. In science and in SF the time of systems thinking represented by Nexialism was yet to come, but Van Vogt identified what would be involved and made the practice more than just a frame for his fix-up. Soon after this book was first published he went off on a very different tangent involving Dianetics, but between 1939 when “Black Destroyer”, the story of Coeurl, was published and the novel’s first appearance in 1950 he was working on original lines.

In another analysis, in the second part of the novel, which tells of the Riim, a sort of telepathic chicken community who could yet destroy the ship, Elliott Grosvenor, the Nexialist protagonist, uses the terms “fellah” and “fellaheen” in his examination of Riim thinking and acceptance or non-thinking-about of their philosophies using terms that have now gained a new recognition in the light of Middle Eastern events and politico-theologies. The terms and the problems they represent remain significant. That Van Vogt could apply them so appropriately in the realms of space is a tribute to the continuing power of this book, again indicating that it is far more than a horror story set on an enclosed world, and more of a novel ahead of its time well worth re-printing.

In the same decade in which he wrote SPACE BEAGLE Van Vogt wrote THE WORLD OF NULL-A and its sequel, THE PLAYERS OF NULL-A, introducing Gilbert Gosseyn, who lives in a universe in which Non-Aristotelian logic is purported to exist, in which machines allocate those with remarkable powers to the super-world of Venus, in which Gosseyn is found to have two brains, in which he can die repeatedly, and in which super-villains and Space Emperors, have many varied intentions for the unfortunate amnesiac. After last year’s SLAN HUNTER by Kevin J. Anderson continued another of Van Vogt’s series (quite well, too), John C Wright has written NULL-A CONTINUUM for the Van Vogt estate. Readers of Wright’s 2002 novel THE GOLDEN AGE and its sequels will recognise his powers as a Van Vogt ventriloquist, particularly as to the inventions of the Null-A series; however, Wright adds some features of his own. Firstly, he gives the name of the philosophers who inspired Van Vogt’s work, such as Samuel Hayakawa, to characters. Secondly, he starts to cross-refer these stories to other, non Null-A books, such as the fantasy BOOK OF PTATH, whose name becomes a significant part of the plot. Thirdly, though, his invention explodes. NULL-A CONTINUUM must be twice the length of any of Van Vogt’s own works, as Gosseyn himself goes backwards and forwards, fights back against Shadow Worlds, and travels through time. Gosseyns multiply until in the last chapters there are enough of them to fill a court room, so that his generations and avatars sit on judgement on him. Despite Van Vogt’s own protestations the Null-A books were never a good advertisement for Non-Aristotelian reasoning and John C Wright has probably extended that nullity.

Tor’s Van Vogt editions have glorious red-gold cover illustrations by Bruce Jensen. Admire the covers, and then open SPACE BEAGLE, there is more to be found inside than I can account for.