Van Vogt or Asimov

Sadly neglected these days, Van Vogt had a better grasp than any of these writers what the real core of science fiction was: the magic of science, if I may use an oxymoron. One reads an Asimov tale. One is immersed in a tale by van Vogt.

Reading Asimov is much like doing a crossword: entertaining, yes, gripping, no. Can anyone honestly remember the names of the main characters in the FOUNDATION series, without looking them up? Were those stories actually about anything in terms of plot, character, or action? No: they were intellectual puzzles to see how the Seldon Plan would unfold in the current crisis. Chess puzzles are not like seeing a real game in action, they are intellectual exercises. The plots in Asimov were like chess puzzles, not like chess games.

Compare this with WORLD OF NULL-A, THE WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER, or with SLAN. The central conceit of science fiction, the magical core, so to speak, is the strangeness and wonder of the future, that feeling of disorientation or delight in realizing that the things this generation takes as permanent are not so: or the shock when science show how matter is mostly empty space, and time is relative to a frame of reference. None of the certainties of the world are safe in science fiction. Van Vogt’s tales were like games where the rules changed every 800 words, and you had to adapt fast, or be lost.

Van Vogt’s genius was to capture that sense of uncertainty. Amnesiac superhumans struggle against hidden enemies to control their strange powers before they are destroyed…this is a common theme in Van Vogt, and an apt image for the human race that might destroy this world if we fail to rise in glory to the stars. In a way, the advance of science and its incredible powers makes the whole modern generation into a superhuman that has lost its way, a world of Gilbert Gosseyn.

Compare that to an average Asimov tale. Here is a galactic empire whose rise and fall is controlled by equations no one can do anything about. There is a broken robot which, upon the application of some detective work, we can deduce the error and correct. There is neither passion nor hope nor despair nor brilliance here. Asimov makes a workmanlike product whose workmanship is much to be admired. But genius? No.

The way Tolstoy wrote a vision of the world, so that certain folk could dedicate themselves to it, and call themselves Tolstoyan, it is possible (though not feasible) to take seriously the philosophy of the world implied in Null-A or Nexialism or the philosophy of the Weapon Shops, and call oneself a Van Vogtian, a follower of his ideas: or, to be more modest, since these theories are not rigorous, one can be inspired by Van Vogt’s bracing vision of the indomitable spirit of man. But what would it be to be a follower of Asimov? His stories are about puzzles, not ideas, cleverness, not visions.

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Greg Feeley, a man once aptly described as “The Anti-John-Wright” (his love of the irrational contrasts sharply with my love of the rational–a Dionysos to my Apollo, to dignify him perhaps overmuch) offered this comment:

“It sounds as though people are setting up a tidy dichotomy, with Asimov the rationalist and van Vogt the nutty visionary. This allows one to slot in various indisputable facts — that Asimov could put together an intelligent, craftsmanlike piece of fiction, while van Vogt seemed to steer by the seat of his pants or by nutty little self-taught tips (e.g. throw in something striking every 900 words). Apollonian vs. Dionysian, to dignify it perhaps overmuch…

“…..As for van Vogt, there’s no question that his crazy ideas often gave his early, best work a great irrational shimmer, although most of his notions were just dumb (The Right to Buy Weapons is the Right to be Free), and I don’t think he ever thought through the question of how much he believed them. (I’m not sure that he thought through anything.) After “Slan,” one or two very early stories, and bits of the Weapon Shop and Null-A series, is there really anything worth one’s attention?”

My reply:

In my opinion, the SILKIE, one of Van Vogt’s later works, is unparalleled even compared to modern writers, in terms of the wonder and invention of the plot, the breathless pace, the sheer magnitude of the setting. It also investigates one of those quirky Van Vogt ideas the strangely compelling concept of “Logic of Levels.” There is simply no ideas as startling or thought-provoking in all of Asimov.

Asimov’s closest approach to a startling new idea is the theory of Psychohistory—a somewhat fatalistic concept, if you think about it, whose implications Asimov did not think through. That job was left for Donald Kingsbury in his brilliant PSYCHOHISTORICAL CRISIS.

If you are going to list Van Vogt ideas that are “just dumb” I goggle in astonishment that you bypass all fashion of airy nexialism and nonaristotelianism and instead list the one idea in all his body of work which is entirely a matter of common sense not open to serious dispute. Unarmed men enjoy their liberty only if armed men stand ready to defend the same, and only to the degree the generosity of the armed men permit.

Whether you agree with the legal theory behind the idea, the idea itself that independence cannot be granted, only won, is one of ancient heritage in the West, as well as current application. More importantly, it is an idea common in other Campbellian SF (for example Robert Heinlein’s maxim that “An armed society is a polite society”).

Had you used the example of the Theory of Finite Logic expressed in DARKNESS ON DIAMONDIA, or Van Vogt’s theory behind the sexual roots of violence neurosis in THE VIOLENT MAN, you could have safely mocked a theory that was Van Vogt’s own, belonging to no other man. As it is, you have decided to mock an entire body of literature, both SF and mainstream, not to mention a long history of political thought, reaching from the modern Second Amendment back to the bloody field of Thermopylae.