Writers should never argue with reviewers. Never ever, ever. A book must speak for itself or not at all.
But …
One or two reviews I’ve read liken some ideas I use in my NULL-A CONTINUUM to ideas from other authors, such as Olaf Stabledon or Stephen Baxter. I don’t want anyone to get a wrong impression of my sources and influences. I was really and honestly trying to write a “Van Vogt” book.
Let me therefore not argue with the reviewers, but let me point out the sources for some of my ideas. They were Van Vogt sources.
SPOILER WARNING! I am discussing some of the scenes in the book below the cut, and I give away several rich surprises. Please do not look if you have not read my book.
One of the reviewers I read yesterday likens the transcosmic entity known as the Ydd (from my book) for being like the photino birds from Stephen Baxter. I am afraid I see no resemblance whatever. The photino birds are a non-baryonic -particle based form of life that accelerates the speed of stellar evolution, turning stars into red giants and red dwarfs before their time. They exist inside of timespace and are not self-aware. The Ydd is a representation of everything the Null-A philosophy opposes: basically a self-destructive and all-consuming false-to-facts association writ large.
The Ydd is made of the same substance The Follower from PLAYERS OF NULL-A is made: out-of-phase matter, distorted matter; but its life-processes are tied into a time paradox similar to those of the far future transhumans who aid Norma Matheson in MASTERS OF TIME (aka Recruiting Station; Earth’s Last Fortress).
The distorter machines in Van Vogt’s Null-A books are examples or symbols of the thought-distortion General Semantic is trying to avoid: the Ydd is my impression of what a distortion of consciousness would be like if it were alive.
I hate to give away my secrets, but in this case the secret is rather transparent. The idea for the Ydd was stolen, almost without change, from the Nijjans, the enemies of the Silkie, that appear in the vintage Van Vogt THE SILKIE, a fixup of his three Silkie short stories.
The Nijjans were a race whose life-energies were tied into the basic structure of spacetime in such a fashion that to destroy the Nijjans would destroy the universe. For the sake of preserving the universe itself from any possible threat, the Nijjan embarked on a program of interstellar genocide, wiping out any race that might pose a threat to Nijjan, and hence to cosmic, survival.
For very similar reasons, the Ydd monster in my novel has to hide any evidence of its own existence, and destroy those who threaten to discover it. I was trying to make a monster much in the same flavor as the monsters Van Vogt peopled in his famous VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE, and in his early stories, where the monster had an understandable (if ruthless and inhuman) motivation. The Ydd, in other words, was my version of a Rull, or of the Black Destroyer.
The Ydd is a mind that is destroying itself; which is the fate, according to General Semantics, of any mind that rejects sanity and seeks comforting illusions; or which places its own survival above all other considerations.
This same theme shows up in the final scene of Enro the Red. Enro’s strange doom I stole from another Van Vogt book, THE VIOLENT MAN, which was Van Vogt’s mainstream novel set in Communist China. Van Vogt’s pop-psychological analysis of the dependence of violent men on their female victims is what I used for Enro, the ultimate “violent male” type personality.
So far, three reviewers have criticized the climax of the book for being too much like Olaf Stabledon. While I admire Stabledon and am pleased to be likened to that great author, in this case, the three reviewers mistook who I was stealing from.
The scenes at the end of NULL-A CONTINUUM where the entire cycle of cosmic creation and destruction, from Big Bang to Big Crunch is being influenced by Gilbert Gosseyn, is, once again, simply stolen from a scene in THE SILKIE, where Ned Cemp is propelled countless billions of years into the past, where he witnesses the destruction of the universe, and has to use his “Logic of Levels” to edit and reconstruct the universe.
So, no, there was nothing taken from Stabledon nor from Baxter to be used in NULL-A CONTINUUM, at least, not consciously. As for unconscious influences, your humble author cannot say.
The attempt, whether is succeeded or failed, was to write pure Van Vogt.
Other Van Vogtian influences and homages will be clear enough to the average Van fan. For example, the ending is taken without change from the ending of “Asylum” (later fixed up into the novel SUPERMIND). I have peopled the galaxy with other disciplined mental systems akin to Null-A, but I borrowed them all from other Van Vogt books. For example, I people an entire planet with folk who all have the “callidetic” talent of Cayle Clark from WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER; another world studied the Nexialism of Grosvenor from VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE, and so on. What would a whole world run on such principles be like? I thought the idea was Way Cool, and I wanted to give the galaxy some personality.
Some times, of course, a writer makes a decision which seems logical at the time, but some readers simply find ridiculous. One reviewer (for example) thought absurd that I returned “X” as the villain, and in the body of a seventeen year old boy.
My decision to have that plot-twist was not arbitrary. There are several things from the three Null-A books that support the idea, or even make it look inevitable.
First, in WORLD OF NULL-A the super-egotist “X” is established by the plot as having the memories and skills and personality, if warped by an accident, of Lavoisseur, who was established as being the inventor of the system of serial immortality.
That logically implies that “X” could not be killed by a gunshot wound any more than Gosseyn himself could be. This seems to be a plot-point that Van Vogt himself overlooked. This raises an interesting question for a writer writing a sequel. If “X” is still alive, where is he?
Second, PLAYERS OF NULL-A establishes that the next group of cloned bodies for Gosseyn include none over seventeen.
Logically, again, if “X” is Lavoisseur, and Lavoisseur is Gosseyn, then “X” if slain would wake up in one of the unprepared Gosseyn bodies, as a seventeen-year-old.
Third, the events in NULL-A THREE already established that two Gosseyns could be alive and awake at once. This implies that “X” and Gosseyn can both be awake at once.
Fourth, since “X” was created so that Lavoisseur would be in mental rapport with him, in order to spy on the activities of the Hardie gang, this raises the possibility of a rapport, willing or unwilling, between “X” and Gosseyn. (NULL-A THREE also establishes that there is rapport between Gosseyn bodies). This raises the possibility that “X” can influence Gosseyn’s brain, and drive him insane; but also raises the possibility that Gosseyn can cure “X”, and drive him sane.
To me, the reincarnation of “X” as a youth looks like a perfectly logical and perfectly surprising plot-twist allowed, nay, demanded by the events of the canonical books. I mean, I made up the stuff in the book, but, for sanity’s sake, I did not make it up at random, or without putting some thought into it.
But if the reader bursts out laughing when “X” comes on stage, what can a writer do? The book has failed; the magic spell is broken.
