A. E. van Vogt

Alfred Elton van Vogt (April 26, 1912 - January 26, 2000) was a renowned Canadian-born science fiction author who achieved a degree of immortality as one of the most prolific, yet complex, writers from the mid-20th century 'Golden Age' of his genre.

A post-war philosopher

In 1944, van Vogt moved to Hollywood, California, where his writing took on new dimensions after World War II. Van Vogt was always interested in the idea of all-encompassing systems of knowledge (akin to modern meta-systems), the characters in his very first story used a system called 'Nexialism' to analyze the alien's behaviour, and he became interested in the General Semantics of Alfred Korzybski. And he was profoundly affected by revelations of totalitarian police states that emerged after WWII. He subsequently wrote three novels merging these overarching themes, The World of Null-A and The Pawns of Null-A in the late 1940s, and Null-A Three in the early 1980s. Null-A, or non-Aristotelian logic, refers to the capacity for, and practice of, using intuitive, inductive reasoning (fuzzy logic), rather than reflexive, or conditioned, deductive logic.

Related Topics:
1944 - Hollywood, California - World War II - Meta-systems - General Semantics - Alfred Korzybski - Totalitarian - Police states - 1940s - 1980s - Non-Aristotelian logic - Intuitive - Fuzzy logic

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Van Vogt systematized his writing method, using scenes of 800 words or so where a new complication was added or something resolved. Several of his stories hinge upon temporal conundrums, a favorite theme of his. He said many of his ideas came from dreams, and indeed his stories at times had the incoherence of dreams, but at their best, as in the fantasy novel The Book of Ptath, his works had all the vision and power a dream can impart.

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In the 1950s, van Vogt briefly became involved in L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics. Van Vogt operated a storefront, for the secular precursor to Hubbard's Scientology sect, in the Los Angeles area for a time, before winding up at odds with Hubbard and his methods. His writing more or less stopped for some years, a period in which he bitterly claimed to have been harassed and intimidated by Hubbard's followers. He resumed writing again in the 1960s, while remaining in Hollywood with his second wife, who took care of him through his declining years.

Related Topics:
1950s - L. Ron Hubbard's - Dianetics - Scientology - Sect - Los Angeles - 1960s

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