Both “Elton” and “van” were added much later

Saturday, January 11th, 2025

Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. van VogtI recently went back and read “Black Destroyer,” a science fiction short story by Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt, first published in Astounding SF in July 1939 and later combined with several other short stories to form the novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle, because the protagonist of the story, Coeurl — pronounced “curl”? — is a large, intelligent, black, cat-like alien that inspired D&D’s displacer beast.

The monster was introduced in the game’s first supplement, Greyhawk (1975), as “a puma-like creature with six legs and a pair of tentacles which grow from its shoulders,” a physical description that matches the story’s, but there the similarity ends.

Displacer Beast 1E Stat BlockThe story’s anti-hero is intelligent, if hungry and impulsive, and easily controls “vibrations,” a term that seems to include radio waves, the electricity in the ship’s electronics, the vibrations emitted by the human explorers’ weapons, and even the structure of space-age metal walls. It craves id, its term for phosphorus, which it drains from its victims. (The later novel changes this to potassium.)

One exotic power Coeurl does not have is the one the Dungeons & Dragons monster is named for, its ability to appear to be several feet away from its actual position. I don’t know where that came from.

Anyway, “Black Destroyer” arguably kicks off the Golden Age of Science Fiction:

The same July 1939 issue of Astounding also contained Isaac Asimov’s first story to appear in the magazine, “Trends”, while the next issue included the first story by Robert A. Heinlein, “Life-Line”, and the next, Theodore Sturgeon’s, “Ether Breather”. As a result, this issue is described as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

I recognized A. E. van Vogt‘s names as one of the old masters of sci-fi, but I was never sure how to pronounce his seemingly Dutch name properly:

Alfred Elton van Vogt (/væn vo?t/ VAN VOHT; April 26, 1912 – January 26, 2000) was a Canadian-born American science fiction writer. […] The Science Fiction Writers of America named him their 14th Grand Master in 1995 (presented 1996).

[…]

Alfred Vogt (both “Elton” and “van” were added much later) was born on April 26, 1912, on his grandparents’ farm in Edenburg, Manitoba, a tiny (and now defunct) Russian Mennonite community east of Gretna, Manitoba, Canada, in the Mennonite West Reserve. He was the third of six children born to Heinrich “Henry” Vogt and Aganetha “Agnes” Vogt (née Buhr), both of whom were born in Manitoba and grew up in heavily immigrant communities. Until he was four, van Vogt spoke only Plautdietsch at home.

[…]

He added the middle name “Elton” at some point in the mid-1930s, and at least one confessional story (1937′s “To Be His Keeper”) was sold to the Toronto Star, who misspelled his name “Alfred Alton Bogt” in the byline. Shortly thereafter, he added the “van” to his surname, and from that point forward he used the name “A. E. van Vogt” both personally and professionally.

Plautdietsch?

Plautdietsch (pronounced [?pla?t.dit?]) or Mennonite Low German is a Low Prussian dialect of East Low German with Dutch influence that developed in the 16th and 17th centuries in the Vistula delta area of Royal Prussia.

[…]

Plautdietsch was a Low German dialect like others until it was taken by Mennonite settlers to the southwest of the Russian Empire starting in 1789. From there it evolved and subsequent waves of migration brought it to North America, starting in 1873.

Another van Vogt story that went into The Voyage of the Space Beagle, “Discord in Scarlet,” describes an alien boarding a human ship to implant parasitic eggs in their stomachs. Van Vogt brought a case against 20th Century Fox for Alien copying his work. They settled out of court.

Comments

  1. Gaikokumaniakku says:

    Around 1990 I was reading biographies and gossip about Phil K. Dick. PKD once said (perhaps very seriously, perhaps insincerely) that A. E. van Vogt had done more to create the field of sci-fi than anyone else. From the moment I read that endorsement, I sought out van Vogt’s work assiduously.

  2. Dan Kurt says:

    By chance I met a woman and her pre-teenage son circa early 80s whose name was Vogt. She was divorced and used her maiden name. I mentioned that a favorite author mine was A.E. van Vogt. She replied that that was her uncle Alfred, and she said that he sent their family a copy of every novel he published. I asked her if she enjoyed any of them and she said that NO ONE in the family ever read any of his novels.

    Another point about A.E. van Vogt is that he was dyslexic and writing was an ordeal for him.

  3. Bruce says:

    In Dream Makers Charles Platt said Van Vogt’s stories were ‘utterances’, not just stories.

  4. Phileas Frogg says:

    “…NO ONE in the family ever read any of his novels.”

    The true pain of those who write is the realization that, “No prophet is accepted in his hometown.”

  5. Isegoria says:

    I’m afraid I sensed exactly where Dan’s anecdote was headed, when he said that Uncle Alfred sent them a copy of every book. Sigh.

  6. Isegoria says:

    PKD is an odd character and not necessarily one I’d expect to value the language of clear thinking.

  7. Isegoria says:

    A.E. van Vogt coined the term fix-up:

    He followed a strategy of introducing a new twist or complication every 800 words — a method SF author and critic James Blish called recomplication, and which Damon Knight derided as the “Kitchen Sink Technique.” This approach is both exhilarating and frustrating, and has contributed to the sharply polarized critical response to van Vogt. In the words of Brian W. Aldiss, he was a “genuinely inspired madman.” Philip K. Dick, who ardently defended van Vogt against his critics, asserted that he “influenced me so much because he made me appreciate a mysterious chaotic quality in the universe which is not to be feared.” At the other extreme, we encounter Knight, the leader of the anti-van Vogt faction, who — in an infamous fanzine article entitled “Cosmic Jerrybuilder” — almost singlehandedly torpedoed van Vogt’s reputation by famously proclaiming: “Van Vogt is not a giant as often maintained. He’s only a pygmy using a giant typewriter.”

  8. TRX says:

    Van Vogt’s imagination far outstripped his writing ability, which is why so many of his stories started off with a bang, then trailed off into mediocrity.

    The fix-up thing became very annoying when I went through a van Vogt phase, as I kept finding previously read short stories (or pieces of them) in later novels. And later editions of the same book might get revised without any mention on the cover or copyright page, leading to some head-scratching as a re-read fails to match the original.

    What he really needed was an editor with a chair and a whip, to keep him focused on the main story line.

    Still, while sometimes annoying, he reliably delivered on the “sense of wonder” thing.

  9. T. Beholder says:

    TRX says:

    Van Vogt’s imagination far outstripped his writing ability, which is why so many of his stories started off with a bang, then trailed off into mediocrity.

    Many such cases. Some worse. Salvatore can do a good scene, but then he buries it under a hundred pages of hackity-hack and herpity-derp. He also would struggle to make up as much as 3 non-ridiculous names in a row even if his life depended on it.

    What he really needed was an editor with a chair and a whip, to keep him focused on the main story line.

    What he really needed was a good co-author to cover his weak sides.

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