 First edition | |
| Author | A. E. van Vogt |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Ronald Clyne |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Published | 1959 (Simon & Schuster) |
| Publication place | United States of America |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 244 (Hardback edition) |
| OCLC | 661127 |
The War Against the Rull is a science fiction novel by American writer A. E. van Vogt, first published in 1959 by Simon & Schuster. The novel is a fixup made from six (after 1999, seven) short stories and two connecting chapters.
The novel consists mainly of six short stories, all originally published in Astounding Science Fiction :
A seventh story, "The First Rull" (first published in the 1978 collection Pendulum), was included as a 26th chapter in the 1999 reprint and all subsequent editions.
1-4: Dr. Trevor Jamieson is stranded on the deadly jungle planet Eristan II with an ezwal, a 3-ton, six-legged, telepathic saurian-like creature that dislikes humans. Having bailed out of a crashing spaceship, Jamieson and the hostile and contemptuous ezwal - whose goal is to drive human colonists off his homeworld of Carson's Planet - must cross hundreds of miles of jungle to make their way to the ship's wreckage. The two need each other to survive, but the ezwal cannot allow Jamieson to leave Eristan II alive, as he is the only human that knows that ezwals are sapient. Their journey is interrupted by the appearance of a warship belonging to the Rull, worm-like creatures who are implacably hostile to all intelligent life. A Rull landing party capture the ezwal, who gives up on his plan of enlisting them against humans after meeting them face to face. An Earth battleship appears and destroys the Rull cruiser; after the Rull landing party are killed by a semi-intelligent carnivorous plant, Jamieson allows the ezwal to join him in their shuttle and flies them to safety.
5: Jamieson returns the ezwal to Carson's Planet, vital as a base to the human war effort. As they part, the ezwal rejects Jamieson's request that the ezwals develop a mechanical civilization capable of fending off the Rull. Jamieson finds a similar intransigence in the human settlers, all of whom have had family members killed by ezwals, and who are angered by his suggestion that the planet be returned to its native species. One young woman tells him that Carson's Planet's habitable moon could be used as a base instead, and offers to take him to see it.
6-7: On Carson's Satellite, Barbara Whitman attempts to kill Jamieson, leaving them stranded in hostile wilderness. During the hike back to safety, Jamieson uses his wilderness-survival skills to obtain food for them and save them from a blood-sucking gryb. Several days later, his battleship finds and rescues them.
8-13: Jamieson had ordered a female ezwal and her cub to be taken to Earth. Damaged in battle, the ship carrying the ezwals crashes in Alaska; a crewman kills the mother ezwal, who kills him in turn before dying. The cub manages to escape and is pursued over the landscape by men who believe he is merely an animal. Jamieson arrives as the men are closing in and manages to convince the young ezwal that he needs to cooperate with humans in order to make them understand that ezwals are intelligent beings.
14-16: Jamieson is organizing a project on the planet Mira 23 to obtain a fluid from a native lifeform in order to create a bioweapon against the Rulls. Kidnaped by Rull agents, he is taken to Mira 23, where they plan to frame the project's leader for his murder. He is left in the forest for the planet's lethal fauna to kill him, but the Rull agents are killed by a menace they did not anticipate and Jamieson is rescued by the project's leader.
17-19: In Solar City on Earth, a giant spaceship is being built in a highly-secure facility known as the Yards. As is customary for the city's children, Jamieson's nine-year-old son Diddy leaves home to spend the night exploring the Yards, to find the source of an all-pervasive sound emanating from them. During the all-night quest, he is waylaid by Rull spies and saboteurs, who use him to gain access to sections of Yards supposedly protected from Rulls by the biological weapons obtained from Mira 23. With the aid of counterintelligence agents communicating with him telepathically via the ezwal cub, he lures the Rulls into a building in which they cannot use their organic weapons, and kills them all with a gun provided to him.
20: With the ezwal cub accompanying him, Jamieson goes to the planet Ploia to capture one of the natives. Made up entirely of electromagnetic fields, the Ploian sends electrical systems into a frenzy, so Jamieson must use purely mechanical devices to control his ship. Through the ezwal's telepathic ability, he makes contact with the Ploian, which agrees to help him in return for a promise to return it home.
21-25: Jamieson has gone directly from Ploia to Laertes III to make a preliminary survey of the planet as a base of operations against the Rull. A Rull survey boat disables his lifeboat but is itself shot down. Jamieson must then engage the Rull in a battle of wits for ten days. In that time, he manages to condition the Rull with a subconscious belief that the war is futile. At the end the Rull captures him, but the Ploian frees him and they go home in a Rull lifeboat. The Rull Jamieson confronted turns out to have been a Prime Leader of his species and does, indeed, move to de-escalate the conflict.
26: At an Earth university before the outbreak of the war, a Rull infiltrator works to retrieve a piece of lost Rull technology while also sabotaging experiments, murdering students, and generally sowing chaos and confusion, before departing the planet with a low opinion of humanity in general and college life in particular.
In compiling his short magazine fiction into novel-length fixups, van Vogt often modified plots or transplanted protagonists to fit originally unrelated works into a single continuity; The War Against the Rull is highly characteristic in this regard, as three of the six constituent stories were (as initially published) wholly unrelated to the Rull series, and only two of the six had originally featured the novel's overall protagonist, Dr. Trevor Jamieson.
The oldest of the stories, 1940's "Repetition," had - in its initial form - contained no intelligent aliens at all, being set on the Jovian moon of Europa before humanity had ventured outside the Solar System, during a period of political tension between Earth and a human-colonized Mars. The 1959 rewrite moved the action to a satellite of the fictional Carson's Planet, and replaced the original protagonist with Jamieson. (Van Vogt also forgot to remove the original story's references to Europa's colonial cities and mines, creating an inconsistency, as Carson's Satellite had earlier been specified to be uninhabited.)
The Rulls were introduced in "Co-Operate - Or Else!" (1942), where they served largely as a narrative device driving the story's primary plot: the human attempt to secure the cooperation of the ezwals, a non-technological species pretending to be non-sapient in an attempt to frustrate human colonization of their homeworld. The fixup version had only a few changes; it made the ezwal slightly less murderous towards humans, but also altered the ending to make it definitively refuse to cooperate with them.
"The Second Solution" (also from 1942) only involved humans and ezwals. It was substantially expanded for the fixup, with more scenes of the ezwal cub dealing with Earth wildlife; the original protagonist, Jamieson's assistant Caleb Carson, was replaced with Jamieson himself.
The 1948 novella "The Rull" is the only component of the fixup in which a human and Rull actually confront each other directly, and is also the only one told partially from the Rull perspective: they are revealed to be an extragalactic species, whose own name for themselves is "Ria" and who believe themselves to be the perfect organism (all other intelligent life being therefore "unnecessary.") Both this story and "Co-Operate - Or Else!" describe the Rulls as bone-white, muscular, carnivorous worm-like beings who either slither or ambulate with the aid of with numerous suckers (which also serve as mouths), and a feeding habit which involves paralyzing large prey (including humans) before burrowing into a carcass and consuming it from the inside. They possess a very rapid metabolism, and a sufficient understanding of human psychology to compel humans to commit suicide via hypnotic suggestions encoded into simple images. The fixup incorporated the Ploian alien from the preceding interpolation into the plot, and expanded the ending, promoting Jamieson to the equivalent of secretary-general of the UN-like Galactic Convention.
The original versions of "The Green Forest" and "The Sound" (1949, 1950) took place in one of van Vogt's unrelated continuities, a conflict between humanity and a very different enemy, the Yevds. Unlike the implacably-hostile Rulls, the Yevds had previously communicated with humans and even exchanged ambassadors, and were presently engaged in a relatively low-intensity territorial war. They were also physically quite unlike the Rulls, being tall, angular, and black, with many reticulated piston-like arms and legs. Incapable of hearing without mechanical assistance, they communicated via modulated light and had an organic, chameleon-like ability to project holographic disguises and fire energy blasts. (Some of these qualities were transferred to the Rulls in the fixup, considerably muddling their nature.)
The 1978 story "The First Rull" is a prequel describing the activities of a Rull infiltrator on Earth, seemingly before the outbreak of the human-Rull war. Its semi-satirical and sexually-frank tone is very different from the rest of the series.
The book was reviewed by
Alfred Elton van Vogt was an American science fiction writer. His fragmented, bizarre narrative style influenced later science fiction writers, notably Philip K. Dick. He was one of the most popular and influential practitioners of science fiction in the mid-twentieth century, the genre's so-called Golden Age, and one of the most complex. The Science Fiction Writers of America named him their 14th Grand Master in 1995.
Macrolife: A Mobile Utopia is a 1979 science fiction novel by American author George Zebrowski.
The World of Null-A, sometimes written The World of Ā, is a 1948 science fiction novel by Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt. It was originally published as a three-part serial in 1945 in Astounding Stories. It incorporates concepts from the General Semantics of Alfred Korzybski. The name Ā refers to non-Aristotelian logic.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950) is a science fiction novel by Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt. An example of space opera subgenre, the novel is a "fix-up" compilation of four previously published stories:
James Henry Schmitz was an American science fiction writer born in Hamburg, Germany of American parents.
This Island Earth is a 1952 science fiction novel by American writer Raymond F. Jones. It was first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories magazine as a serialized set of three novelettes by Jones: "The Alien Machine" in the June 1949 issue, "The Shroud of Secrecy" in the December 1949 issue, and "The Greater Conflict" in the February 1950 issue. These three stories were later combined and expanded into the 1952 novel This Island Earth. It became the basis for the 1955 Universal-International science fiction film also titled This Island Earth.
A fix-up is a novel created from several short fiction stories that may or may not have been initially related or previously published. The stories may be edited for consistency, and sometimes new connecting material, such as a frame story or other interstitial narration, is written for the new work. The term was coined by the science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt, who published several fix-ups of his own, including The Voyage of the Space Beagle, but the practice exists outside of science fiction. The use of the term in science fiction criticism was popularised by the first (1979) edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by Peter Nicholls, which credited van Vogt with the term’s creation. The name “fix-up” comes from the changes that the author needs to make in the original texts, to make them fit together as though they were a novel. Foreshadowing of events from the later stories may be jammed into an early chapter of the fix-up, and character development may be interleaved throughout the book. Contradictions and inconsistencies between episodes are usually worked out.
A Talent for War is a science fiction mystery novel by American writer Jack McDevitt, the story of a search by Alex Benedict, the protagonist, to discover the nature of a mysterious project Alex's uncle had been working on when the interstellar passenger ship, on which his uncle was a passenger, was lost in space. This investigation leads deep into the history of a war between human civilization and a neighboring alien civilization and challenges the foundation mythos of the current human government.
Rogue Ship is a 1965 science fiction novel by Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt, adapted from three short stories to form a novel. The three short stories used were:
The Mixed Men is a 1952 fix-up science fiction novel by the Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt, a compilation of several shorter pieces written in the early 1940s.
Almuric is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert E. Howard. It was originally serialized in three parts in the magazine Weird Tales beginning in May 1939. The novel was first published in book form in 1964 by Ace Books.
The Planet Savers is a science fantasy novel by American writer Marion Zimmer Bradley, part of her Darkover series. It was first published in book form in English by Ace Books in 1962, dos-à-dos with Bradley's novel The Sword of Aldones. The story first appeared in the November 1958 issue of the magazine Amazing Stories. It subsequently appeared in a German translation in 1960 with additional chapters added that were not by the author.
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. It was written between 1895 and 1897, and serialised in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was first published in hardcover in 1898 by William Heinemann. The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother who escapes to Tillingham in Essex as London and southern England is invaded by Martians. It is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.
Supermind is a 1977 science fiction novel by A. E. van Vogt, published by DAW. Like most of van Vogt's longer works, it is a fix-up, comprising three shorter pieces written over a period of more than twenty-five years:
The Haunted Stars is a science fiction novel by American writer Edmond Hamilton. It tells the story of an expedition from Earth to a planet of the star Altair — a planet called Ryn, inhabited by humans like those on Earth. Against the wishes of Ryn's inhabitants, the team from Earth seek information about weapons technology used in an ancient space war. Their unsuccessful search ends in dramatic contact with another species, the ancient enemy of Ryn.
Star Gate is a science fantasy novel by American writer Andre Norton, published by Harcourt, Brace & Company in 1958. The story is science fiction with a blend of sword and sorcery, mingling technologically advanced humans from Earth with the human natives of the far-off world of Gorth and a native culture that has achieved the development level of medieval Europe.
Storm Over Warlock is a science fiction novel written by Andre Norton and published in 1960 by the World Publishing Company. The story combines science fiction with fantasy, technology with witchcraft, in a way typical of Norton's works. The sequels are Ordeal in Otherwhere and Forerunner Foray.
The Wailing Asteroid is a science-fiction novel written by Murray Leinster and first published in 1960 by Avon Books. It presents the theme of the lone inventor who saves Earth from cosmic danger and introduces Humanity to an unknown civilization. The novel was adapted for film by John Brunner as The Terrornauts in 1967.
"The Sound" is a science fiction short story by Canadian American writer A. E. van Vogt, originally published in Astounding in February 1950.
"Black Destroyer" is a science fiction short story by Canadian-American writer A. E. van Vogt, first published in Astounding SF in July 1939. It has been marked as the story that represents the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.