2018 read #12: Slan by A. E. van Vogt.

Slan by A. E. van Vogt
255 pages
Published 1946 (originally serialized 1940)
Read from April 18 to April 29
Rating: 1.5 out of 5

A classic of the Astounding-curated "Golden Age" of science fiction, Slan (according to the blurb on the back cover of this reprint edition) "was considered the single most important SF novel" throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Read now, it's something of an absurd relic, approximately on the same level of storytelling, character depth, and prose quality as a contemporary pulp movie serial, the kind that get riffed on MST3K. The tale begins with a slan (a mutant superhuman with psychic powers and superstrength) mother artlessly dumping exposition on the reader, reminding her young son of what they are, what their powers are, and what risks they run among hostile humanity. "As you well know" exposition is a sure way to turn me off a novel, and Slan is packed full of it, ranging from conversations between veteran secret police agents to long-winded expository orders broadcast on the radio. It's all so stiff and awkward that the only way I could persevere through the first few pages was for my reading voice to adopt a vintage radio announcer's Mid-Atlantic cadence.

The plot is pure B-movie grade, stuffed with disintegration rays and super x-rays and the marvelous power of the atom. The first two-thirds of the novel devotes nearly equal time to two viewpoint characters: a rugged, effortlessly competent slan inventor-hero, and a sheltered, usually helpless, occasionally crafty slan damsel in distress. If you don't mind spoilers for a seventy year old book, the two cross paths at last, falling immediately in love thanks to their psychic communication abilities... only for the woman (who, again, has occupied half the foregoing pages just to get to this point) to end up fridged just as immediately, in order to further the man's character development. She gets brought back later thanks to some silly pseudo-science, but not until the very last page. It's rather cringe-inducing, on top of the garbage prose and the other absurd pulp twists of the narrative. Showing an interesting kinship with his contemporary author, Robert Heinlein, van Vogt dips his narrative toe into incest and polygamy, too. Something must have been going around in the Astounding air.