Triad : The World of A . The Voyage of the Space Beagle. Slan [Hardcover]

Triad (1951) is an omnibus edition of early SF novels by this author, containing The World of Null-A, The Voyage of the Space Beagle and Slan. These three works were novelizations of his most famous SF short story series published prior to 1950. Only the series that were later published as The Book of Ptath are excluded.

In The World of Null-A (1948), the Earth has been gradually influenced by the principles of General Semantics over several centuries under the direction of the Semantic Institute and the Games Machine. Those who show the greatest comprehension of these principles are transported to Venus to live in a Non-Aristotelian society. Those who don't score high enough to be allowed on Venus are awarded with high offices on Earth.

In this novel, Gilbert Gosseyn has traveled to the city of the Machine to participate in the annual Games. Joining the local self-protection group, his identity is challenged by a resident of his home town. A lie detector confirms that he is not Gilbert Gosseyn, but states that his true identity is not known within his mind.

Ejected by the hotel staff into the crime filled night, Gilbert is bewildered by these events. Without any warning, a young woman runs into him and almost knocks them both off their feet. The woman claims to be pursued by two men, but Gilbert doesn't see them.

Teresa Clark tells him that she has been evicted from her boarding house and lacks a place to spend the night. Gilbert finds them a vacant lot and they settle down amidst the bushes. During their discussion, various things she says and does contradict her story. The next day, he learns that she is actually Patricia Hardie, the woman that he had believed to be his dead wife.

In this story, Gilbert meets various members of a group that has taken over the government of Earth and Venus. Patricia's father is the President of Earth. Thorson is the personal representative of the leader of the Greatest Empire. Elred Crang is the commander of the local Greatest Empire forces and John Prescott is his vice-commander. Dr. 'X' is a gravely injured Earth scientist whose personality has been distorted toward megalomania.

They all seem to be interested in his brain. After his interrogation and examination, Gilbert is carried down, still bound to his chair, into a dungeon and locked up. Later, Patricia releases him and they escape to her room. Then guards come searching for him and he slips out the window. As he is approaching the Games Machine, cars come out of the trees and attack him. He is shot by projectile weapons and burned by energy guns, quickly passing out from the blood loss.

Later, Gilbert wakes up on Venus. He doesn't have any scars or other signs of the wounds and burns, but he still has all his memories, including those of extreme pain. He visits the house of Prescott and Crang, but is then captured and returned to Earth. There he is shown the corpse of Gosseyn I. Apparently he is Gosseyn II, alive and well after the death of his previous body.

In The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950), the Space Beagle is a roving laboratory ship that is outward bound to another galaxy. Almost every human science is represented onboard the great ship, including one Nexialist. These scientists are searching for new and unusual data that they can use to evaluate and revise existing scientific theories.

In this novel, Ellott Grosvenor -- the Nexialist -- observes as the other scientists encounter a huge black cat-like animal on a previously unexplored planet. The creature is obviously intelligent, as is shown by its straight-forward, yet cautious, approach to the scientists. It even has manipulative tentacles around its neck.

Coeurl is hungry, but knows that it cannot directly attack the small strangers and survive. It acts friendly and later ambushes a lone individual among the ruins of the Builders. For the first time in weeks, it absorbs life sustaining id from the body. But its feeding is interrupted by the approach of a small flyer.

The strangers are suspicious of Coeurl after the body is found. Gregory Kent -- head of the chemistry department -- is very angry at the death of his friend Jarvey. He wants to terminate the creature immediately, but is overruled by Hal Morton, the expedition director.

The chemistry department analyses the remains and discovers a shortage of potassium. They prepare a soup of potassium suspended in an organic compound similar to its state within the human body and Kent presents a bowl filled with the substance to the alien creature. Before most of the department heads, Coeurl angrily dumps the contents of the bowl into Kent's face.

After being thrown off his feet by the forcefully thrown substance, Kent responds by drawing his vibrator gun and shooting the creature. He is quickly disarmed, but the whole incident results in a loud argument. Eventually one of the participants notes that Kent's shot struck Coeurl without harming the creature.

In this story, Grosvenor leads the creature into a specimen cage and the doors are locked from the outside. Grosvenor submits a report to the director about the incident and points out that, with the creature's known and suspected abilities, the current confinement has certain flaws. Later that night period, Coeurl manipulates the electrical lock with its control of electromagnetic energy and starts killing off the humans.

At first, the creature kills humans in individual bedrooms and returns to the cage in sufficient time to fool the roving guards. When it reaches a dormitory, however, Coeurl goes into a killing frenzy and returns late to the cage. As it is killing the guards, one cries out and sets off alarms throughout the ship. It throws the bodies far down the corridor and slips into the cage, locking the door behind it.

In Slan (1951), slans are a mutation of humanity that have high intelligence and telepathic capabilities. Their popular name came from Samuel Lann, the man who discovered their abilities. The most distinctive difference from humanity is the golden tendrils growing from their scalp, but they also have internal dissimilarities, including a modified heart.

In this novel, Jommy Cross is the son of Peter and Patricia Cross. His father had been killed by a mob of humans about four years before. Since Jommy is charged with retrieving his father's papers from the catacombs when he reaches fifteen, his mother is taking him into Centropolis to show Jommy a secret entrance into the tunnels.

Unluckily, the humans have noticed the pair and suspect that they are slans. The secret police are closing in, although Jommy is not mature enough to detect their presence until they are quite close. His mother shoves him between two other people and tells him to run.

Jommy climbs onto the rear bumper of a car that is soon moving swiftly down the street. Jommy tunes in to the thoughts of the men within the car. He has no difficulty reading the thoughts of the driver, but the passenger only shows the upper level of his thoughts.

Soon Jommy realizes that the passenger is John Petty, chief of the secret police. Moreover, the radio is announcing his flight from the area where his mother has just been killed. John Petty is realizing that his car is probably the one mentioned in the radio report.

The car is traveling too fast for Jommy to jump off and survive. Yet Petty is having the driver slow down and stop to check the rear bumper. As soon as the car has slowed enough to jump, Jommy is off the bumper and fleeing down a poorly lit alleyway. But the driver gets one good shot at him and doesn't miss.

Jommy wonders at the lassitude of his body, which is usually not tired by any effort. He is feeling woozy, but he pulls himself over a pile of boxes and inside a hole in the wall. He finds that the irritating objects under him are shards from the wall and replaces them, using mud as mortar to hold them in place.

While he is preparing his bolthole, he discovers that an evil mind is also thinking of the hiding place. Later, after the pursuers have left the area, he crawls out and is snatched by the owner of the evil thoughts. She puts him into her wagon under a smelly cover and smuggles him out of the neighborhood.

In this story, Granny is a former show girl who uses her good looks and sex to advance in show business. Yet she is eventually betrayed and tossed out onto the street. Since then she has become an alcoholic rag lady. But she is still capable of finding a way to use Jommy to gain money.

Granny takes Jommy to a department store to swipe valuable trinkets. He brushes against a man heading out of the store and scans his mind. He is quite startled to find that the man is a slan. Yet the man lacks tendrils and is unable to read minds.

He follows the man to his destination and then naively shows his tendrils to two men within the building. He barely escapes their attempts to capture and then kill him. He climbs up the building to the roof and sees a spaceship launched into space.

These early SF novels show most of the elements that earned the author a lofty reputation: high adventure, exotic science, and extraordinary individuals. The second novel incorporates his first published short story -- "Black Destroyer" -- from the July 1939 issue of Astounding.

While this omnibus edition was published over fifty years ago, the stories still seems to be as futuristic as the latest tales in SF magazines. The author had a way of presenting complex concepts in such a downright and convincing manner that the reader could almost believe that such ideas were already being implemented in obscure workshops or laboratories somewhere in the world.

Highly recommended for van Vogt fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of high adventure, political intrigue, and strange talents.

-Arthur W. Jordin

› Go to Amazon.com to see the review  5.0 out of 5 stars