From Amazon.com
You might easily mistake a list of A.E. van Vogt's classic stories for the names of bygone rides in Disney's Tomorrowland:
Empire of the Atom,
Mission to the Stars,
Two-hundred Million A.D.,
Project: Spaceship. This Nebula Grand Master, while still writing well into the 1980s, was a pioneer of sci-fi's golden age, an author that the
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction credits with creating--along with Heinlein and Asimov--"the first genuinely successful period of U.S. SF." A prolific contributor to such early mags as
Thrilling Wonder,
Startling Stories, and
Astounding, van Vogt distinguished himself with his expert pacing, his mind-bending ideas, and--surprising in the starched-lab-coat 1940s--his serious access to weird. (Check out 1945's cult hit
The World of Null-A as a prime example.)
The War Against the Rull, assembled from five stories written for Astounding between 1940 and 1950, is classic, keep-you-guessing van Vogt, even if it doesn't quite qualify for must-read status like Null-A and Slan. Our hero is Trevor Jamieson, chief scientist of the Interstellar Military Commission, on the front lines of humanity's war with a shape-shifting race of insectoid aliens known as the Rull. Jamieson may have found the key to victory, but first he must simply survive--marooned on a wild, hostile planet with a 6,000-pound, blue-furred, six-legged, human-hating telepathic bear, Jamieson escapes only to find himself trapped days later in a meteor-carved cave with a woman who wants him dead, armed with only a knife and his wits against a blood-thirsty giant weasel that can claw through solid rock. --Paul Hughes
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
A.E. Van Vogt is one of the Grand Masters of science fiction in the 20th century and The War Against the Rull is one of his classic works from the 1940s, the Golden Age of Astounding Stories. Out of print now for years, we are pleased to publish it again, and to augment it with the Rull stories not incorporated into the novel version.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
