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Page 194
the story is an excellent example of the almost theological note sounded by the best science fiction. It recalls Pascal's phrase about the 'eternal silences of these infinite spaces', and it also has the merit of bringing these home to the imagination more forcibly than Pascal does.
Colin Wilson, The Strength to Dream: Literature and the Imagination (London: Gollancz, 1962), p. 111
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Avram Davidson
Nothing kept me at The Beast except that it was straight SF, of which the column's been shortand the fact that it's by the great A. E. van Vogt. Surely (I kept telling myself), surely any minute now things will start getting good. Surely paper characters, cliché situations, poor writing, flapdoodle and flumadiddle about Mysterious Super Engines, Secret Mysterious Organizations, Super Mysterious Powers, Mysterious Secret Caves in the Moon, Secret Super Communist Nazis, Super Secret Mysterious Neanderthalsurely all this must momentarily give way to the Great van Vogt Stimulating Concepts for which Slan, The World of NullA, The Weapon-Shops of Isher, were famous . . . surely? Well, give way it didfor a whilebut only to make room for Super Mysterious Equalized Man-Like Women, Mysterious Super Intelligent Arc-lights Living in a Pit, Secret Super Kidnapping Colonies on Venus
But why go on. Apparently this collection of rubbish has been confected out of three stories originally published in Astounding, the dates of which are meretriciously not given, but I'd guess not long after the War, with perhaps the dates re-set later to bring it (ha ha) up to date; which, if I'm correct, failed miserably in its intention: and, if I'm wrong, merely convicts van Vogt of here being a poor prophet as well as (here) a poor writer. The only redeeming features of the book are good paper, clear typography, an arresting jacket design by Howard Burns. In short, I feel quite savage about having wasted on it an entire evening which I might have better spent bubbling my lips for the amusement of my little boy.
Avram Davidson, [Review of The Beast], Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 25, No. 5 (November 1963): 6869
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Donald A. Wollheim
Van Vogt swings back and forth, like his victim of Isher, making all time and space his field, and showing in

 
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