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A review by beaconatnight
The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. van Vogt
3.0
This book is more like a collection of short-stories, including four adventures 0f the Space Beagle. This episodic character, and also the subject-matter, of the likes of 'Star Trek'. In every story, the crew of the spaceship confronts a different race from the space, upping the ante with every encounter. While the first alien is only a mild danger to the crew, the last being is a danger to the entire universe.
In the beginning of the book, I was excited by the prospect that this would involve the cooperation of different scientific disciplines in order to solve problems (something that I quite liked in Lem's 'The Invincible'). So, at first I that it was cool that the main protagonist is a so-called Nexialist, a disciple of Nexialism (from nexus, 'connection'), the idea of bringing together different sciences for practical purposes. Unfortunately, Vogt only uses these ideas to introduce some form of magic into the story. Rather than being able to coordinate the knowledge of different scientific departments of the ship, the protagonist is more like the all-powerful being, being able to learn everything immediately, controlling minds, and deriving all plot-relevant information from no matter how poor a basis.
What I quite liked was the tension between different people aboard ship. In the beginning, our protagonist is quite eager to earn the recognition he probably deserves, but having to learn the bitter lesson of experience when he realizes that the older and more important men on the ship do not really pay all that much attention to him. In this way, the seed is sown for negative feelings and conflict that are played out throughout the book.
Also the 'Alien(s)'-like fights in the ships corridors are quite decent. I feel like the action scenes could have been more descriptive at times, but the developments are somewhat complex and remain interesting. Also interesting was the abstract second story, in which the protagonist becomes part of some collective consciousness. I liked the idea that, even when there is something like our idea of friendliness (or even friendship) is attributable to an alien race, their means of approaching us might be ambiguous and hurtful.
Rating: 3/5
In the beginning of the book, I was excited by the prospect that this would involve the cooperation of different scientific disciplines in order to solve problems (something that I quite liked in Lem's 'The Invincible'). So, at first I that it was cool that the main protagonist is a so-called Nexialist, a disciple of Nexialism (from nexus, 'connection'), the idea of bringing together different sciences for practical purposes. Unfortunately, Vogt only uses these ideas to introduce some form of magic into the story. Rather than being able to coordinate the knowledge of different scientific departments of the ship, the protagonist is more like the all-powerful being, being able to learn everything immediately, controlling minds, and deriving all plot-relevant information from no matter how poor a basis.
What I quite liked was the tension between different people aboard ship. In the beginning, our protagonist is quite eager to earn the recognition he probably deserves, but having to learn the bitter lesson of experience when he realizes that the older and more important men on the ship do not really pay all that much attention to him. In this way, the seed is sown for negative feelings and conflict that are played out throughout the book.
Also the 'Alien(s)'-like fights in the ships corridors are quite decent. I feel like the action scenes could have been more descriptive at times, but the developments are somewhat complex and remain interesting. Also interesting was the abstract second story, in which the protagonist becomes part of some collective consciousness. I liked the idea that, even when there is something like our idea of friendliness (or even friendship) is attributable to an alien race, their means of approaching us might be ambiguous and hurtful.
Rating: 3/5