The Reading Canary: a Reminder

Series of novels - especially in fantasy and SF fiction, but distressingly frequently on other genres as well - have a nasty tendency to turn sour partway through. The Reading Canary is your guide to precisely how far into a particular sequence you should read, and which side-passages you should explore, before the noxious gases become too much and you should turn back.

The Mutant Mage: Half Dune, Half A Canticle For Leibowitz

A.E. van Vogt is a name you don't hear much these days, but back in the 1940s and 1950s he was amongst the first tier of SF writers, along with Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein. Whereas Asimov's later work was compromised by a misguided attempt to weave all of his stories into one single timeline, Clarke succumbed to the temptation to write a few too many extraneous sequels to 2001 and Rendezvous With Rama, and Heinlein went crazy and spent most of The Number of the Beast carefully narrating the status of the characters' nipples, van Vogt met a much worse fate: he went out of fashion.

His name is mainly associated with his 1940 debut novel, Slan, which involves the struggles of a society of elite mutants to gain the respect they deserve from the human race. Given the time period it was written in, and given the Nazi's fondness for the idea of the superman, this has arguably had a negative effect on van Vogt's reputation; the book can come across as being "mutant supremacist", enough so that Philip K. Dick would be inspired to write several stories in which supposedly "superior" mutants turn out to be deadly threats to the survival of humanity and civilisation as opposed to the Bold Next Step in Human Evolution (or just very ill people struggling with crippling genetic disorders). To be fair to van Vogt, though, Slan is very specifically the story of a persecuted minority culture, and so could be read as an anti-Nazi tract; furthermore, PKD saved most of his vitriol for the second-rate authors who imitated Slan as opposed to van Vogt himself.

Perhaps as an attempt to write a more considered treatment of the subject, in 1946 van Vogt began the series which would become known as The Mutant Mage, chronicling the life and times of a mutant born to the ruling family of a postapocalyptic empire with strong parallels with Imperial Rome, set in a devastated solar system.

Empire of the Atom

The first book in the series is actually patched together from a series of short stories published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946 and 1947, and so this probably qualifies as amongst the first post-apocalyptic SF novels to be written after the invention of the atomic bomb. Although van Vogt's grip on the science is occasionally shakey - four nuclear reactor cores go critical at the same time in the first couple of chapters, but the city of Linn remains intact and inhabitable - he is under no illusions about the awesome destructive power of nuclear weaponry. The story is set thousands of years after human civilisation reverted to savagery, in the wake of a crippling nuclear war - and that war is far enough in our future that its signs can not only be found on Earth but across the planets, as Earth's colonies throughout the solar system were not spared. Sufficient time has passed that a new civilisation has arisen - the Linnan Empire, founded by the city of Linn. This civilisation is highly reminiscent of the Roman Empire, and not just on a trivial, aesthetic level either - van Vogt has clearly done his research on Roman politics, but at the same time he doesn't feel a need to show off, or to stick too rigidly to the structures of Roman government, resulting in a society with an authentically Roman feel but which is not just "ancient Rome in space".

The most striking difference between Linn and Rome, of course, is the technology it has access to. The powerful temples of the atom gods, Uranium, Plutonium, Radium and Ecks, have amassed a great wealth of scientific knowledge, yet this is a mere shadow of the knowledge possessed before the war - furthermore, superstition and religious doctrine (apparently deliberately engineered by the temples' founders to prevent another war from happening) rule the day, not the scientific method. Linn is therefore an Empire with access to starships and nuclear power, but hasn't the slightest clue how those things work - and in other areas, in particular weaponry, their technology is woefully behind. The result is a strangely lop-sided society which possesses nuclear reactors and interplanetary spaceships, but whose soldiers fight with spears, short swords and bows.

Into the bloodthirsty intrigues of the Linnan court is born Clane, grandson of the current Lord Leader. Clane is a mutant, but unlike the powerful telepathic mutants of Slan, this does not mean he is some kind of overman: he's just a bright kid who suffers a certain amount of physical disability. (In fact, most mutants in Empire of the Atom are simply physically or mentally disabled, if not both; it's not even clear whether Clane's keen intelligence is a result of his mutation or just a normal characteristic of his family's). Suffering tremendous social prejudice, Clane can only survive to adulthood by being brought up in isolation, and is extremely emotionally underdeveloped as a result. Despite his occasional lapses into nigh-catatonic shyness he has a brilliant political and scientific mind, and soon becomes a patron of the arts and sciences - and Chief Priest of the atom temples. He must use all of these resources if he is to survive his enemies, both within his family and in the wider universe.

Like I said, Empire of the Atom was originally cobbled together from short stories, although to van Vogt's credit you have to look close to see the seams. This does mean, however, that it unfolds as a series of relatively self-contained incidents - and that like most SF short stories, the focus is on ideas rather than character. Much of the prose is delivered in a fairly impersonal manner, the events of years sometimes narrated in a single page, which turns out to be an advantage - the book comes across more like a future history than a narrative novel, like an update of Suetonius for the far future. Where the novel does focus closely in on particular characters, the depictions are sparse but effective. Naturally, the deepest character is Clane himself, whose main personality trait is being extremely smart; that said, the scene where he almost has one of his nervous fits the first time he is saluted as a military leader is excellent. All in all, Empire of the Atom is an excellent effort, which left me scrambling for the sequel.

The Wizard of Linn

Unfortunately, the sequel does not live up to the promise of its predecessor. At the end of Empire of the Atom it is revealed that the solar system was devastated not by a war between humans, but a war between humanity and the alien Riss, a conflict which (it is later hinted in The Wizard of Linn) did severe damage to both societies. Keenly aware that a Riss invasion is imminent, Clane is urged by Czinczar - chieftain of Europa - to seize control of the Linn Empire so that he can effectively co-ordinate its resources against the threat, but Clane refuses. Firstly, he realises that humanity cannot fight a purely defensive war against an interstellar threat, and thus plans an interstellar expedition to find long-lost offensive technologies; on another level, he has become tired of political scheming and intrigue, and feels that if humanity is to survive and peace between humans and Riss is to be won then humankind must rid itself of these base urges. However, to his frustration he finds himself forced time and again to deploy the Machiavellian skills he honed in the first book.

Just as Clane has become tired of politics, so too has van Vogt. This novel was written as a single novel, as opposed to a set of linked short stories (although like its predecessor it was first published in serialised form), and came out three years after the last episode of Empire of the Atom was published. It is clear to me that van Vogt was forced back to the story by popular demand (to be honest, the end of Empire of the Atom was a decent enough stopping point), but can't muster the enthusiasm for the political elements of the story he displayed in the first book. As a result, the early portions and the final chapters of The Wizard of Linn, which focus on the politics of the Empire and matters on Earth, are easily the weakest, displaying none of the charm or intricacy of the scenarios in the first book. By far the best part of this novel is Clane and Czinczar's interstellar quest, which reminded me at times of the sociological SF of Jack Vance. (Then again, considering that this came out before Vance published any of his space opera, perhaps it would be better to say that Jack Vance reminds me of van Vogt?) The characterisation is better in this book, too; the central conflict is between Clane and Czinczar, as Clane slowly wins Czinczar's loyalty and convinces him that a purely pragmatic, military approach to the problem cannot win a lasting speech; it is when those two are interacting and conversing that the book really comes alive. These conversations between Clane and Czinczar are so good that I am inclined to forgive van Vogt for utterly contradicting his earlier characterisation of Clane - where's the crippling shyness which was such a feature of book 1?

Sadly, the Czinczar-Clane scenes are just brief sparks in an otherwise cold and lightless book; The Wizard of Linn is an unworthy conclusion to the series, which really deserved better than this.

The Canary Advises

Empire of the Atom is excellent: I would say that its political dimensions are easily equal to (if not better than) Dune's - van Vogt doesn't display Herbert's aggravating tendency to have every character have ludicrous levels of smarts and foresight one day, nigh-moronic gullibility the next. As far as depictions of civilisations rising from the ashes of nuclear war go, it isn't quite on the level of A Canticle For Leibowitz, but it's pretty damn close.

The Wizard of Linn is less groundbreaking; if you especially want to read a lot about Clane and Czinczar debating politics and human nature, or if you're massively keen to see how the Riss invasion pans out it is worth a look, but otherwise I can't say it's essential. You can quite happily stop reading at the end of Empire of the Atom and I can't honestly say you'd be missing anything important.

There's been several compilations published containing both novels; you may find it best to buy The Mutant Mage that way, so you can have The Wizard of Linn if you're really keen on reading it but you don't have to pay for two books to get it.