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Title: The World of Null-A (SF Alternatives) by A.E. Van Vogt, David Wingrove, David Wingrove ISBN: 0-86391-022-X Publisher: John Goodchild Publishers Pub. Date: 1984 Format: Hardcover

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Average Customer Rating: 4.17 (12 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Dated, but still fun
Comment: As a classic Sci-Fi novel it reads pretty good. Much of the futuristic speculative science is not yet either obsolete nor proven impossible 60 years later. Some of the high-tech foreseen by Vogt includes a society run by a mega-computer which selects leader based on a mental discipline and philosophy called "Null-A." Our hero enrolls in the annual selection by the computer after some years of study. Selected winners are sent to an imaginative colony on Venus. Everything in perfect order, until he finds out that his brain has been tampered with, he isn't who he thinks he is, and nothing is as it seems. The Earth is a pawn in a galaxy wide political plot wherein one evil dictator is planning to destroy Earth and Mars as and use it as justification to start a huge interstellar war. Our hero finds out that his brain has been genetically augmented to give him extra abilities, and his body is being cloned and the clones receiving his mental patterns so that when he is killed the clone takes over without loss, a sort of immortality. Typical of early sci-fi the characters are mostly cardboard cutouts. There is a woman in the plot, and he almost but not quite manages a relationship. In Vogt style it ends when he gets tired of writing without the reader finding out what ever became of the space war. Still, it's an entertaining read on a lazy afternoon.

Rating: 3
Summary: An early SF classic
Comment: The year is AD 2560. Earth is controlled by a gigantic computer, the "Games Machine", which each year determines who is eligible for emigration to Venus, home to an utopian society based on the precepts of "Null-A" philosophy, a discipline which allows an individual's intellectual and emotional processes to work in perfect harmony.

Gilbert Gosseyn is a man seemingly without a past. He is drawn into a complex web of intrigue by Earth's leaders and soon discovers a plot by an alien Galactic League to conquer the Solar System. Whats more, he realises he is also being used as a pawn by an unknown power, the nature of which he must uncover to determine his true purpose and identity.

As one of the earliest commercial SF novels, written in 1948, the "World of Null-A" is predictably anachronistic in its description of a world of the future. Yet the book is suitably action-packed and fast-paced to hold your interest. In fairness to it, in the late-1940s it would have been groundbreaking. The plot is only partially resolved at the end and its clear that the book was intended as the first in a series. Probably worth reading only for serious connoisseurs of sci-fi.

Rating: 5
Summary: Classic in its time
Comment: If this book was released today I don't think it would be as critically praised as it has been and regarded as an outright classic of Golden Age SF. It's not that standards were lower back then, but the audience was different and looking for a different type of story, one that audiences today probably aren't as interested in. Of course, keeping in mind that, all nostalgia aside, most of the Golden Age SF, except for a handful of notable authors was mostly derivative crap, this book looks pretty good indeed. It's original, for the most part it's readable and often times fairly exciting. What we have here is a hero who has no idea who he really is fighting against an enemy and being manipulated every time he turns around. Like most novels of the period, Van Vogt wasn't about to let something as simple as plot get in the way of a good story and it shows. The book is supposed to be based around the concept of General Semantics which I admittedly know nothing about and didn't learn much from the book itself . . . the concept is never really fully explained except for general asides and most of the stuff "fully null-A people" would do strikes me as mostly common sense (attack an army at night? it takes a logical system of thought to figure that out) so I suspect there's more to it than Van Vogt shows us. The best way to read this book is as quickly as possible, preferably in one sitting . . . plots shift gears and scenes change so quickly and ideas are tossed out with such uncaring glee that when you're immersed in the story, it's great fun. But when you take a step back to think about it, you're not so pleased. But the ideas and the feelings are what make this story work and explains why people still read it fifty some odd years after its publication . . . it's certainly not for the sophisticated writing or the depth of charactization but simply because it's a fun book that at best will get you interested in General Semantics and at worst will simply entertain you.