![]() In doing so, the first two Dreeghs to crash on Earth somehow assume that any random newspaper reporter will have all of the information they need to find the local Observer for Earth. These races are considered to be Observers and the Dreeghs begin by seeking them out to be destroyed first, thereby opening the floodgates for a full invasion. The Great Galactic uses lesser races such as Kluggs and Lennels to carry out its missions. Space vampires known as Dreeghs land on Earth in an attempt to dominate the planet and feed off humans, despite the fact that the planet is under protection from a being known as the Great Galactic. It reads like an author who has quickly and haphazardly pieced together unrelated stories to get a book to market. Supermind does not rank among Van Vogt’s enjoyable books. While horribly dated, some are quite enjoyable. I have several of these thin pulp books on my bookshelf authored by Van Vogt. Van Vogt comes up short in this area most of the time. They also incorporated human emotion, human heroism, and human frailties into their tales. Bradbury, Asimov, and even the technically oriented Heinlein developed greater characters and greater settings for their tales. More refined readers of today expect more. This was acceptable in the pulps of the 1940s and 1950s. Van Vogt wrote action oriented stories with thin characters. While many names from that era like Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov are recognized by most people today, Van Vogt has faded from the notice of even most science fiction fans. Van Vogt is one of the more prolific writers of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. While it is long for a short story, it is well paced with no wasted words or actions. However, she retains her essential humanity and makes conscious decisions not to harm anyone. ![]() In the case of the young typist, it does corrupt her to some degree because she enjoys her omniscience. In most stories of this sort, we see illustrated the old maxim of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. The characters are interesting and complex. RESEARCH ALPHA – even in this fix up book – is a great stand alone story and reveals what a great teller of short stories A.E. In Supermind, she is that at times, but at other times hopelessly weak and indecisive for no explicable reason. Van Vogt may have developed the character of Patricia in his original story as a strong willed, self sufficient woman. Here, it is a mishmash of the original with a great deal of obviously injected and incongruous new material that makes it disjointed and hard to follow. The PROXY INTELLIGENCE might have well been a decent stand alone story. The story was well written except where obviously new material was injected into it to link it and transition it to the second phase of the story. I would like to read ASYLUM as a stand alone story because its elements of intergalactic vampires coming to Earth to take over has great appeal to me. SUPERMIND, being a "fix-up" was an uneven reading experience. ![]()
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