The War Against the Rull (SF From the Great Years Series)

Van Vogt, A. E.

ISBN 10: 0441871836 / ISBN 13: 9780441871834

Published by Ace Books, 1977

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # S_466504188

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The War Against the Rull (SF From the Great Years Series)
• Publisher: Ace Books
• Publication Date: 1977
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0441871836
• ISBN 13: 9780441871834
• Binding: mass_market
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

The War Against the Rull (SF From the Great Years Series) [Aug 01, 1977] Van Vogt, A. E.

Review

You might easily mistake a list of A.E. van Vogt's classic stories for the names of bygone rides in Disney's Tomorrowland: Empire of the Atom, Mission to the Stars, Two-hundred Million A.D., Project: Spaceship. This Nebula Grand Master, while still writing well into the 1980s, was a pioneer of sci-fi's golden age, an author that the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction credits with creating--along with Heinlein and Asimov--"the first genuinely successful period of U.S. SF." A prolific contributor to such early mags as Thrilling Wonder, Startling Stories, and Astounding, van Vogt distinguished himself with his expert pacing, his mind-bending ideas, and--surprising in the starched-lab-coat 1940s--his serious access to weird. (Check out 1945's cult hit The World of Null-A as a prime example.)

The War Against the Rull, assembled from five stories written for Astounding between 1940 and 1950, is classic, keep-you-guessing van Vogt, even if it doesn't quite qualify for must-read status like Null-A and Slan. Our hero is Trevor Jamieson, chief scientist of the Interstellar Military Commission, on the front lines of humanity's war with a shape-shifting race of insectoid aliens known as the Rull. Jamieson may have found the key to victory, but first he must simply survive--marooned on a wild, hostile planet with a 6,000-pound, blue-furred, six-legged, human-hating telepathic bear, Jamieson escapes only to find himself trapped days later in a meteor-carved cave with a woman who wants him dead, armed with only a knife and his wits against a blood-thirsty giant weasel that can claw through solid rock. --Paul Hughes