A. E van Vogt. Pendulum (1978)

     A. E van Vogt. Pendulum (1978) According to the Wikipedia article on Vogt the stories in this collection are almost all originals. Never mind. I found once again that Vogt’s writing is appallingly flat, dull, and uninvolving. I''ve tried several times to read his classic works, and gave up after the first 10 or 20 pages.
     Only his ideas attract: he has the rare ability to imagine the almost unimaginable, and thus suggest what actual alien minds might be like. Reading his accounts of alien actions and thoughts disorients: for a few moments, we are thinking thoughts we wouldn’t have been able to conjure up on our own.
     His human characters however aren’t believable, in fact they hardly resemble human beings. They are observed from the outside; they have no inner life, even though Vogt tells us what they are thinking. The effect is odd. Darrell Schweitzer, quoted in the Wiki article, says Vogt’s characters are toy soldiers in a sandbox. And acute comment I think. The sandbox is more or less bizarre, and it’s that which makes Vogt’s fiction interesting. But oh, what a slog to read these stories! Other writers have learned from Vogt how to imagine the alien, and how to imagine alien worlds, but have done a much better job of writing.
     The collection ends with an article or report about the launch of Apollo XVII. I found it as off-putting as the fiction: facts, facts, facts, and not a hint of the actual experience. Eg, Of the writers who watched the Apollo liftoff, the majority had press passes and at launch time they were a mile or so away (to our right, south) with 3400 reporters from all over the world. Theirs was a separate set of grandstands. And so on. What’s point of the compass direction? Or the number reporters (which is only approximate anyhow)? Or the grandstands? Later on, it become clear that Vogt wants to know who rates what kind of invitation. That his reader wants to know what it was like to be there, doesn’t seem to occur to Vogt.
     It was as if a robot were reporting what it had seen and heard. Vogt records “interviews” with other attendees verbatim. His questions and comments are weird: it’s as if there no person there. He doesn’t seem able to elicit the kind of elaboration and personal detail that would give these interviewees presence. Or maybe he doesn’t recognise the comment that’s an opening to the kind of question whose answer would have that effect.
     He reports all kinds of facts (one man is described as in a suit, mature, about five foot nine), but not one sensation or feeling. For example, Sterling and I had gone to a line of catering wagons. Our principal hope as that we might be able to buy a drink. We each got a half pint of milk. After we had absorbed them...
     Reading this kind of stuff I realised that Vogt was missing something. Exactly what, it’s hard to say. Imagination. Sensory memory. Awareness of himself. Insight into himself and other people. Some or all of these. I’m wondering if he had Asperger’s syndrome.
     These stories vary in quality. Most I didn’t read through, but skipped ahead to the ending. This is a book where the journey is so much less interesting than the destination that a summary of each tale would have satisfied me as much. Maybe more. The one story that appealed was The Human Operators, in which humans were kept alive within robotic ship known as Starfighters. They performed the tasks the ship couldn't do on its own. The narrator has figured out that he may be able to take over the ship, and does so when the ship admits a female so that they can make a baby which will eventually displace the narrator. Both the humans and the robotic brains are stunted persons, and match the plot and the ambience very well. * to **