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From: donch@teklabs.UUCP (Don Chitwood)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: A.E. Van Vogt's 3rd Null-A Novel
Message-ID: <3165@teklabs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 20:15:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: teklabs.3165
Posted: Fri Aug  9 20:15:01 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 07:26:43 EDT
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Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
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I just finished the latest A.E. Van Vogt Null-A novel (damned if I can remember
the name of it.), copyright July l985.

The first two, The Worlds of Null-A and Pawns of Null-A, are two of my 
all-time favorites, particularly since they introduced me to the field
of General Semantics.  With this one, I'm disappointed, largely because
he comes up with a pretty good conceptual followup to the first two, but
he bungles the story with his difficult writing style.

In this latest novel, it was apparent to me that many years had gone by
since the last one was written.  The feel of the characters is just too
modern.  Their language has lots of contemporary slang.  My biggest
difficulty with the book was the jumping-around style van Vogt affects.
From the very beginning, I had to re-read sections to discover that we were
now on earth or in a spaceship or etc.  He makes lots of assumptions,
rather Gosseyn does, that fly in the face of General Semantics thinking.

Hmm, since I wanted this to be a non-spoiler and I don't have the book in
front of me to excerpt examples, this is about the extent of my comments.
In summary, he blew it.  Makes me mad.

Don Chitwood
Teklabs
Tektronix, Inc.