A. E. van Vogt: The Voyage of the Space Beagle

A. E. van Vogt
The Voyage of the Space  Beagle

In 1831, a British warship was refitted for an exploratory mission. It's task was "to complete a survey of the South American coast and to carry out a chain of longitude measurements around the world." One of the crew was Charles Darwin, who had signed on as ship's naturalist. His task was "collecting, observing and noting anything worthy to be noted in natural history." The ship's name was the HMS Beagle.

What Darwin saw on this exploratory expedition led him to write The Origin of the Species in 1858 and thereby bring the issue of evolution, which had been lurking in the background, out in the open and initiate the debate that still rages in some places today. In 1859, Darwin then published an account of his almost four years on board the ship. The title was The Voyage of the Beagle.

Some 90 years after Darwin published The Voyage of the Beagle,  the SF writer, A. E. van Vogt published The Voyage of the Space Beagle in 1950. The novel depicted the adventures of a space ship whose mission was to explore uncharted areas of space--to go places where no humans had gone before. The book includes four encounters with alien species, with internal linking created by a basic cast of about ten characters with one or two crew members who hadn't appeared before in each of the four encounters. The encounters were all published separately in various SF magazines, prior to the book publication.

The novel begins with what is probably van Vogt's most famous short story, "The Black Destroyer," the first line of which has remained with me for many decades--"On and on Coeurl prowled." There have been some rumors floating about that Coeurl and the creature from the third episode were influential in the design of the Alien in the film series with Sigourney Weaver. Unfortunately I can't document this story.

In 1956, Jack Vance published To Live Forever, a novel set in a society that had conquered death. In the novel, one of the characters is described as the navigator of the galaxy-exploring "ship, Star Enterprise." It's just a coincidence, I suspect.

In 1966, Gene Roddenberry presented an SF series which depicted the adventures of the crew of the Starship Enterprise on a ten year voyage of exploration--"to boldly go where no man has gone before."  Roddenberry has given credit for his idea to van Vogt's novel, The Voyage of the Space Beagle.  Some have thought that he got the idea from another TV series, Wagon Train. However, Roddenberry explained that he used the Wagon Train concept when he tried to sell his idea to network executives. He feared that they wouldn't understand what he was talking about, so he used a more familiar concept, one that they could grasp--a western.


Prior to reading the novel, I had read in the short story version only the first alien encounter titled "The Black Destroyer."  In fact I hadn't even known the others existed until I did a little research on the novel.  One of the significant differences between the short story, The Black Destroyer, and its version in the novel is the presence of Elliott Grosvenor.  Grosvenor is a student of a new science van Vogt calls Nexialism.  Just where and why he named it so, I never did find out or I missed it.  But, it seems that the real issue in the novel is the collision between two points of view:  that of the specialist, one who knows more and more about less and less,  and the Nexialist or the generalist, jack-of-all-trades and master of none.

Grosvenor's Nexialist education has equipped him to at least be able to converse with the various specialists on board the Beagle, even if he isn't able to conduct a serious research into that science.  He therefore is able to draw upon the findings of the various sciences and interrelate them in ways the specialists are unable to.  It is this that allows him to solve the problems that arise aboard ship, either alien or human.

It vaguely reminds me of the debate going on when I entered college back in the late 50s:  the value of a liberal education versus the concentration on a specific course of study designed to lead to a career: in other words,  gaining a broad perspective on all human activities (science, social sciences, economics, philosophy, history, humanities, arts, etc.) versus concentrating on a narrow course of study designed for a profession  (pre-law, pre-business, pre-med) 

I suspect that the liberal arts philosophy lost out.  However, recent college graduates are better equipped to answer that question.   But I also hear occasionally about attempts to develop a "Nexialist" position--an attempt to close somewhat the gap that exists among the various sciences.

I did notice though that, in the novel,  Grosvenor had to go to Korita, the historian, for information regarding history.  I wonder if Nexialism also included the humanities and arts in its curriculum or restricted it to the hard sciences.  If limited to the hard sciences, I wonder what that suggests about van Vogt's POV.


Another point I found interesting was the political issue that ran throughout the novel.  Morton, the director at the beginning, seems to be more or less democratic in his actions and encourages free discussion of the problems facing them, while Kent, who takes over temporarily, seems far more authoritarian in his philosophy and is willing to use violence to get his way.  Kent seems especially disturbed by the Grosvenor's presence aboard ship.  I wonder if Kent sees him as some sort of threat to his program.  That these stories were written just before, during, and after WWII makes me wonder if van Vogt is making some sort of point here about problems facing these exploratory journeys that last for years. 

This seems to be the first time that I've encountered a political issue in stories of this type, or at least in which this issue stands out.

I have some questions about Elliott Grosvenor,  specifically in the last encounter with an alien.  He addresses the scientists regarding the fourth alien encounter, presents his conclusions based on his Nexialist training which, unfortunately no one without Nexialist training can grasp, and issues the following ultimatum when his plan is voted down:

"If by 1000 hours tomorrow my plan has not been accepted, I shall take over the ship.  Everybody aboard will find himself doing what I order whether he likes it or not.  Naturally, I expect that the scientists aboard will pool their knowledge in an attempt to prevent my carrying out such a stated purpose.  Resistance, however, will be useless."

Later in a discussion regarding the ethics of Grosvenor's actions, one of the scientists comments that the ethical position of Nexialism seems "pretty elastic" even though the Nexialists have been conditioned into following a code of ethics.  Grosvenor replies, "When I firmly believe, as I do now, that my actions are justified, there is no internal nervous or emotional problems."  In other words, the conditioning is useless in the face of the person's firm conviction that he or she is absolutely correct.  This seems a bit scary to me.

This position  presented in the novel seems to embody the end-justifies-the-means philosophy.   This is worrisome, to me anyway, for it can be and sadly has been used to justify the most inhumane actions taken for a good reason.

Overall, it's an interesting read on its own, and it also exemplifies some philosophical positions as they would be expressed in the real world, not just as some abstract concepts.

Loren Eiseley: Darwin's Century

Actually, the full title of this book by Loren Eiseley is Darwin's Century:  Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It.  The most significant word is "Men" which spells outs Eiseley's thesis that there were many threads in the tapestry of the development of evolution.  Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, published in 1859, did not appear in a vacuum, but was the culmination of several centuries of theorizing and debating the origin of  the various types of plants and animals found on this planet. Eiseley does not present a defense or a detailed explanation of evolution: that is not his purpose here but rather to spell out the various forerunners and then the defenders of evolution against various attacks made against it.

Eiseley begins with the early theories about the creation of life including that from The Bible in Genesis and hints of a evolutionary process by various thinkers, including those from Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin.  Eiseley points out the irony that the Great Chain of Being, created by Christian thinkers, which was designed to demonstrate the completeness of God's creation by presenting creatures in an ascending sequence from the lowliest creatures at the "bottom level of creation" to humans at the top.  Evolutionists later borrowed this scheme and used it for their own purposes.  Eiseley then discusses many thinkers and theorists  who had put forth their own small piece of the puzzle: Lamarck, Linnaeus, and Malthus, among numerous others.

Eiseley then brings in one of the most important works for the further development of  evolutionary theory; Charles Lyell,  whose incredibly influential Principles of Geology,  first published in 1834, argued for a much much longer time span for the existence of the earth than the six thousand years many Christian theologians and thinkers had postulated based on their study of the Old Testament.  Now, with many millions of years to work in, random selection now had the time available to be effective.

Darwin's seminal work, The Origin of Species, does not, as Eiseley argues, appear out of a vacuum.  Rather it draws together many differing threads and ideas, all viewed by Darwin through a perspective gained by his voyage on the Beagle which visited various parts of the world, especially South America, where both new animals and plants appeared along with many that were to be found in Europe and Africa.  This raised the question: why did some creatures, plants and animals, appear in the Old and New Worlds and why were there creatures unique only to the New World.

After the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin faced considerable opposition from both the Christian defenders of Genesis and from scientists of considerable repute.  He also gained the strong support of Alfred Lord Wallace, who also published a work on evolution shortly after Darwin, and Thomas Huxley, who became known as Darwin's Bulldog.  His grandson, Aldous Huxley, is the  author of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception.   The opposition of the scientists was quelled by the discovery of Mendel's work on genetic inheritance and by a greater understanding of the sun.  Some scientists argued that the world couldn't have lasted millions of years because the sun would have consumed itself in much less time. This was caused by an inadequate appreciation of the sun and its processes.

The only weakness in Eiseley's work is his overly optimistic belief that the opposition to evolution has disappeared.  Darwin's Century was published in 1958, approximately a century after Darwin's Origin of Species, and at that time he could not foresee the rise of religious opposition once again to evolutionary theory to the point where a significant portion of the US population does not accept evolution nor any span of time longer than six thousand years of existence for the universe.  

Highly recommended for those interested in the early history of evolution and for those who just en;joy reading anything by Loren Eiseley (readers like me).

Something to think about

Something to think about:

If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the part of my brain now atrophied would thus have kept active through use.

The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

-- Charles Darwin --

Galapagos: The Enchanted Islands

BBC has another interesting documentary to add to its already superb list. This one is a three part film on the Galapagos Islands, once known as the Encantadas, or the Enchanted Islands. The Galapagos sit on the equator in the South Pacific about 600 miles west of South America. They were first discovered in the 16th century by a ship that was traveling down the west coast of South America and was carried out into the South Pacific by a strong current. More than a century passed before they were found again.

The first part focuses on the geological history of the islands and the various forms of plant and wild life that inhabit them. Part Two relates the story of Charles Darwin's visit to the islands in 1835 and the influence it had upon his thinking about the formation of new species. It, however, was 25 years later that he finally published his revolutionary work, The Origin of Species. The third part considers the various forces, geologic, climatic, and human, that have affected the islands in the past and those that are presently influencing the plant and wildlife on the island. One dismaying point brought up was that on some islands, non-native plants now out number native species.

Darwin wasn't the only one to write about the Galapagos. Some five or six years after Darwin's visit, during the early 1840s, the islands were visited by an American whaling ship, one of whose crew members was Herman Melville. While Darwin took nearly 25 years to publish his work on the Galapagos in 1860, Melville published his novella, The Encantadas, in 1854, approximately ten years after his visit.

I found the documentary to be excellent, and my only gripe is that it wasn't longer. The photography was superb, and the information was presented clearly and straightforwardly. The narrator occasionally came across as though she was bestowing the sacred mysteries upon us, but I didn't find this to be as intrusive as I have in other documentaries.

Highly recommended.

Connections

Many moons ago, I watched a TV series called _Connections_. James Burke, the host, would trace out the link between something in the past and the present day. I think one depicted the linkage between medieval looms and computers. This was an intriguing idea, and occasionally I'd come up with a far-fetched connection of my own. One of my favorites is the linkage between Charles Darwin and _Star Trek_.

In 1831, a British warship was refitted for an exploratory mission. It's task was "to complete a survey of the South American coast and to carry out a chain of longitude measurements around the world." One of the crew was Charles Darwin, who had signed on as ship's naturalist. His task was "collecting, observing and noting anything worthy to be noted in natural history." The ship's name was the HMS Beagle.

What Darwin saw on this exploratory expedition led him to write _The Origin of the Species_ in 1858 and thereby bring the issue of evolution, which had been lurking in the background, out in the open and initiate the debate that still rages in some places today. In 1859, Darwin then published an account of his almost four years on board the ship. The title was _The Voyage of the Beagle.



Some 90 years after Darwin published The Voyage of the Beagle, the SF writer, A. E. van Vogt published a novel titled The Voyage of the Space Beagle in 1950. The novel depicted the adventures of a space ship whose mission was to explore uncharted areas of space--those places where no humans had gone before. The book includes four encounters with alien species, with internal linking created by a basic cast of about ten characters with one or two crew members who hadn't appeared before in each of the four encounters. The encounters were all published separately in various SF magazines, prior to the book publication.

The novel begins with what is probably van Vogt's most famous short story, "The Black Destroyer," the first line of which has remained with me for many decades--"On and on Coeurl prowled." There have been some rumors floating about that Coeurl and the creature from the third episode were influential in the design of the Alien in the film series with Sigourney Weaver. Unfortunately I can't document this story.

In 1956, Jack Vance published To Live Forever, a novel set in a society that had conquered death. In the novel, one of the characters is described as the navigator of the galaxy-exploring "ship, Star Enterprise." It's just a coincidence, I suspect.

In 1966, Gene Roddenberry presented an SF series which depicted the adventures of the crew of the Starship Enterprise on a ten year voyage of exploration--"to go where no man has gone before." Roddenberry has given credit for his idea to van Vogt's novel, The Voyage of the Space Beagle.  Some have thought that he got the idea from another TV series, Wagon Train. However, Roddenberry explained that he used the Wagon Train concept when he tried to sell his idea to network executives. He feared that they wouldn't understand what he was talking about, so he used a more familiar concept, one that they could grasp--a western.

Darwin and Star Trek by way of van Vogt. Significant? Not really. But, it's a break from the day's headlines.