The Silkie [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

In 1963, A.E. van Vogt returned to the science fiction field after a long absence (he had been working as a Dianetics counselor).His output was prolific during this late period, but it is fair to say that he produced no new classics and a great many novels that were absolutely dreadful. Nevertheless, he wrote a few novels that were good. _The Silkie_ is one of the good pieces.

There are some flaws. The novel is a fixup comprised of three novellas originally published in _If_ between 1964 and 1967, along with a bit of added material. It is sometimes structurally a little on the rough side, with gaps between scenes. And the style is sometimes a bit pulpish. But on the balance, the flaws are minor.

In folklore, a silkie is a changeling-- a person who is a man upon the land and who is a seal in the ocean. Van Vogt's silkie, Nat Cemp, is a changeling who has three forms: human, fish and silkie. The silkie form is not that of a seal; rather, it is a kind of armored space creature. There is one scene in which Cemp re-enters the Earth's atmosphere to land off the coast of Florida and another in which he chases a renegade silkie up into space, losing him in the Van Allen radiation belts.

There are a number of settings which show a return to the van Vogt imagination. There is a giant water filled spaceship with shark caves and underwater cities. There is a planetoid silkie colony with art and gem rooms and miles and miles of twisting corridors. There is planet Minus 1109-93, with its city of "slender buildings that reared like stretched lacework toward the sky"(104).

The action in the story is effective as well. There is a chase scene from a sewer to an underwater canyon. There is an encounter with an ancient alien who collects planets for their esthetic qualities. And there is a battle with pyramidal alien killers who can create or destroy galaxies.

If _The Silkie_ does not quite have the _panache_ of some of his earlier classics like _Slan_ or _The World of Null A_, it comes close to them. Unlike a lot of modern space operas which are presented in a tongue-in-cheek manner, _The Silkie_ plays it straight-- and succeeds remarkably well.

Only my second Van Vogt book, but now I'm hooked. I can't even say I enjoyed the book itself. I certainly enjoy the fact that it left me with such a strong impression of Sci-Fi/Fantasy goodness. Van Vogt is a mind blower, and I regret I did not discover his works earlier in my life. This one is out there in terms of "hard sci-fi" and certainly seemed to tread a more fantasy thread. That's ok though. Van Vogt makes you think. Love his stuff!

After having gotten several recommendations on Usenet and reading the reviews here, I decided to read _The Silkie_ and see what it was all about. The book is certainly involing, but has some problems that soured the enjoyment of it.

One of these problems, for example, is that Van Vogt feels that it's unnecessary to have any sort of continuity. I can't count how many times I would be reading a chapter only to go to the next paragraph and be completely lost because some leap in logic occured in the space of few sentences. It's similar to what you experience when you're very sleepy and you're trying to stay awake, but occasionally you find yourself snapping back to reality and realize that you dozed off for a bit. That's how I felt when reading this book. Like I'm running at full speed and someone pushes me in the back.

Another problem (and this may be personal preference) is that there is very little dialog - most of it takes place in Cemp's mind and the action sequences. I bet it would make for a great screenplay, but it certainly did nothing to clarify the confusion.

And I had to cringe during a couple of passages that started with "And what happened what this:..." long after some apparently amazing event takes place. The whole book had a feel of several stories put together under one cover.

Having said that, I did enjoy the book's description of Silkies and their physical and mental abilities. That would be the ultimate manifestation of man's dream to live among the stars.