Nexialism, Null-A and A. E. van Vogt

1
Nexialism, Null-A and A. E. van Vogt
1
2
Presentation Outline

• Personal Biography
• Professional Writing Career
• Influences and Interest in General Semantics
• Publication History Null-A Books
• Story Summary The Voyage of the Space Beagle
• Publication History The Voyage of the Space
  Beagle
• Nexialism and General Semantics
• Nexialism in Action
• Influences on and Developments of Nexialism
• Conclusion

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Personal Biography 1

• A. E. (Alfred Elton) van Vogt (pronounced vote)
  was born to parents of Dutch origin, around 10am,
  26 April 1912, at his maternal grandparents
  farm, Gretna, Manitoba, Canada.

• Early upbringing was in Neville, a small town in
  Saskatchewan. Then he moved to Morden, Manitoba
  (when he was 10), then Winnipeg, Manitoba (when
  he was 14), back to Morden, back to Winnipeg,
  then to Swift Current, Saskatchewan.

4
Personal Biography 2

• Got a job in Ottawa working on the 1931 Canadian
  census, for ten months.
• Went back to Winnipeg and starting writing
  stories in the public library.

• Married Edna Mayne Hull on 9 May 1939, after he
  had written his first two science fiction stories.

5
Personal Biography 3

• Worked for the Department of National Defence,
  late 19391941. Resigned to become a full-time
  writer.
• Entered the United States, 7 Nov 1944, and moved
  to Los Angeles, California.
• In 1950 was approached by L. Ron Hubbard to
  become involved in Dianetics. Became an auditor,
  but left around 1961, when Dianetics turned into
  Scientology. Mayne stayed on as an auditor for
  another 10 years or so.
• Edna Mayne Hull died 20 January 1975.

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Personal Biography 4

• Married Lydia I. Brayman on 6 October 1979.

• A. E. van Vogt died 26 Jan 2000.

Powerful figures learn they are pawns, and pawns
become major players. Victims become heroes in a
blink of an eye, and bring invincible villains
low. The world of every man is constantly
recreated in a new image with every turn in the
labyrinth of life. Joe Rico, Transfinite The
Essential A.E. Van Vogt
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Professional Writing Career 1

• Van Vogts stories are for thinking readersH. L.
  Drake
• First exposure to science fiction was at age
  eleven, in the pages of an old British Chum
  annual, which a friend loaned him.
• When I was fourteen, I picked up on the
  newsstand the November 1926 issue of Amazing
  Stories...I took it home and read it, and I must
  have read every issue published while we were in
  Winnipeg that first time. (Reflections, p30-31)?

8
Professional Writing Career 2

• During the first time I was Ottawa 1931, I
  took a course from the Palmer Institute of
  Authorship. It was entitled English and
  Self-Expression...It was a course in advanced
  English. (Reflections, p37)?
• Used the books The Only Two Ways to Write a Story
  by John Gallishaw and Narrative Technique by
  Thomas H. Uzzell to further his writing education.

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Professional Writing Career 3

• Sold his first story I Lived in the Streets,
  published as No One to Blame But Herself, to
  True Story magazine in 1931-32. Received 110. He
  was 20-years-old.
• Won 1,000 prize in a True Story magazine monthly
  competition, for the 7,000-word story entitled
  The Miracle in My Life.
• Worked as a trade papers representative, wrote
  radio plays (beginning in 1934) and slick
  confessional stories, and took the advanced
  course in writing from Writers Digest.

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Professional Writing Career 4

• ...one day, in 1938, I went into McKnights Drug
  Store in Winnipeg, near where I lived, and
  causally picked up a copy of Astounding
  Science-Fiction. (Reflections, p46)? July
  issue
• He was inspired by Don A Stuart's 'Who Goes
  There?' to contact the editor John W. Campbell
  with a story idea.
• Stopped writing confessional stories in 1939 and
  devoted himself to science fiction.

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Professional Writing Career 5

• His second science fiction story written, Black
  Destroyer, published in the July issue of
  Astounding Science-Fiction, 1939. Also containing
  stories by Isaac Asimov and C. L. Moore, this
  issue is considered to have started the Golden
  Age of science fiction.

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Professional Life 6

• His first science fiction story written, Vault
  of the Beast, published in the August issue of
  Astounding Science-Fiction, 1940.
• While I was up in the Gatineau 1941, in a
  rented cottage in Farm Point, Quebec, Campbell
  wrote and said, I would like to contract you to
  write for Astounding... (Reflections, p65)
• ...during that period I lived a very ascetic
  existence, because in order to produce what I was
  producing approx 300,000 published words per
  year, I worked from the time I got up usually
  9am until about eleven oclock at night, every
  day, seven days a week, for years. (Reflections,
  p65)

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Professional Writing Career 7

• His first novel, Slan, published by Arkham House
  (hardcover) in 1946.
• In 1980, Van was the first recipient of Canada's
  Prix Aurora Award, for Lifetime Achievement.

• Published over 45 books.
• Last novel, Null-A Three, publ. 1984.
• Awarded SFWA Grand Master Award,27 April 1996.

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A E van Vogt's Popularity

• Results of analysis of 'The Analytical
  Laboratory', 1938-1976 (a monthly reader's poll
  in Astounding Science Fiction, renamed Analog in
  1960)
• 1) Anson MacDonald (10 stories)
• 2) Robert A Heinlein (25)
• 3) E E 'Doc' Smith (13)
• 4) Jerry Pournelle (11)
• 5) A E van Vogt (59)

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Influences 1

• From the age of thirteen to the age of twenty I
  mustve read from two hundred to five hundred
  books a year...In history, I was fascinated by
  the Napoleonic era, by the Julius Caesar-Augustan
  age of Rome, Italy of the Renaissance, the King
  Richard the Lionheart period of Britain and
  Europe, and ancient Egypt. (Reflections, p109)
• A. Merritt, Max Brand (one of the pseudonyms of
  Frederick Faust), Fred MacIsaac, Don A Stuart
  (the pseudonym of John W. Campbell), E.E. Smith,
  E. Phillips Oppenheimer, John Dickson Carr, Edgar
  Wallace, Frank L. Packard (the Gray Seal
  stories), and Rafael Sabatini.

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Influences 2

• I read Balzac, Dickens, Jane Austen, Arnold
  Bennett, George Moore, and other 19th century
  novelists of England and Europe...I read hundreds
  of plays most of Shaw, Ibsen, and Moliere, some
  of the Greek ancients. (Reflections, p108)
• Sir James Jeans on the universe Edward Wiggam on
  the mind the series of books with titles like
  The Wonderful World of Coal, or The Wonderful
  World of the Atom The ABC of Relativity.
• Also, J.B.S. Haldane, Arthur Eddington, Alfred
  Korzybski, Oswald Spengler, Alfred North
  Whitehead.

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Interest in General Semantics 1

• For my second semantics-orientated novel, The
  Players of Null-A, I wrote a twenty-two paragraph
  explanation of GS, and used one paragraph as the
  heading of each chapter. The summation took three
  weeks to do. When it was out of the way, I had
  essentially completed my eight-year study of
  general semantics. (The Semantics of
  Twenty-First Century Science, Best, p103)

• General Semantics is a systematic approach to
  reality... (Best, p101)?

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Interest in General Semantics 2

• He was loaned a copy of Science and Sanity
  sometime before he left Canada for the USA. Given
  that The Players of Null-A was published in 1948,
  and assuming a one- or two-year writing and
  publication period, van Vogt probably commenced
  his study of GS around 1938-39.

• Some years ago I wrote two science-fiction
  novels The World of Null-A and The Players of
  Null-A in which, in thousands and thousands of
  paragraphs, I employed the various GS recommended
  usages for rectifying what might be called the
  shortcomings of English. (Best, p101)

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Interest in General Semantics 3

• My GS training stayed with me even though I had
  turned to other things. In talking to people I
  would automatically hold up two sets of two
  fingers to indicate quotations. I used dates...I
  indexed...I was careful not to label people or
  things. I noticed when I was referring to the
  object (the territory)then I pointedand when to
  the word that described it (map or symbol). I
  differentiated the rituals in which most of us
  engage in some areas from the individual himself.
  And I was nearly always aware of self-reflexive
  sentences. Etc. Pretty precise. Sometimes
  irritating to other people. (Best, 104) my
  underlining

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Interest in General Semantics 4

• An implication of general semantics is that
  words that contain assumptions that are only
  partially true interfere with reasoning at
  sub-awareness levels. (Best, p110)
• The mind needs signals to indicate insistently
  that our universe is an incredibly dynamic
  complex. (Best, p115)

• ...GS was a system, an orderly way of looking at
  the world that prescribed, essentially, being
  acutely aware of the symbols that man used to
  describe said world and think about it. (Best,
  p117)

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Interest in General Semantics 5

• What is reality? General Semantics may not bring
  you any closer to a positive answer. But it is a
  systematic approach, a series of methods that, as
  a starter, may restrain you from jumping to hasty
  conclusions about people and the world we live
  in. (Best, p118)

• If you are a person who notices the sometimes
  tiresome behaviour patterns of individuals, a
  picture of me as a systemizer should at this
  stage have taken firm form in your mind. (Best,
  p146)

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Other SF Writers Interested in GS

• Harlan Ellison
• Frank Herbert
• Aldous Huxley
• Samuel Delany
• Henry Kuttner
• Alexei Panshin

• Robert Heinlein
• L. Ron Hubbard
• Robert Anton Wilson
• Philip K. Dick
• Poul Anderson
• John Varley

The science fiction 'What if' as a variation of
the three questions of GS 1) What do you
mean? 2) How do you know? 3) What have you left
out?
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Publication History Null-A Books

• The World of Null-A First published in
  Astounding Science Fiction in 1945 (August to
  October issues), and in book form (hc) by Simon
  Schuster in 1948.
• The Players of Null-A First published in
  Astounding Science Fiction in 1948 (October to
  December) and 1949 (January), and in book form
  (pb) by Ace Books, as The Pawns of Null-A, in
  1956.

• Null-A Three first published, as a limited
  edition, in 1984, by Editions Jai Lu in France
  and the Morrison, Raven-Hill Company of
  Berkshire, England and Beverley Hills,
  California. Then published in 1985 by Sphere
  Books.

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The Voyage of the Space Beagle

• The novel is a science fiction version of
  Darwins voyage around the world on the HMS
  Beagle. In this case, the space ship is
  journeying around and beyond the galaxy and
  features a new type of scientist, a Nexialist.
  The adventures related in the novel concern
  encounters with various creatures, some of whom
  are in direct conflict with the ship and its crew
  and one, a race of bird-like telepathic
  creatures, which accidently attacks the ship when
  trying to communicate with it. The novel features
  the actions of the one Nexialist on board,
  Elliott Grosvenor, as he tries to help the crew
  deal with these problems, deal with the conflicts
  between various factions, and demonstrate to the
  specialist scientists in the crew how valuable
  the science and practise of Nexialism is.

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Publication History Space Beagle 1

• Black Destroyer, Astounding Science Fiction,
  July 1939 Chapters One to Six. Nexialist Elliott
  Grosvenor was not in the original story..

• War of Nerves. Other Worlds, 1950. Chapters
  Nine to Twelve.

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Publication History Space Beagle 2

• Discord in Scarlet, Astounding Science Fiction,
  December 1939 Chapters Thirteen to Twenty-One.
  Ixtls quest to implant eggs in crew members was
  duplicated in the Aliens franchise, and van Vogt
  received an out of court settlement (reportedly
  50,000). Again, Grosvenor was not in the
  original story.

• M 33 in Andromeda, Astounding Science-Fiction,
  1943 Chapters Twenty-Two to Twenty-Eight.

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Publication History Space Beagle 3

• Published by Panther Books, in 1959, as a
  fix-up novel, which is made up of previously
  published short stories with added material, such
  as transitions. He added approx 30,000 words in
  this process.
• Is seen by some as a precursor to the Star Trek
  franchise.

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Gosseyn and Grosvenor

• Both are examples of van Vogt's theme of the
  'super-man'.
• Names start with the same letter.
• Gosseyn (Go-sane).
• Grosvenor (contains governor, as in a leader
  and a self-regulating mechanism).
• Gosseyn has null-a training and a second brain
  that gives him psychic-type powers.
• Grosvenor only has his nexialist training, plus
  the teaching instruments of the Nexialist
  Foundation.

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Definitions of Nexialism 1

• ... Nexialism? Whats that?
• Applied whole-ism, said
  Grosvenor, and stepped across the threshold.
  (p37, The Voyage of the Space Beagle, Panther
  Books, 1977)

• At the Nexial Foundation we teach that behind
  all the grosser aspects of any science there is
  an intricate tie-up with other sciences... (p44)
• Nexialism is the science of joining in an orderly
  fashion the knowledge of one field of learning
  with that of other fields. It provides techniques
  for speeding up the processes of learning
  knowledge and of using effectively what has been
  learned. (p51)

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Definitions of Nexialism 2

• ...Nexialism is a tremendous new approach to
  learning and association... (p55)
• I refer to the science of Nexialism, which has
  its own mathematics, and is a method of training
  designed to bridge the gap between facts that are
  related but separated, for instance, by being
  contained in the brainpans of two individuals.
  Nexialism joins. It seeks to unify apparent
  irrelations and its scope is so great that the
  data of an entire galaxy is not too complicated
  for it to cast into a recognizable design. (M
  33, p143) my underlining

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Nexial Techniques

• Hypnosis (usually with gas equipment)?
• Psychotherapy
• Miniature transmission equipment
• Encephalo-adjuster (direct stimulation of brain
  cells)?
• Musical tone instrument that stimulates the brain
  directly...

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Nexialism General Semantics

• Since there are many sciences, it is obvious
  that I cannot in a short article give examples
  from them all. So I asked a group of people to
  whom I had given a talk on GS to ask me test
  questions. My preliminary statement to them was
  that a GS analysis could probably be made of the
  terminology of any science. (Best, p115. A
  possible Nexialism approach at joining
  sciences?)

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GS Principles and Techniques

• Dating.
• Delayed Evaluating.
• Et Cetera (Etc.).
• Hyphens.
• Indexing.
• Logical Fate.
• Multiordinality.
• Multi-valued Orientation.
• Quotes.
• Self-reflexiveness.
• Structure, Relations, Order.
• Structural Differential.
• Time-binding.

• The map is not the territory.
• The map doesn't cover all the territory.
• The map is self-reflexive.
• The word isn't the thing.
• Extensional/Intensional.
• Non-Allness.
• Non-Elementalism.
• Non-Identity.
• Organism-as-a-Whole-in-Environments.
• Over-/Under-/Un-Defined Words.

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Nexialism in Action Coeurl 1

• We have enough evidence now, he Grosvenor
  dictated into the recorder, to make what we
  Nexialists call a Statement of Direction. (p21)
• Grosvenor made no reply. His part in the incident
  was finished. He had recognized an emotional
  crisis, and he had spoken the necessary words in
  the right tone of peremptory command. The fact
  that those who had obeyed him now questioned his
  authority to give the command was unimportant.
  The crisis was over. (p22-23)

35
Nexialism in Action Coeurl 2

• The suggestion Space Madness irritated
  Grosvenor. It was a meaningless phrase, still
  current after all these years of space travel.
  The fact that men had gone insane in space from
  loneliness, fear, and tension did not make a
  special sickness of it. There were certain
  emotional dangers on a long voyage like thisthey
  were among the reasons he had been put on
  boardbut insanity from loneliness was not likely
  to be one of them. (p29)

36
Nexialism in Action Coeurl 3

• I know something of metallurgy, he said. (p33)
• He appreciated the forcefulness and the purpose
  of the attack that was about to be made. He could
  even imagine that it might be successful. But it
  would be a hit-or-miss success, not actually
  successful. The affair was being handled on the
  basis of an old, old system of organizing men and
  their knowledge. Most irritating was the fact
  that he could only stand by and be negatively
  critical. (p35-36)

37
Nexialism in Action Coeurl 4

• What Morton wanted was integration of many
  sciences, which was what Nexialism was for...The
  trouble with what the scientists had agreed on
  was that it was not thorough enough. A number of
  specialists had pooled their knowledge on a
  fairly superficial level. Each had briefly
  outlined his ideas to people who were not trained
  to grasp the wealth of associations behind each
  notion. And so the attack plan lacked unity.
  (p38-39)
• It struck Grosvenor that the end result might
  well be death for people who had inflexible ways
  of dealing with unusual danger. (p41) Outside
  Context Problems

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Nexialism in Action Riim

• How could you influence anothers mind? By
  changing his assumptions. How could you alter
  anothers actions? By changing his basic beliefs,
  his emotional certainties...In the history of
  life, few thinking beings had done anything
  illogicalwithin their own frame of reference. If
  the frame was falsely based, if the assumptions
  were untrue to reality, then the individuals
  automatic logic could lead them to disastrous
  conclusions. (p89)
• It is unwise for birdsor mento live too
  specialised an existence... (p92)

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Nexialism in Action Ixtl 1

• He Morton said, Recently, I have personally
  come to feel that the science of Nexialism may
  have a new approach to offer to the solution of
  problems. Since it is the whole-istic approach of
  life, carried to the nth degree, it may help us
  to a quick decision at a time when a quick
  decision is important... (p109)

40
Nexialism in Action Ixtl 2

• But there was another factor in this developing
  situation the conviction and hopes that men had.
  Only an actual event would change the minds of
  some people. When their ideas were altered by
  realityand then onlythey would be emotionally
  ready for more drastic solutions.
• It seemed to Grosvenor that he was
  learning slowly but surely how to influence men.
  It was not enough to have information and
  knowledge, not enough to be right. Men had to be
  persuaded and convinced. (p133)

41
Nexialism in Action The Anabis 1

• Unfortunately, men who had knowledge of only one
  or two sciences might not be able, or even
  willing, to comprehend the potentialities of the
  deadliest danger that had ever confronted all the
  life of the entire intergalactic universe. The
  solution itself might become the centre of a
  violent controversy. (p161)

42
Nexialism in Action The Anabis 2

• ...But the fact is that people who are wrapped
  up in pleasure, excitement, or ambition are
  easily controlled. I didnt devise the tactics
  Id use. Theyve been around for centuries. But
  historical attempts to analyse them just didn't
  get to the roots of the process. Until recently
  the relation of physiology to psychology was on a
  fairly theoretical basis. Nexial training reduced
  it to definite techniques. (p179)

43
Nexialism in Action The Anabis 3

• A baby is conditioned when it learns to walk,
  move its arms, speak. Why not extend the
  conditioning to hypnotism, chemical responses,
  the effects of food? It was possible hundreds of
  years ago. It would prevent a lot of disease,
  heartache, and the kind of catastrophe that
  derives from misunderstanding of ones own body
  and mind. (p183)

44
Nexialism in Action The Anabis 4

• The problems that Nexialism confronts are whole
  problems. Man has divided life and matter into
  separate compartments of knowledge and being.
  And, even though he sometimes uses words which
  indicate his awareness of the wholeness of
  nature, he continues to behave as if the one,
  changing universe had many separately functioning
  parts. The techniques we will discuss
  tonight...will show how this disparity between
  reality and mans behaviour can be overcome.
  (p190)

45
Nexialism and GS Concepts 1

• Changing assumptions of the Riim relate to a
  basic formulation found in general semantics
  i.e., sometimes the behaviours of individuals are
  based on assumptions which are false when
  compared to facts. War of Nerves, and The
  Voyage of the Space Beagle touch on additional
  concerns of general semanticists how we know
  what we know, logic, and a proper order of
  abstractions (what we perceive, the proper
  stages of how we perceive and the labels given to
  our perceptions)...
• continued next slide

46
Nexialism and GS Concepts 2

• ...Non-allness (we cannot know all that there
  is to know about a given person, place or thing)
  is very much part of general semanticist
  theorizing, but, van Vogt may have contradicted
  this formulation when later in the novel
  Grosvenor seems to know all that there is for
  humans to know at the moment, which is one way
  that Nexialism is defined. Alfred Korzybskis
  general semantics theories of human communicating
  also include the idea that unsane
  individuals...have the ability to correct their
  false assumptions and become sane, if they
  correct errors in their abstracting and labelling
  processes. (Icon, p37-38)

47
Possible Influences on and Developments of
Nexialism

• General Systems Theory
• International Society for the System Sciences
• Institute of Nexialism (ION), www.nexial.org/ION/
• The Nexial Institute, www.nexialinstitute.com
• Paper Theory Theory An Introduction to
  Nexialism, www.drchinese.com/Nexial.htm
• Cybernetics and Second-Order Cybernetics
• Ken Wilbur's Integral Theory (AQAL All
  Quadrants, All Lines)?

48
Conclusion

• Van Vogts stories emphasized that only smart and
  well disciplined Homo sapiens can survive on
  earth and move us to interstellar space
  conditions. (Icon, p45)
• The undisputed idea man of the futuristic field.
• Forrest J. Ackerman

49
Bibliography 1

• Drake, H. L. A. E. van Vogt Science Fantasys
  Icon. Lancaster Booklocker.com, Inc, 2001.
• Kodish, Susan Presby and Kodish, Bruce I. Drive
  Yourself Sane Using the Uncommon Sense of
  General Semantics. Pasadena Extension
  Publishing, 2001.
• Van Vogt, A. E. M 33 in Andromeda. New York
  Paperback Library, 1971.
• Van Vogt, A. E. My Life Was My Best Science
  Fiction Story. Fantastic Lives Autobiographical
  Essays by Notable Science Fiction Writers. Martin
  H. Greenberg, ed. Carbondale Southern Illinois
  University Press, 1981.

50
Biography 2

• Van Vogt, A. E. Reflections of A. E. van Vogt.
  Lakemount Fictioneer Books, 1975.
• Van Vogt, A. E. The Best of A. E. van Vogt.
  Intro. Barry N. Malzberg. Markham Pocket Books,
  1976.
• Van Vogt, A. E. The Voyage of the Space Beagle.
  St Albans Panther Books, 1977.
• Van Vogt, A. E. Transfinite The Essential A.E.
  Van Vogt. Ed. Joe Rico and Rick Katze.
  Framingham The NESFA Press, 2003.

51
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52
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