The War Against the Rull

I've never read something that is so transparently a bunch of serialized short stories fashioned into a novel, nor have I read something so obviously made for an audience of 1940's teenage boys. My first impression of van Vogt has not been a pleasant one, though I suppose that's it's important for me to get some reading in from this age of SF for context to my other reading in the genre.

The War against the Rull is a collection of hastily pasted together short stories that originally didn't even have the same main character, Trevor Jamison, who seemingly can do no wrong whatsoever. Van Vogt was churning out these types of fix-ups in the 50's after his decade of original productivity in the 40's. In these stories humanity is in an endless war with a race of shape-shifting aliens called the Rull, who can take the place of humans easily, thus much of the conflict happens in human networks as Rull spies are discovered and thwarted. Surprisingly, the Rull are really only a part of half of these stories. The other main focus is another another alien race, the Ezwal, who are gargantuan bear-like creatures with six legs, three eyes, herculean strength, and telepathic powers. Jamison is the only human who knows that the Ezwal are telepathic, let alone intelligent, and tries to convince them and humanity of the truth throughout the stories. There are a lot of side tangents in these stories, one involving Jamison's son, one involving an alien species that eats electricity, and another with a failed assassination attempt on Jamison's life.

The end result of all of these side tangents is a 'novel' that is so disjointed and poorly framed that I couldn't even really consider it a cohesive work. Van Vogt does such a poor job of bringing the stories together that he might as well not even tried, and simply left the stories as they were. Most of these stories amount to nothing more than adventurous scenes of conflict intended as a power fantasy for adolescent boys. The women are casually thought of as nothing more than the sum of their looks with annoying emotions attached. The main character is so resourceful, witty, and competent that he looses all basis in reality. The writing is repetitive, dull, and unimaginative.

I've read that van Vogt often used his dreams as a starting point for his plot lines, and boy does it show. The first few stories, while not necessarily noteworthy, were at least understandable. I can't say the same for the last story, which devolves in structure to the point that I wasn't exactly clear what was going on. I'm honestly surprised that serialized pulp stories that are this incomprehensible were that successful.

The relationship between human and the Ezwal could've been interesting, but instead they end up being used a tool of the plot more so than a focal point of exploration. I was disappointed at how basis the main conflict between the Rull and humans was, which maybe at the time wasn't stereotypical, but now it certainly is. Not even worth the time to finish even though it was so short to begin with.