Slan » (First Edition)

A. E. Van Vogt was a SFWA Grand Master. He was born in Canada and moved to the U.S. in 1944, by which time he was well-established as one of John W. Campbell's stable of writers for Astounding Science-Fiction. He lived in Los Angeles, California and died in 2000.

The Slans, a superior race of telepaths, are isolated and persecuted by the "normal" humans. The young Jommy Cross's mother dies in a pogrom and he struggles to survive. With its obvious evocation of the Holocaust, this novel, first published in 1941, made an enormous impression. Van Vogt (1912-2000) was an SFFWA Grand Master.

Gale Research

Slan, is the story of a young mutant who can read minds, among other powers, fleeing persecution by the society that killed his parents. Although other writers had previously used the superman motif in science fiction stories, declares Sam Moskowitz in Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction," Van Vogt seems to have been the first science-fiction author with the courage to explore the sociological implications of the superhuman race living in and among humans." Slan "is still, after forty years, widely regarded as a classic, and continues the mainstay of [Van Vogt's] fame," says Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Arthur Jean Cox. "By any standard," Moskowitz concludes, "it was a milestone in science fiction."