(Van Vogt and Kramer thus debuted in the issue of Astounding that is sometimes identified as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. It was accompanied by interior illustrations created by Frank Kramer and Paul Orban. "Discord in Scarlet" was van Vogt's second story to be published, also appearing as the cover story. This necessitated a move back to Ottawa, where he and his wife stayed for the next year and a half. Ineligible for military service due to his poor eyesight, he accepted a clerking job with the Canadian Department of National Defence.
The outbreak of World War II in September 1939 caused a change in van Vogt's circumstances. Hull, who had previously worked as a private secretary, went on to act as van Vogt's typist, and was credited with writing several SF stories of her own throughout the early 1940s. While still living in Winnipeg, in 1939 van Vogt married Edna Mayne Hull, a fellow Manitoban. Van Vogt's "Ship of Darkness" was the cover story in the second issue of Fantasy Book in 1948.
A revised version of "Vault of the Beast" was published in 1940. It featured a fierce, carnivorous alien stalking the crew of a spaceship, and served as the inspiration for multiple science fiction movies, including Alien (1979). Van Vogt sent another story, entitled " Black Destroyer", which was accepted. Campbell, who edited Astounding (and had written the story under a pseudonym), sent van Vogt a rejection letter, but one which encouraged van Vogt to try again. Campbell's novelette " Who Goes There?" (later adapted into The Thing from Another World and The Thing) inspired van Vogt to write " Vault of the Beast", which he submitted to that same magazine. He was inspired by the August 1938 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, which he picked up at a newsstand. van Vogt" both personally and professionally.īy 1938, van Vogt decided to switch to writing science fiction, a genre he enjoyed reading. Shortly thereafter, he added the "van" to his surname, and from that point forward he used the name "A. He added the middle name "Elton" at some point in the mid-1930s, and at least one confessional story (1937's "To Be His Keeper") was sold to the Toronto Star, who misspelled his name "Alfred Alton Bogt" in the byline. While continuing to pen melodramatic "true confessions" stories through 1937, he also began writing short radio dramas for local radio station CKY, as well as conducting interviews published in trade magazines. Most of these stories were published anonymously, with the first-person narratives allegedly being written by people (often women) in extraordinary, emotional, and life-changing circumstances.Īfter a year in Ottawa, he moved back to Winnipeg, where he sold newspaper advertising space and continued to write. His early published works were stories in the true confession style of magazines such as True Story. In "the dark days of '31 and '32," van Vogt took a correspondence course in writing from the Palmer Institute of Authorship. During his teen years, Alfred worked as a farmhand and a truck driver, and by the age of 19, he was working in Ottawa for the Canadian Census Bureau. īy the 1920s, living in Winnipeg, father Henry worked as an agent for a steamship company, but the stock market crash of 1929 proved financially disastrous, and the family could not afford to send Alfred to college. Again and again I sought shelter, only to be forced out of it by something new. I was like a ship without anchor being swept along through darkness in a storm. Alfred Vogt found these moves difficult, later remarking:Ĭhildhood was a terrible period for me. įor the first dozen or so years of his life, van Vogt's father, Henry Vogt, a lawyer, moved his family several times within western Canada, moving to Neville, Saskatchewan Morden, Manitoba and finally Winnipeg, Manitoba. Until he was four, van Vogt spoke only Plautdietsch at home. He was the third of six children born to Heinrich "Henry" Vogt and Aganetha "Agnes" Vogt (née Buhr), both of whom were born in Manitoba and grew up in heavily immigrant communities. 10.1.1 Special works published as booksĪlfred Vogt (both "Elton" and "van" were added much later) was born on April 26, 1912, on his grandparents' farm in Edenburg, Manitoba, a tiny (and now defunct) Russian Mennonite community east of Gretna, Manitoba, Canada, in the Mennonite West Reserve.4 Return to writing and later career (1962–1986).
0 kommentar(er)
