Excellent Far-Future Space Opera

• Date: 07.08.2009
• Book: The Mixed Men
• Author: plappen

Review

The Mixed Men, A.E. van Vogt, Gnome Press, 1952


Set 15,000 years from now, an Earth ship has spent the last ten years in the Greater Magellanic Cloud looking for a space empire that calls itself the Fifty Suns. They are a group of mutated humans who left Earth many years previously to get away from prejudice and discrimination.

Earth promises a benevolent leadership; the Fifty Suns will generally be able to rule themselves. But Earth makes it very clear: Join Us or Be Destroyed. Long ago, Earth decided to not allow any other star empires to exist. The Fifty Suns decide on silence, and let the Earth ship try to find them among the Cloud’s millions of stars.

A minority among the population of the Fifty Suns is the Mixed Men. Possessing a sort of double brain (not two separate brains, but more like pairs of molecules where there is only supposed to be on molecule), they have been subject to prejudice also, and have had to resort to extreme secrecy to hide their cities. Maltby, hereditary leader of the Mixed Men, finds himself on board the Earthship, the Star Cruiser, ordered to pilot it to the capital of the Fifty Suns. His secret orders, from the leaders of the Fifty Suns, are to pilot the ship right into a space storm, powerful enough to destroy even a hundred-deck behemoth like the Star Cruiser.

It’s obvious to the people that, even if the Star Cruiser is destroyed, which does not happen, it won’t be long, in cosmic terms, before Earth sends thousands of ships looking for the Fifty Suns empire. Many psychological methods are used to get Maltby to talk, including conditioning him to fall in love with Gloria Cecily, Grand Captain of the Star Cruiser.

This is an excellent far-future space opera in the grand tradition. Few writers can do it quite like A.E. van Vogt. This one is very much worth reading.