A Sci-Fi Thriller with Some Cool Ideas! The World of Null-A Review!

This book was recommended by someone who commented on one of my YouTube videos! It's a science fiction novel by A.E. van Vogt, and the version I read was a revised 1970 paperback edition that added a little more background and clarity about the phenomenon he calls "null-A."

"Null-A" refers to a real school of thought, called "General Semantics," which at its best focuses on emphasizing how meaning is only achievable when you make allowances for the structure through which it is filtered. "Null-A" is short for a combination of non-Aristotelian, non-Newtonian, non-Einsteinian. One of the tenets mentioned in the book is the idea that the representation of a thing is not the thing itself. Keep that in mind, van Vogt warns...

The book is a fun little thriller with lots of political intrigue and sci-fi tidbits. Our main character, Gilbert Goseyn, arrives in the city controlled by the Games Machine, a giant supercomputer that runs the government. Surprisingly, we don't get the trite "computer dystopia" development here; it's much more layered and fun than that.

Gilbert discovers that he isn't who he thought he was, and this revelation pushes him into an adventure that takes him across the solar system and pits him against some of the most powerful figures on Earth, and in the whole galaxy.

The story moves at a break-neck pace and is full of double-crosses and uncertain alliances. In fact, so much happens so quickly at times that it can be hard to keep up! There are lots of scenes of tense back-and-forth questioning between different characters, and the ending is moderately satisfying. It's a fun book, and a pretty quick read.

There were a few unique science fiction ideas that I found pretty interesting. One of them is about the development of brains under stress or within a given order. Van Vogt plays around with the concept of indistinguishability (which we now know is a real, honest-to-goodness thing), which I found interesting. Van Vogt also plays around with the idea of attuning different minds with each other, which resulted in some fun switcharoos. He also puts forward an intriguing idea of a voluntary society on Venus which I found particularly cool.

One of the weaknesses of the book is that the concepts of "null-A" remain fairly nebulous, and it definitely felt like it was being used to justify things due to its vagueness. Another was the pervasiveness of perfectly reliable lie detectors--they're used to solve a lot of potential spots where van Vogt could have cornered himself in the story.

I think Gilbert has an interesting arc. I liked how many of the characters had ulterior motivations and hatched complex plots. There were a few cool surprises in the story, too. It was a fun, short read, though a little preachy at times... and preachy for something very abstract and foreign. There's a sequel, but I'm not champing at the bit to read it in a hurry.

If you like thrillers, sci-fi, and intrigue, you'll probably like it!

Grab a copy here.