The Proxy Intelligence And Other Mind Benders - A E van Vogt

 THE PROXY INTELLIGENCE AND OTHER MIND BENDERS - A E VAN VOGT

Of all the books in all the world, why choose to read one above another? There are probably as many reasons as there are books but it's a question I often ponder, particularly after finishing a book and am wondering what next to read? Why do I choose to read, for example, The Proxy Intelligence And Other Mind Benders by A E van Vogt over, for example, Borstal Boy by Brandan Behan? I have both books on my shelf so why choose one above the other? 

In a way, the answer can be very simple though it comes with provisos: Instinct. It's instinctive. It's essentially just giving way to natural attraction and following the heart. You simply block out all external influence so the decision is wholly yours. 

And how did I end up even owning a copy of this book by A E van Vogt in the first place? Well, it's one I found in a second-hand bookshop and among the hundreds of other sci-fi books in there, I just beamed in on this one along with a few others. Grabbing while the going was good. The title was ambiguous and the cover art sort of proto-psychedelic, and as we all know: to fathom hell or soar angelic you need a pinch of psychedelic. So I went for it.

A E van Vogt is a major name when it comes to science-fiction writers and apparently was a big influence upon Philip K Dick. His writing has a hallucinatory quality about it. Very dream-like. In fact at times it's almost child-like due to the sometimes lack of formal structure. There is lineage but it sometimes comes across as having been written in tiny chunks, a paragraph a day with there sometimes being a disconnect. It can be like reading a join-the-dot picture.

The Proxy Intelligence And Other Mind Benders is a collection of six short stories written by van Vogt, all previously published in various science-fiction magazines during the Forties, Fifties and Sixties. What they're all actually about is probably of little significance. I mean, I'm not even sure what all of them are about and I've read them! 

The point of the stories instead, it seems to me, is the experience. It's a bit like those holidays you can take where you can get to swim with dolphins. There's no real meaning in swimming with dolphins so instead the experience is all. Though that's not to say this collection of short stories should be compared to a pod of dolphins because they're not as beautiful as that. If anything, I'd compare them to a school of fish. A hover of trout. Swimming under ice.

And is it just me, or after reading A E van Vogt are you meant to be left feeling a bit woozy?

John Serpico