Difficult to penetrate van
Vogt’s logic (2/5)
A.E. van Vogt was one of the first authors I was exposed to back
in 2007 when I seriously began to start reading science fiction. Of course, I
read The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950) and was titillated with the
adventure, thrill, and horror of it all. I’ve also read three of his
collections which have been hit and miss, where Monsters (1965) is a
fun, indulgent foray into the creepy and Away and Beyond (1952) fell
DOA. Aside from Beagle, his novels haven’t found purchase on my
readership yet with Rouge Ship (1965) and Quest for the Future (1970)
being the notable failures. Needless to say, I was leery on starting this last
van Vogt novel on my shelves.
Rear cover synopsis:
“Colonel Morton was sent to Diamondia to report on the war between
the Earth-descended colonists and the guerrilla warriors of the inhuman Irsk. Because
something was going terribly wrong—a darkness was setting in, mental confusion
was epidemic, and there was evidence of Outside interference.
The Darkness was impartial, and Morton’s encounters with it were
the most disturbing events in his career. For it seemed as if the Outside were
deliberately stirring up the planetary pot, mixing minds with minds, and
personalities with personalities.
But when Morton realized that the only solution might be to find
and use the incalculable power of the Lositeen Weapon, he realized also that
the decision was too great for any one man—or even for all men together—to
make.”
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Below the book’s own synopsis, I almost always provide my own
synopsis to the novel. Usually, this is a lengthy affair which touches on all
the aspects of the novel which come into play without revealing any fundamental
spoilers. Occasionally, this summarization is hampered by one of two things:
(a) my inability to penetrate the author’s intentions or (b) my inability to
understand the pivotal point of the novels existence. The Darkness on
Diamondia is a case of the latter, where “finite logic” plays an essential
and recurring role in the affairs of the protagonist Morton and his fractal
fight against the Darkness. So, the brevity of the synopsis is both my own
fault and one of the book’s most frustrating points.
The human-colonized planet of Diamondia was inhabited with the
simple Irsk aliens when it was settled. Gradually, the Irsk undertook menial
labor posts, thereby exposing them to the common human habits, which they largely
subsumed. For a long while, the billion Irsk and half-billion humans got along
fairly well… until strife and resistance to the occupation began to spring up
thirty years prior. To placate both parties, the native tentacle Irsk and the bipedal
human Diamondias, Earth sent a Negotiating Committee which continually swelled
in size and diminished in capability and effectiveness.
The onset of strife is mysterious, but a common sickness strikes
at random with tight-eyed facial contortions are followed by unconsciousness and
the memory of living through the eyes of another. Colonel Morton had be
stricken once and saw through the eyes on a seemingly common Irsk laborer, but
inside its house was another mystery, a possible solution or weapon to be used
against the nebulous incursion or mind transference.
Morton is no common man, mind you. He’s not a man conflicted with
so-called modern logic based on man’s nature of emotion and estimation; rather,
Morton prides himself in the finite logic system which the universe and all
life operates on though in infinitely differentiating realities of the same
logic system. This finite logic, a mathematical system of sets of duplicates,
enables a man to perceive his world with ample yet realistic possibilities, but
also grant a man “courteous, generous, and almost completely nonviolent” (155).
Certainly applicable to a military-minded man such as Morton, the skill also
applies to his leisure, where women are attracted to him because, according to
his memory, women “were attracted to him because they recognized that he was
becoming a finite logic male” (69). Women love a mathematical mind. [Chapter 26
contains a much lengthier and rather perplexing explanation about finite logic.]
Utilizing his finite logic and the weakness of the Darkness which
transfers minds, Morton is able to release his mind from its carnal carriage
and penetrate the minds of others, even convincing other that they are his
duplicate. Thence, thousands of people, of both human and Irsk descent, claim
to be the original Morton, a subterfuge which frustrates the Darkness and its
nefarious agenda.
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I collected notes on the number of times van Vogt mentioned finite
logic versus modern logic, I had page numbers and arrows and stars next to
material; I tried to synopsize what “finite logic” was to van Vogt in the
context of The Darkness on Diamonia and how it affects the outcome of
the novel, but my attempt failed me. The closest approximation of what finite
logic is harkens, rather predictably if you know a bit about van Vogt’s history,
to Scientology:
“Man is basically good, the he is seeking to
survive, that his survival depends on himself and his attainment of brotherhood
with the universe”. With this goodness and universality of one with
finite logic, only the greater good for the greatest number can be attained.
The pitfall of this “greater good” lays in ignoring the individual, the death
of individuality or even the physical death of one for many. Morton, the conscientious
colonel, sticks to his finite logic guns and attempts to form a greater good
for both human and Irsk, alike.
Morton’s attempt to spread himself over the
planet sounds a lot like brainwashing. Again, I’m not entirely clear about how
Morton perpetrated his actions with the willing/unwilling assistance of the
Darkness, but therein, again lays the problem: Why was this 253-pag novel so
doggedly difficult to penetrate? Was it my lack vigilance? Was it my own lack
of finite logic? Or was it van Vogt’s inability to write a smooth yet engaging
novel? My guess it the latter… van Vogt seems to have failed somewhere. Where
was his writer’s logic in writing for the reader?
Perhaps my inability to find purchase came with
my repugnance with the inclusion of telepathy and hypnosis. These weak
pseudo-sciences thereby weakened the book’s plot: a tower of sand built on the
silty foundations of muddy scientific waters, where the build-up of silt blocks
most upriver understanding. I didn’t quit the novel, I didn’t thrown away my
oars of readership and drift to another book because some elements of the Darkness
were actually interesting: the origin, the function, and the future. At the
conclusion, the Darkness proved to be an excellent vehicle for the plot, but
van Vogt was underskilled at presenting this with finite logic for the reader’s
(or this reader’s) full understanding. Mentioning finite logic again and
again should cement the reader’s understanding, but perhaps there were too many
points spread across too many pages.
Another thing van Vogt tried to force into the
plot is promiscuous women. All the females on Diamondia seem to be prostitutes
because (a) the Diamondia male is a difficult man to deal with and (b) the
Negotiation Committee has many members (ha) on the planet whose needs must be
fulfilled. Isolina is one women who is part of the underground resistance
against Earth’s nosiness, so to enlist double agents in her guerilla unit, she
simply sleeps with men so that they will instinctively feel obliged to her. I
guess there’s no better way to wrangle a man in the 39th century.
Conversely, according to van Vogt’s novel here, what’s the best way to wrangle
and/or tame a woman? Isolina’s own monologue reveals the answer: “While I am
hurt … it will be a pushover for me to get him to marry me … I should like to
die Mrs. Charles Morton” (232); apparently, this is a common thought among
Diamondian women. How very subservient of them.
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Accuse my impatience and poor note keeping or accuse van Vogt’s
inability to transfer an idea to paper, but other Amazon and Goodreads reviews
seem to have trouble understanding where van Vogt was going with this novel.
The first inkling of frustration should have come from the book’s very
first page; is it a teaser or a test, an invitation or an eviction notice?
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