Critical Reception
The novel was the subject of an extended critical essay by noted author and critic Damon Knight. In "Cosmic Jerrybuilder: A. E. van Vogt", Knight writes that "far from being a 'classic' by any reasonable standard, The World of Ā is one of the worst allegedly-adult science fiction stories ever published." Knight criticizes the novel on four main levels:
1. Plot: "The World of Ā abounds in contradictions, misleading clues and irrelevant action...It is habit to introduce a monster, or a gadget, or an extra-terrestrial culture, simply by naming it, without any explanation of its nature...By this means, and by means of his writing style, which is discursive and hard to follow, van Vogt also obscures his plot to such an extent that when it falls to pieces at the end, the event passes without remark."
2. Characterization: "Van Vogt's characters repeatedly commit the error known as the double-take. This phenomenon is funny because it represents a mental failure...Its cause is inability to absorb a new fact until a ridiculously long time has elapsed. In The World of Ā there are twelve examples in all."
3. Background: "In van Vogt's world, the advancement over 1945...amounts to no more than (a) a world government; (b) a handful of gadgets...van Vogt has not bothered to integrate the gadgets into the technological background of his story, and he has no clear idea of their nature."
4. Style: "Examples of bad writing in The World of Ā could be multiplied endlessly. It is my personal opinion that the whole of it is written badly, with only minor exceptions."
It should be noted that Damon Knight and Van Vogt differed on a number of points of personal ideology. Damon Knight, the founder of the SFWA, abhorred van Vogt’s style and politics and thoroughly demolished his literary reputation in the 1950s.
It should also be noted that Damon Knight took the trouble of making this analysis, writing it down, and publishing it - efforts one would hardly expect for a novel that really wasn't worth the trouble of reading.
Read more about this topic: The World Of Null-A
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