Cover artist Ronald Clyne Genre science-fiction novel Pages 244 (Hardback edition) Page count 244 (Hardback edition) OCLC 661127 | Language English Media type Print (Hardback) Published 1959 (Simon & Schuster) | |
Country United States of America Similar A E van Vogt books, Other books | ||
The War Against the Rull is a science-fiction novel written by A. E. Van Vogt and first published in 1959 by Simon & Schuster.. The novel is a fix-up made from six short stories and two connecting chapters.
Contents
Component stories
The six short stories that comprise most of the novel, all originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, are:
Plot
1-4: Trevor Jamieson is stranded in a deadly jungle on the planet Eristan II with an ezwal, a 3-ton, six-legged saurian-like creature that dislikes humans and wants them to leave his native world, Carson’s Planet. Having bailed out of a crashing spaceship, Jamieson and the telepathic ezwal must make their way to the wreckage in hopes that the subspace radio survived and they can call for help. Their journey is interrupted by a cruiser belonging to the Rull, creatures that appear to have evolved from chameleon-like worms and who are implacably hostile to all intelligent life. The Rull capture the ezwal, but must lie doggo when a Terran battleship engages their cruiser. When a native plant kills the Rull, the ezwal guides Jamieson to their lifeboat and Jamieson flies the two of them to safety.
5: Jamieson arranges to return the ezwal to Carson’s Planet. As they part, the ezwal rejects Jamieson’s request that the ezwals develop a mechanical civilization capable of fending off the Rull. Jamieson finds a similar intransigence in the human settlers, all of whom have had family members killed by ezwals. One young woman tells him that Carson’s Planet’s moon is habitable and offers to guide him on tour of it.
6-7: On Carson’s Satellite Barbara Whitman leads Jamieson into a trap. Her plan fails to kill Jamieson, but they are both stranded on a hostile world. They begin walking back toward the city whence they came and Jamieson uses his wilderness survival skills to obtain food for them and save them from a blood-sucking gryb. Several days later the crew of his ship finds and rescues them.
8-13: Jamieson had been concerned about a female ezwal and her cub being taken to Earth. The ship carrying the ezwals crash lands in Alaska and a crewman kills the mother, who kills him before she dies. The cub manages to escape and is pursued over the landscape by men who believe he is merely an animal. Jamieson comes as the men are closing in and with the ezwal’s cooperation convinces the men that the ezwal is an intelligent being and persuades them not to kill him.
14-16: Jamieson is organizing a project on the planet Mira 23 to obtain a fluid from a native lifeform in order to create a substance that will poison the Rull. Kidnaped by Rull agents, he is taken to Mira 23, where he will be used to frame the project’s leader for his murder. He is left in the forest, where the lethal fauna will kill him, though the three Rull agents are killed by a menace they did not anticipate. Jamieson is then rescued by the project’s leader.
17-19: In Solar City Jamieson’s son Diddy is on a quest to find the source of an all-pervasive sound. During the all-night quest he is accompanied by Rull spies and saboteurs, who use him to gain access to The Yards, where a giant spaceship is being built. With the aid of counterspies and the ezwal cub, he obtains a flame gun and kills the saboteurs. Then he completes his quest.
20: With the ezwal cub accompanying him, Jamieson goes to the planet Ploia to capture one of the natives. Made up entirely of electromagnetic fields, the Ploian sends electrical systems into a frenzy, so Jamieson must use purely mechanical devices to control his ship. Through the ezwal’s telepathic ability, he makes contact with the Ploian, which agrees to help him in return for a promise to take it home.
21-25: Jamieson has gone directly from Ploia to Laertes III to make a preliminary survey of the planet as a base of operations against the Rull. A Rull survey boat disables his lifeboat but is itself shot down. Jamieson must then engage the Rull in a battle of wits for ten days. In that time he manages to condition the Rull with a subconscious belief that the war is futile. At the end the Rull captures him, but the Ploian frees him and they go home in a Rull lifeboat. The Rull Jamieson confronted turns out to have been a Prime Leader and he does, indeed, end the war.
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