"Slan" (1940) - A. E. van Vogt’s first and most famous novel

First published in four installments in the September-December 1940 issues of Astounding Science Fiction, this smoothly-written and ambitious first novel with its action-oriented, science-minded, Big-Ideas-About-The-Evolutionary-Future-of-Humanity theme, its dramatic story line involving an incredibly intense and long-lasting manhunt, wild careening all over the solar system, much grim violence and some pretty intense man-woman confrontations, is a quintessential golden-age masterpiece that has captivated readers young and old ever since its first publication.

Slightly modified for its publication in book form in 1945 and then again in 1951, Slan has remained one of the best-known science-fiction novels of all time.

The text below is the final version published by Simon and Schuster in hard-cover format in 1951.

We have included here the interesting graphics by Schneeman that appeared in the original September-December 1940 issues of Astounding Science Fiction.

(67,000 words)

An e-book is available for downloading below.

Slan (e-book)