"Discord in Scarlet" by A. E. van Vogt (1939)

This is the dramatic story of the struggle for survival of the inter-galactic exploration ship The Space Beagle, after having being invaded by an incredibly powerful alien being – a narrative familiar to viewers of Ridley Scott’s 1981 masterpiece Alien, which was largely based on this story.

First published in the December 1939 issue of the Astounding Science Fiction magazine, Discord in Scarlet is the direct sequel of van Vogt’s equally dramatic novella Black Destroyer that had appeared in the July 1939 issue of Astounding.

This quite extraordinary tale, certainly one of the author’s finest, became the pivotal chapters 13-21 of van Vogt’s epic 1950 "fix-up" novel, The Voyage of the Space Beagle.

However there are a number of differences between this original version of the story of the stupendous monster Xtl and the later novel, particularly in the dialogues, and there’s notably no reference here to the novel’s central character Elliot Grosvenor and his multidisciplinarian doctrine of "Nexialism", for example [1].

So this is a quite separate text that can and should be read – and admired – on its own.

As an extra treat the reader will find here the splendid original artwork by Kramer, whose two-colour illustrations had the honour of being the first ever to appear in the magazine, as well as the eye-popping December 1939 Astounding cover design by Gilmore shown here.

(14,000 words)

An e-book is available for downloading below.

Discord in Scarlet (e-book)