"M33 in Andromeda" by A. E. van Vogt (1943)

M33 in Andromeda, first published in the August 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, was the third of van Vogt’s great series of stories, after Black Destroyer and Discord in Scarlet, about the adventures of the spaceship The Space Beagle on man’s first trip of scientific discovery outside of his own Milky Way galaxy.

Quite up to the remarkable level of those other two famous stories, it became a key part of van Vogt’s masterful novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950), albeit with a not inconsiderable number of text changes, the later novel emphasizing throughout the central role of the "Nexialist" scientist Elliott Grosvenor, who in the magazine version of the saga only appeared for the first time here in this episode.

This is the 1943 version of the story, with the original artwork by Williams.

(7,400 words)

An e-book is available for downloading below.

M33 in Andromeda (e-book)