My life in books

So I've finally read Slan Hunter, the sequel to A. E. Van Vogt's classic novel Slan, written by Kevin J. Anderson from a partial draft and outline by Van Vogt. Like the Various Dune sequels written by Anderson and Brian Herbert, it really doesn't live up to the original - but then not much fan fic does.

My identification with Jommy Cross and the true slans, back when I read Slan, was so strong and so pervasive that just reading more in that universe revived my attachment to the characters, and that carried me through Slan Hunter, reading at a breathless pace. Of course, the text lends itself to such reading, being little more than tense action sequences interrupted by expository dialogue between multiple characters.

The narrative covers the span of a few days immediately following the abrupt end of the events in Slan. President Kier Grey is exposed as a slan by John Petty, chief of the secret police, and he, Jommy and Kathleen are arrested. Out in the city, a tendrilled child is born to two apparently human parents, and the father gives his life to buy tome for the shocked mother to escape with her baby. Suddenly, the first wave of the invasion fleet sent by the tendrilless slans living, unknown to humans, on Mars, appears in the skies, bombarding human cities around the globe into rubble.

After much dashing here and there, and many bloody scenes of destruction, these characters, along with Joanna, a tendrilless slan who was converted by Jommy to the true slan cause in the original book, converge on a deserted slan complex that was once the secret laboratory and living facility where Jommy's father Peter Cross and other true slans had hidden away.

With only two days until the second invasion fleet carrying the ground troops arrives, Jommy and co. are desperate to find a way to save the world and bring about peace between human, tendrilled and tendrilless slan. Fortunately, one of the biggest deus ex machinas I've ever seen arrives right on time to save the day, and the future.

A quick read, mostly enjoyable because anything that restores Jommy Cross and the true slans to their rightful place as peaceful participants in the glorious future of humanity, after seven decades of dangling on a cliff-hanger, is better than never finding a resolution.

Well, the long-awaited answer to the burning question Frank Herbert left us with at the end of Chapterhouse: Dune - what the hell has all those Honered Matres so terrified - has finally arrived, thanks to Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, in the form of two volumes assembled from Herbert’s notes:

Hunters of Dune
Sandworms of Dune

I read the books to find out the answer to that question, not because I expected much in the way of great writing – after all, I’d already slogged through the Butlerian Jihad trilogy and the “Prelude to Dune” trilogy and found them pretty grim reading, albeit packed chock-full with all sorts of really interesting and inventive backstory – most of which is absolutely vital to an understanding of the latest two books.

I must admit, Herbert and Anderson’s prose style has improved somewhat. And the books are really quite well-structured, considering how many plotlines they have to knit up to bring the whole thing to a satisfying conclusion – considering that in addition to everything that was left hanging at the end of Chapterhouse: Dune, there are also several very large loose threads left over from the Butlerian Jihad novels, which are on the whole quite seamlessly integrated into an enjoyable narrative.

There are some real surprises, yet another apotheosis, and a lot of interesting revelations. This is yet another future history series that is built on thesis (machine intelligence will dominate humanity), antithesis (humans can advance technologically without the use of any “thinking machines”) and ultimate synthesis – the gist of which should be fairly obvious from my summation of the preceding terms, but which I will leave unspoiled as to particulars – but the conclusion works.

Still, it's sad that neither these final volumes, nor any of the other sequels and prequels, either by Frank Herbert or by Brain Herbert and Kevin Anderson, ever reach the magic of the original Dune.