Monday, October 12, 2020

Quest for the Future by A.E. van Vogt

(pb; 1970)

Review

Peter Caxton, middle-man academic film supplier, investigates why the short-subject films he sends out change, boring academic science text and visuals replaced with mind-blowing scenes of outer space and alien creatures. Caxton’s investigations lead him to a time- and character-expanding adventure in time travel and its human and interplanetary limits.

Quest is a blink-and-miss-twists-and-time-jumps book, one that blasts through the usual boundaries of storytelling (and, in doing so, was hard for me to follow). Its quick-cut turn of events did not detract from my enjoyment of the book too much, I just went along for the well-written ride, figuring it was thoroughly mapped by Vogt (a consistently superb and complex author) and it would work out in the end─which it did, dovetailing in an altered and effective way.

To better keep track of the plot and character points, this is likely a read-in-a-short-span-of-time work. I read this over the course of a week when I should have read it in two days or one sitting (which would’ve been easily possible, it’s only 253 pages). Because of this, I might read it again. Either way, this a wonderful, boundary-pushing and often clever read, something I could see as a film, perhaps directed by Christopher Nolan (Inception, Tenet).

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