Without doubt, A. E. van Vogt was the first great Canadian science-fiction writer. In his heyday he was one of the most popular science-fiction authors in the world and is considered to belong to the so-called golden age of writers in the genre, along with such masters as Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. Certainly, until the explosion of Canadian science fiction in the 1980s no Canadian had as high a profile as van Vogt within the genre. Although his prominence in Canadian science fiction has now been eclipsed as a result of the success of such writers as William Gibson, Guy Gavriel Kay, and Robert J. Sawyer, and his work is no longer as widely read, van Vogt's early fiction represents one of the greatest achievements in Canadian science fiction and has had a lasting, if underappreciated, impact on the genre.

Alfred Elton Vogt...