I am reading Van Vogt's MISSION TO THE STARS (on the cover it says originally published as THE MIXED MEN). I like the second title better. Umm...the copyright date is 1952 -- that's for the mixed men titled version, I bet, because I might have been precocious, but -- 1952! -- not that precocious

Anyway...here I am reading MISSION. It's short compared to these days. 157 pages. [40 lines per page; 'bout 8 words per...times 157 pages makes it around 50,000 words.] I notice first that there are lots of sequels rather than scenes in the story. In fact...everybody seems to stand or sit around flapping their mouths a lot. Then I realize that not only does not much happen here, but that the real action all happens off stage! Then I go on to see that this all happens in locations perilously close to white rooms.

The mixed men of the original title are mutated humans ala slan. Wait, didn't Van Vogt write SLAN? Anyway, very annoying. The main mixed man has two minds and can seize control of regular humans and make them do what he wants and they never even notice. Not much of a challenge for him. The tension is low because of that. There isn't any subtle byplay. And Van Vogt often resorts to a kind of hint type zinger at the end of a chapter to goose the tension up.

Here's an example:
from page 74
....
His only hope was that the wolves of space -- as the warships were often called -- would by pack action make short work of the single Earth ship.

They ran into a tiger.

[end of chapter]

However, the text reads very clearly. I never got confused or lost. There were a couple of info dumps but they came at points where I, as reader, wanted the information, so they worked out okay. These days "I" would have tried harder (or maybe, at least tried!) to find an active way to show the information and to fill in the background scenery a tiny bit. That would have upped the page count considerably.

Well, I was disappointed to learn how poorly written the old stuff is -- even by the old "greats."

I'm going to have read some more. As I pedal along for hours on my exercise bike, I wonder how Arthur C, Clarke is going to turn out? And Asimov. Remember Murray Leinster? Keith Laumer? John Brunner? Edmond Hamilton? Boy, do I date myself.

As I recall those guys used to turn in first or second drafts. It shows.

I generally read (and occasionally reread) the older stuff...somehow most of the newer stuff passes me by, though I still look through the SF section and pick up anything that catches my eye.

Sure, a lot of it is badly written---but I usually encountered it as an age where I was easily dazzled by what I found. The concepts were new to me (however old the stories were). To paraphrase from someone whose name I can't remember right now, they took me to a place I'd never been before, that, eventually, I decided to try to go to by taking up writing myself.

I can't be dazzled like that anymore, or at least only rarely. I'm older, more savvy (maybe), more cynical (definitely).

But new readers are always coming along to be dazzled anew, by new stuff or old stuff, depending on what they find.

*****

A while ago I read a recent collection of Murray Leinster's stuff, which referred to a lot of his novels as "'Die Hard' in space." I found that a little unfair---Leinster died quite a while before any of those movies came out, so if anybody was ripped off, it would be Leinster.

The trick with those guys was that their writing flowed so easy, you didn't even realize the pages were turning. A whole book in one setting (or several stories, in Bradbury's case.) Each held a satisfying build-up of suspense (ever notice most of those early books are just protracted riddles?) and a satisfying end. Brunner's "Total Eclipse" had such a shocking ending that I still find myself thinking about it.