Synopsis
Once again the crew of the starship Beagle happen upon an alien creature, this time out in the lifeless void between two galaxies!
History
First publication: Astounding, December 1939
Review
In some way sthis story repeats what Van Vogt did in Black Destroyer, but he takes it much farther. First, he imagines the Beagle heading out of our galaxy on a journey to the Andromeda Galaxy. I believe this was taken a story farther into space thatn anyone had done before. Galaxies were a fairly recent concept in astronomy. Second, he imagines acreature that can survive in space, rearrange its atoms to walk through walls, and that has survived from the previous incarnation of the universe. Van Vogt also wrote the story of such a dangerous being getting loose inside the spaceship, with the crew needing to defeat the powerful being. So while he wasn’t doing anything especially new with the basic story, he did take his scientific imagination much farther than anyone else had done at the time. And the story is very compelling. Admittedly it isn’t about the human characters or any world-Building. These are absent. It is all about building the creature. Recommended.
Videos
We have the story in these editions:
Menace of the Monster, edited by Mike Ashley, trade paperback, British Library, 2019-09-12
Transfinite: The Essential A. E. Van Vogt, hardcover, NESFA Press, 2003-04-00
All of the stories in the Space Beagle series:
M-33 in Andromeda
War of Nerves
Black Destroyer
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Discord in Scarlet
