Van Vogt was born on a farm in Edenburg, a Russian Mennonite community east of Gretna, Manitoba, Canada. Until the age of four a dialect of Dutch was spoken in his home. Van Vogt's father, a lawyer, moved his family several times and his son found these moves difficult, remarking in later life:

Childhood was a terrible period for me. I was like a ship without anchor being swept along through darkness in a storm. Again and again I sought shelter, only to be forced out of it by something new.

After starting his writing career by writing for "true confession" style pulp magazines like True Story, van Vogt decided to switch to writing something he enjoyed, science fiction.

Van Vogt's first published SF story, "Black Destroyer" (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1939), was inspired by Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. The story depicted a fierce, carnivorous alien stalking the crew of an exploration spaceship. It was the cover story of the issue of Astounding that is sometimes described as having ushered in the "Golden Age" of science fiction. The story served as the inspiration for a number of science fiction movies.(a) Pringle, David (1990) "The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction", Grafton Books, page 346."This [The voyage of the Space Beagle] is the classic 'bug-eyed monster' novel, the unacknowledged inspiration for the film Alien and scores of similar"(b) Hughes, Aaron "Neglected Masters Book Review" retrieved 2010-09-09"The stories collected in The Voyage of the Space Beagle were perhaps the first to chronicle the adventures of the crew of a large, military-style starship exploring the universe, and doubtless influenced Gene Roddenberry strongly when he created Star Trek.""One of the Space Beagle stories purportedly inspired the movie Alien - the resemblance was great enough that van Vogt brought a lawsuit against the filmmakers, which reportedly settled for a $50,000 payment."(c) Walters, Trent "Oh, the Humanity of A.E. van Vogt's Monsters: Reorienting Critics and Readers to the van Vogt Method" retrieved 2010-09-09"... The Voyage Of The Space Beagle (1950), later inspired the original Star Trek series and the movie Alien."(d) Jonas, Gerald (2000) "A. E. van Vogt, 87, Forceful Science-Fiction Voice", New York Times obituary, 2000-02-04" 'Black Destroyer' has been cited as the inspiration for the movie Alien and its many sequels and imitations"

In 1950 it was combined with "War of Nerves" (1950), "Discord in Scarlet" (1939) and "M33 in Andromeda" (1943) to form the novel ''[[The Voyage of the Space Beagle]]'' (1950).

In 1941, van Vogt decided to become a full-time writer, quitting his job at the Canadian Department of National Defence. Extremely prolific for a few years, van Vogt wrote a large number of short stories. In the 1950s, many of them were retrospectively patched together into novels, or "fixups" as he called them, a term which entered the vocabulary of science fiction criticism. When the original stories were related (e.g. The War against the Rull) this was often successful. When not (e.g. Quest for the Future) the disparate stories thrown together generally made for a less coherent plot.

One of van Vogt's best-known novels of this period is Slan, which was originally serialised in Astounding Science Fiction (September - December 1940). Using what became one of van Vogt's recurring themes, it told the story of a 9-year-old superman living in a world in which his kind are slain by Homo sapiens.

In 1944, van Vogt moved to Hollywood, California, where his writing took on new dimensions after World War II. Van Vogt was always interested in the idea of all-encompassing systems of knowledge (akin to modern meta-systems) -- the characters in his very first story used a system called 'Nexialism' to analyze the alien's behaviour, and he became interested in the General Semantics of Alfred Korzybski.

He subsequently wrote three novels merging these overarching themes, The World of Null-A and The Pawns of Null-A in the late 1940s, and Null-A Three in the early 1980s. Null-A, or non-Aristotelian logic, refers to the capacity for, and practice of, using intuitive, inductive reasoning (compare fuzzy logic), rather than reflexive, or conditioned, deductive reasoning.

Van Vogt was also profoundly affected by revelations of totalitarian police states that emerged after World War II. He wrote a mainstream novel that was set in Communist China, The Violent Man (1962); he said that to research this book he had read 100 books about China. Into this book he incorporated his view of "the violent male type", which he described as a "man who had to be right", a man who "instantly attracts women" and who he said were the men who "run the world".

At the same time, in his fiction, van Vogt was consistently sympathetic to absolute monarchy as a form of government. This was the case, for instance, in the Weapon Shop series, the Mixed Men series and in single stories such as "Heir Apparent", whose protagonist was described as a "benevolent dictator".

Van Vogt systematized his writing method, using scenes of 800 words or so where a new complication was added or something resolved. Several of his stories hinge upon temporal conundra, a favorite theme. He stated that he acquired many of his writing techniques from three books, "Narrative Technique" by Thomas Uzzell, and "The Only Two Ways to Write a Story" plus "Twenty Problems of the Short-Story Writer", both by John Gallishaw.

He said many of his ideas came from dreams; throughout his writing life he arranged to be awakened every 90 minutes during his sleep period so he could write down his dreams.

In the 1950s, van Vogt briefly became involved in L. Ron Hubbard's projects. Van Vogt operated a storefront for Dianetics, the secular precursor to Hubbard's Church of Scientology, in the Los Angeles area for a time, before winding up at odds with Hubbard and his methods. His writing more or less stopped for some years, a period in which he bitterly claimed to have been harassed and intimidated by Hubbard's followers. In this period he was limited to collecting old short stories to form notable fixups like: The Mixed Men (1952), The War Against the Rull (1959), The Beast (1963) and the two novels of the "Linn" cyle, which were inspired (like Asimov's Foundation series) by the fall of the Roman Empire. He resumed writing again in the 1960s, mainly at Frederik Pohl's invitation, while remaining in Hollywood with his second wife, Lydia Bereginsky, who cared for him through his declining years. In this later period, his novels were conceived and written as unitary works.On January 26, 2000, van Vogt died in Los Angeles, USA from Alzheimer's disease.

Critical opinion about the quality of van Vogt's work has been sharply divided.

An early and articulate critic was the noted author Damon Knight. In a chapter-long essay in In Search of Wonder, entitled "Cosmic Jerrybuilder: A. E. van Vogt", Knight famously remarked that van Vogt "is no giant; he is a pygmy who has learned to operate an overgrown typewriter." Knight described The World of Null-A as "one of the worst allegedly-adult science fiction stories ever published." About van Vogt's writing in general, Knight said:

In general van Vogt seems to me to fail consistently as a writer in these elementary ways: 1. His plots do not bear examination. 2. His choice of words and his sentence-structure are fumbling and insensitive. 3. He is unable either to visualize a scene or to make a character seem real.

About Empire of the Atom Knight wrote:

Knight also expressed misgivings about van Vogt's politics, noting that his stories almost invariably present absolute monarchism in a favorable light.

On the other hand, when science fiction author Philip K. Dick was asked which science fiction writers had influenced his work the most, he replied:

Dick also defended van Vogt against Damon Knight’s criticisms:

In a review of Transfinite: The Essential A.E. van Vogt, science fiction writer Paul Di Filippo said:

In The John W. Campbell Letters, Campbell says, "The son-of-a-gun gets hold of you in the first paragraph, ties a knot around you, and keeps it tied in every paragraph thereafterincluding the ultimate last one."

Harlan Ellison (who began reading van Vogt as a teenager wrote, "Van was the first writer to shine light on the restricted ways in which I had been taught to view the universe and the human condition."

Writing in 1984 David Hartwell said:

The literary critic Leslie A. Fiedler said something similar:

Nevertheless, van Vogt still has his critics. For example Darrell Schweitzer writing to the New York Review of Science Fiction in 1999 quoted a passage from the original van Vogt novelet “The Mixed Men”, which he was then reading, and remarked:

In 1946, van Vogt and his first wife, Edna Mayne Hull, were co-Guests of Honor at the fourth World Science Fiction Convention.

In 1980, van Vogt received a "Casper Award" (precursor to the Canadian Aurora Awards) for Lifetime Achievement. In 1995 he was awarded the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA). There was controversy over how late in van Vogt’s lifetime the SFWA left it to bestow their highest award. Writing an obituary of van Vogt a fellow Canadian writer of science fiction remarked:

”There was no doubt that van Vogt should have received this honor much earlier ... the injustice of him being overlooked, at least in part because of damnable SFWA politics, had so incensed Harlan Ellison, a man with an impeccable moral compass, that he'd lobbied hard on the Sci-Fi Channel and elsewhere on van Vogt's behalf.”

It is generally held that the “damnable SFWA politics” relates to Damon Knight, the founder of the SFWA, who abhorred van Vogt’s style and politics and thoroughly demolished his literary reputation in the 1950s.

Harlan Ellison writing in 1999 the introduction to Futures Past: The Best Short Fiction of A.E. van Vogt was more explicit:

" ... at least I was able to make enough noise to get Van the Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Award, which was presented to him in full ceremony during one of the last moments when he was cogent and clearheaded enough to understand that finally, at last, dragged kicking and screaming to honor him, the generation that learned from what he did and what he had created had, at last, 'fessed up to his importance."

” were the same ones who assured me that Van would never get the Grand Master until Damon Knight had gotten it first, because Damon had loathed Van's work and had, in fact written the essay that ridiculed Van and held him up to opprobrium for decades thereafter, and Damon having founded SFWA it would be an affront to him if Van got it first. Well, I don't know if that's true or not, thought is was common coin in the field for years; but Damon got the Grand Master award in 1994. And Van got it in 1995. As they say during sweeps week on television: coincidence or conspiracy?”

In 1996, van Vogt was recognized on two occasions: the World Science Fiction Convention presented him with a Special Award for six decades of golden age science fiction, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame included him among its initial four inductees.

The works of van Vogt were translated into French by the surrealist Boris Vian (The World of Null-A as Le Monde des Å in 1958), and van Vogt’s works were “viewed as great literature of the surrealist school”.

Concerning Theodore Sturgeon's death, van Vogt commented:

Sturgeon had accepted the idea of dying. I thought: 'Well, I presume that when my time comes, it will also happen to me.' Because, we recognize that there is an end to human life. Now, it is my intention to postpone this moment as long as possible. But, I have only modern science to help me and they're not that busy...

Novels

(dates given are for the first publication in book form)

• Slan (1946)
• The Weapon Makers (1947)
• The Book of Ptath (1947)
• The World of Null-A (1948)
• The House That Stood Still (1950)
• The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950)
• The Weapon Shops of Isher (1951)
• The Universe Maker (1953)
• Planets for Sale (1954), with Edna Mayne Hull
• The Players of Null-A (1956), also published as The Pawns of Null-A
• The Mind Cage (1957)
• Empire of the Atom (1957)
• Siege of the Unseen (1959)
• The War against the Rull (1959)
• Earth's Last Fortress (1960), first stand-alone publication, previously titled Recruiting Station or Masters of Time
• The Wizard of Linn (1962)
• The Violent Man (1962), political thriller set in China
• The Beast (1963), also published as Moonbeast
• The Twisted Men (1964)
• Rogue Ship (1965)
• The Winged Man (1966), with Edna Mayne Hull
• The Changeling (1967) novel publication of story first published in 1942 and 1944 in Astounding Stories
• The Silkie (1969)
• Children of Tomorrow (1970)
• Quest for the Future (1970)
• The Battle of Forever (1971)
• The Darkness on Diamondia (1972)
• Future Glitter (1973), also published as Tyranopolis
• The Man with a Thousand Names (1974)
• The Secret Galactics (1974), also published as Earth Factor X
• Supermind (1977)
• The Anarchistic Colossus (1977)
• The Enchanted Village (1979), chapbook
• Renaissance (1979)
• Cosmic Encounter (1979)
• Computerworld (1983), also published as Computer Eye
• Null-A Three (1984)
• To Conquer Kiber (1985)

Collections

• Out of the Unknown (1948), with Edna Mayne Hull
• Masters of Time (1950)
• Away and Beyond (1952)
• The Mixed Men (1952), also published as Mission to the Stars
• Destination: Universe! (1952)
• The Far-Out Worlds of A. E. van Vogt (1956)
• Monsters (1965)
• The Van Vogt Omnibus (1967), omnibus
• The Sea Thing and Other Stories (1970)
• M33 in Andromeda (1971)
• More Than Superhuman (1971)
• The Proxy Intelligence and Other Mind Benders (1971), revised as The Gryb (1976), with Edna Mayne Hull
• The Van Vogt Omnibus 2 (1971), omnibus
• The Book of Van Vogt (1972), also published as Lost: Fifty Suns (1979)
• Far Out Worlds of Van Vogt (1973)
• The Three Eyes of Evil Including Earth's Last Fortress (1973)
• The Best of A. E. van Vogt (1974)
• The Worlds of A. E. van Vogt (1974)
• Pendulum (1978)
• Futures Past: The Best Short Fiction of A.E. Van Vogt (1999)
• Transfinite: The Essential A.E. van Vogt (2002)
• Transgalactic (2006)

Non-fiction

• The Hypnotism Handbook (1956, Griffin Publishing Company, with Charles Edward Cooke)
• The Money Personality (1972, Parker Publishing Company Inc, West Nyack, NY, ISBN 0-13-600676-0)
• Reflections of A. E. Van Vogt: The Autobiography of a Science Fiction Giant (1979, Fictioneer Books Ltd, Lakemont, GA)
• A Report on the Violent Male (1992, Paupers' Press, UK, ISBN 0-946650-40-3)

Notes