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He was slan.
Human beings had killed his mother. Mankind hated and feared his entire race, regarded them as freaks and artificially created monsters. Mankind had almost exterminated them in the fierce Slan Wars that had left civilization under the thumb of an autocratic world-wide police state.
That much young Jimmy Cross knew. He also knew that -- although he looked almost exactly like everyone he passed on the street -- he was a superior being. And he knew that the slim tentacles half-concealed in his hair were both a source of his superiority and a mark by which men could recognize and track down a hated slan.
Alone and friendless in the world's greatest city, he set out to find his fellow beings and to solve the mystery of his existence.
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Cover design by Edward R. Collins.
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"Fans are Slans," became the catchphrase of early science fiction fandom in the wake of this novel. Like the Slans - telepathic mutants hiding out in a hostile population - science fiction fans considered themselves a haunted special minority, imbued with transcendent and visionary insight, sure to prevail in the fullness of time. Communes were called "Slan shacks" and fans occupied them. In the wake of the atomic bomb and theories of atomic mutation, the premise of SLAN seemed ever more credible.There are two kinds of Slans - those whose tendrils publicize their power to read the minds of ordinary humans and so-called tendrilless Slans whose strange power is concealed (allowing these Slans to hide). The tendrilled Slans were exterminated in a pogrom a while ago; now human society is ruled by the dictator Kier Gray who promises to locate and eliminate the tendrilless Slans. Johnny Cross, a young adolescent, is a secret Slan who in the novel's opening scene is fleeing with his mother, pursued by a human mob. The mob assaults and kills his mother, who dies charging Johnny with the responsibility to confront Kier Gray in his palace and destroy him so that the Slans may live.The novel is the narrative of Johnny's odyssey through the Slan sub-societies and toward his final confrontation with Kier Gray. In Gray's palace lives the young, beautiful Slan, Kathleen Layton,who Gray spared from a mob so that a Slan and her powers could be investigated at close quarters. How Johnny finds his way past Gray's defenses toward that confrontation and what he shockingly learns from that meeting embody the point of the novel and the heart of Van Vogt's novelistic technique.
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February 12, 2021 | Edited by lisaBot | moving edition(s) to primary work |
September 18, 2020 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
May 13, 2019 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
August 20, 2010 | Edited by WorkBot | add editions to new work |
April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |