Supermind
First edition (Cover artist Vincent Di Fate)
AuthorA. E. van Vogt
Cover artistVincent Di Fate
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
PublisherDAW Books
Publication date
January 1977
Media typePrint (Paperback)
Pages176
ISBN0-87997-275-0
OCLC2886411

Supermind is a 1977 science fiction novel by A. E. van Vogt, published by DAW. Like most of van Vogt's book-length works, it is a fix-up, comprising several shorter pieces written over a period of more than twenty-five years:

Despite sharing authorship of the last story (which was also collected in 1971's More Than Superhuman), Schmitz was not credited for the overall novel.


Setting

The first and second stories are essentially psychological thrillers based on van Vogt's frequent theme of highly advanced cognition. No date is provided, but Asylum is set about a hundred years after the discovery of practical space travel, with colonies dotting the Solar System and the transit time from Earth to the Jovian moons being about a month. Unbeknownst to humanity, there exists a vast galactic civilization, whose inhabitants are indistinguishable from humans and which had in fact colonized Earth seven thousand years ago. This civilization is divided into castes based on cognitive capacity; the Galactic Observer stationed in the Solar System and his daughter are of the "Klugg" caste, with an average IQ of 200-250, which is by Galactic standards considered menial. (The word - meaning "clever" in German - was presumably chosen ironically by van Vogt, a native speaker of Plautdietsch.)

Other Galactic castes include the Lennel, Medder, and Hulak; at the top of the pyramid are the Great Galactics, immensely powerful beings with IQs in excess of 1200. In "Asylum," higher cognition grants advanced but non-paranormal capabilities such as extremely rapid reflexes, lie detection, multicameralism, and the ability to control lesser minds through non-verbal hypnotic suggestion; in the follow-up stories, explicitly psionic powers such as teleportation. Intelligence is apparently a sharp social differentiator in Galactic society; the Observer is noted to be psychologically tortured by his knowledge of his own relative inferiority, and he and his daughter both consider the term "Klugg" a slur.

The third story, "Research Alpha," is relatively unattached from the first two, sharing (in its initial magazine version) no characters in common and being somewhat inconsistent with regard to the setting; it makes no reference to space travel, and whereas crime is noted to have been extirpated on Earth in "Asylum," there are still thousands of murders annually on the Earth of "Research Alpha". The cognition scale used in the story is that of the Galactics, differing markedly from the IQ scale used in the first two stories.

Plot

The book's three distinct sections correspond to the three constituting stories. In the first, based on 1942's "Asylum," two members of the Dreegh tribe arrive in the Solar System. The Dreegh are essentially vampires–the last remnants of a group of galactic humans whose physiology had been changed after they were accidentally irradiated by an abnormal sun a million years earlier, making them immortal but requiring regular infusion of blood and "bio-electric energy" to survive. Finding Earth undefended, they plan to summon the entire Dreegh tribe to escape with ten thousand years' worth of blood and energy before the Galactics can respond. The Dreegh are however concerned that the local Galactic Observer may interfere with their plan; they rapidly deduce that professor Ungarn, a famous scientist living on a private asteroid near Europa, is the Observer. Using sophisticated mental powers granted by IQs of roughly 400, they brainwash a reporter named William Leigh and send him to infiltrate the heavily-defended asteroid. At the culmination of his mission, however, Leigh "awakens" to find he is actually one of the Great Galactics, a member of the galaxy's highest cognitive tier, who had gone undercover on Earth for three years to entrap the Dreegh, and whom he uses his powers to easily subdue. However, the "Leigh" cover personality reacts with terror to the realization that it is not real, and is about to be involuntarily reintegrated into a vastly greater intelligence.

The second section, corresponding to 1968's "The Proxy Intelligence," begins only moments after the conclusion of the first. The viewpoint switches to Steve Hanardy, the pilot of a small freighter contracted to supply the Ungarn asteroid from Europa. Unprepossessing and intellectually below-average, Hanardy is suddenly troubled by unnatural insight into the events taking place at the asteroid, including knowledge of the true nature of the Ungarns, the Dreeghs, and Leigh. He is also inexplicably aware that Leigh has neutralized and captured the Dreegh fleet, but that he has now left the immediate area, and that the last nine surviving Dreegh are en route, the first of them impersonating a Galactic emissary. The Dreegh Sween arrives and takes Hanardy and the Ungards hostage, but chooses not to kil them because he is intrigued by Hanardy, whom he believes the Great Galactic is using as a channel for negotiation. Sween reveals that the Great Galactics are not a caste like Kluggs, but an emergent temporary state that can manifest in any individual of any caste, and that he is trying to prevent it from fully manifesting in Hanardy. The remaining eight Dreegh arrive and take the Ungarns and Hanardy to Europa, where they hope to kill them all simultaneously without triggering the emergence. However, a shock brought on by the imminent death of Patricia Ungarn (whom Hanardy secretly loves) awakens him; he stops time, saves her, cures the Dreegh, and teleports their spaceship six thousand light years away.

The third section, corresponding to the 1965 novella "Research Alpha," takes place on Earth at the titular research institute, where Dr. Henry Gloge is secretly and unethically experimenting on unknowing human subjects. Gloge has created "Point Omega Stimulation," a serum that accelerates evolutionary development, causing a test subject to rapidly advance up to a million years in time. He surreptitiously administers this serum to a secretary, Barbara Ellington, and her boyfriend, lab assistant Vince Strather. Ellington experiences a rapid, joyous expansion of her intellect, immediately realizing what Gloge had done to herself and Strather; she also realizes that John Hammond, the director of Reseach Alpha, is not human. Hammond and several other Research Alpha staffers, who are secretly observers from the galactic civilization, become concerned with the experiment and try to detain Ellington, but she is determined to receive the full course of Point Omega treatments and uses her power to evade them. Once she has awakened to the full power of a Great Galactic, she returns to Research Alpha and informs Hammond that she intends to use the serum to uplift the entire human race. Hammond explains that she must not, as her transformation was unique; most humans would be affected differently, and would either perish or change into lesser beings. He demonstrates by letting her see Strather, whose final form is that of a tiny homunculus. Ellington undoes his transformation, erases everyone's memories of the surrounding events, fakes her death, and departs into space, where she has heard the telepathic call of another Great Galactic.

Novel Version

The 1977 fixup made only minor changes to the plot, such as moving forward the origin of the Dreegh tribe from a million years ago to only a thousand; the only significant addition to the narrative is a short passage interpolated into the penultimate chapter of "Research Alpha" In it, Ellington informs Hammond that the Great Galactic she is going to meet in space is in fact "Asylum's" William Leigh, and that they intend to merge into the titular Supermind, which (a single-paragraph coda promises) is to have unequaled powers of perception and an IQ of 10,000.

References

  1. ↑ "Astounding May 1942", https://archive.org/details/Astounding_v29n03_1942-05
  2. ↑ The Proxy Intelligence, Worlds of If archive.org
  3. ↑ Research Alpha, Worlds of If, July 1965, isfdb.org


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