Slan & Slan Hunter

by Kevin J. Anderson and A.E. van Vogt

Book Overview

Omnibus - contains the original novel (from 1940) by SF Grand Master van Vogt, and a modern-day sequel by Kevin J. Anderson. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0739484915
• ISBN13: 9780739484913
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Science Fiction Book Club
• Length: 373 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Holding Back the Tide

Slan & Slan Hunter (2007) is an omnibus edition of Slan SF novels, including Slan and Slan Hunter. Slans are a mutation of humanity that have high intelligence and telepathic capabilities. Their popular name came from Samuel Lann, the man who discovered their abilities. The most distinctive difference from humanity is the golden tendrils growing from their scalp, but they also have internal dissimilarities, including a modified heart. In Slan (1951), Jommy Cross is the son of Peter and Patricia Cross. His father had been killed by a mob of humans about four years before. Since Jommy is charged with retrieving his father's papers from the catacombs when he reaches fifteen, his mother is taking him into Centropolis to show Jommy a secret entrance into the tunnels. Unluckily, the humans have noticed the pair and suspect that they are slans. The secret police are closing in, although Jommy is not mature enough to detect their presence until they are quite close. His mother shoves him between two other people and tells him to run. Jommy climbs onto the rear bumper of a car that is soon moving swiftly down the street. Jommy tunes in to the thoughts of the men within the car. He has no difficulty reading the thoughts of the driver, but the passenger only shows the upper level of his thoughts. Soon Jommy realizes that the passenger is John Petty, chief of the secret police. Moreover, the radio is announcing his flight from the area where his mother has just been killed. John Petty is realizing that his car is probably the one mentioned in the radio report. The car is traveling too fast for Jommy to jump off and survive. Yet Petty is having the driver slow down and stop to check the rear bumper. As soon as the car has slowed enough to jump, Jommy is off the bumper and fleeing down a poorly lit alleyway. But the driver gets one good shot at him and doesn't miss. Jommy wonders at the lassitude of his body, which is usually not tired by any effort. He is feeling woozy, but he pulls himself over a pile of boxes and inside a hole in the wall. He finds that the irritating objects under him are shards from the wall and replaces them, using mud as mortar to hold them in place. While he is preparing his bolthole, he discovers that an evil mind is also thinking of the hiding place. Later, after the pursuers have left the area, he crawls out and is snatched by the owner of the evil thoughts. She puts him into her wagon under a smelly cover and smuggles him out of the neighborhood. This tale also relates the experiences of Kathleen Layton, a slan female who is a couple of years older than Jommy. Kathleen is living in the palace designed and built by true slans before humans drove them into hiding. She is the ward of Kier Gray, leader of all humans on Earth. This novel is one of the early works by the author. It was also one of the first novels published after the wartime constraints. It is considered a classic Science Fiction novel.