A.E. van Vogt

Alfred Elton van Vogt was a bestselling science fiction author from Canada who is best known for his bizarre fragmented narrative style. One of the most influential and popular practitioners of the Golden Age of science fiction, his writing was also one of the most complex. A.E. van Vogt was born in 1912 in Manitoba, and grew up in a small Russian Mennonite community. He was the third child of Heinrich and Aganetha Vogt, both of whom were born in Manitoba and spoke Dutch at home. His father was a lawyer and moved the family around several times while the young Vogt was a child. They lived in a variety of places from Neville and Morden before they finally settled down in Winnipeg. Vogt found these moves difficult as he would assert that he felt like a ship without an anchor. Because of the 1930s depression in North America, his family could not afford to take him to college and as a teen he worked as a truck driver and farmhand before he found a job at the Canadian Census Bureau. He would go to the University of Ottawa during this time and graduated in 1928. He began writing in the true confession style in the 1930s while working at the census office, during which he also worked for the Maclean Trade Papers. While doing his confession style writing, he happened on “The Only Two Ways To Write a Short Story” by John W. Gallishaw, which significantly impacted and honed his unique writing style.