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 |  | The Childlike Enthusiasm and Unmatched Imagination of A.E. van Vogt
By Jesco von Puttkamer
special to space.com
posted: 11:22 am ET
28 January 2000
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It is very, very sad to hear that my dear old friend A
A.E. van Vogt died in Los Angeles Wednesday. His friend, NASA program manager and strategic planner Professor Jesco von Puttkamer, composed the following memorial to the legendary science fiction author.
It is very, very sad to hear that my dear old friend A.E. has passed on. He was a true giant in his field, one of those on whose shoulders others later stood.
As a student back in Germany in the '50s, I was the German translator of most of his great books from the Golden Years of SF. I loved him for his sparkling, unmatched imagination and his unique writing style (self-taught from correspondence courses, he once told me), and our later meetings in the U.S. were great moments for me.
One time, he had come to Huntsville, Alabama, to give a speech at the University of Alabama campus there, and I invited him on a tour of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (where I was working as an engineer under Wernher von Braun).
We had a Lunar Rover simulator, and when A.E. sat down and steered the vehicle across the virtual 3-D lunarscape on the display in front of him, I asked him whether this was how he had envisioned such an excursion in his novels. Answer: "This is exactly as it should be!" I was glad the Master had approved.
Van Vogt (center) on the set of Star Trek: The Motion Picture with admirers Gene Roddenberry (right) and Jesco von Puttkamer, 1979.
(from the collection of J. von Puttkamer)
In 1972, I saw to it that he attended the launch of one of our Apollo missions to the moon, Apollo 17, the last one. He stood among the onlookers on the VIP bleachers at the Cape on December 7, watching the thunderous liftoff of that (in his words) "glorious machine" with an engagingly childlike enthusiasm and noted with amazement that all around him thousands of people began to clap.
Later, he wrote me of his thoughts:
"Within seconds, it seemed as if ten-thousand well-wishers of the space program were applauding not only a 'good shoot' but man's venture into his Universe. Standing there, listening to those average Americans clapping so bizarre an event, it was hard to realize that a mere generation ago only a few, hardy science fiction readers could even imagine what has turned out to be the sight of the century."
And I asked myself whether it perhaps takes a science fiction writer like A.E. van Vogt to look behind technology and science, to perceive how it means change and how we respond to it - and then go ahead and express his thoughts in writing in a style that is at once understandable and grippingly stimulating as well as poetic, diverting and entertaining.
Professor von Puttkamer would like younger readers to pick up van Vogt's work "just to see what he was all about."
Funerary gifts may be sent to Callanan Mortuary, 1301 N. Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90027. A memorial service at that location is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Monday, January 31.
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