Review by Marian Powell   —   May 1, 2002

"His mother's hand felt cold, clutching his. Her fear as they walked hurriedly along the street was a quiet, swift pulsation that throbbed from her mind to his."

Jommy's mother is afraid because she knows that she and her son are trapped and going to be killed. They are slans, a mutation that is hated and feared by the human race. To be a slan is to be killed on sight. Jommy's mother sacrifices herself to save her son. Nine year old Jommy flees, accompanied only by his mother's final, dying command, "Live for one thing only: to make it possible for slans to live normal lives."

All this happens in the opening two pages of Slan. The rest is Jommy's story as he flees, finds a safe place and grows to manhood, seeking not vengeance, but answers. Why do humans hate the slans? The answers Jommy hears are deeply disturbing to him, accusing slans of hideous crimes against humanity at some point in the dim and distant past. Jommy has only one weapon within himself -- his memory of his mother and father. They were both good people. Since Jommy, like all slans, can read minds, he knew his parents in a way no human child could.

Slan was immediately popular when it first appeared as a magazine serial in 1940. The superman theme was attractive back then. Slans could not only read minds; they were geniuses and possessed superstrength as well. So slans became so popular that there was even a slogan "Fans are Slans" and a commune named The Slan Shack lasted several years.*

However, there are much deeper themes present here. Obviously, this is a novel about racism carried to an extreme. Today, we would use terms like ethnic cleansing. The slans are to be destroyed simply because they exist. Humanity can't deal with their strangeness. Humanity wants them all to die. We don't have to look very far in history or in recent headlines to see the same story played out over and over.

The other theme is one you don't normally see in science fiction. The novel illustrates how important a child's parents are. By the age of nine, both of Jommy's parents have been murdered. He grows up on his own, yet guided always by his memories. His parents gave him a mission, a purpose in life, to find and help other slans by finding and utilizing an invention his father had been working on when he died. Most important of all though, they gave him a sense of self, an awareness of himself as a good person. His parents were good people. Therefore he is a good person. And, most important, therefore the stories told about slans have to be lies made up by vengeful humans.

In recent years, psychology has begun to pay attention to what it calls "the resilient child," the child who seems able to survive anything. For years psychology had focused exclusively on all the things that can go wrong in child-rearing. Now it's looking at the other side of the picture -- the child who survives a horrible childhood and comes out fine. Slan suggests one answer, the memory of a good parent and a sense of purpose in life.

Does Slan the novel have flaws? Yes, definitely. The fact that it was originally written in 1940 shows, sometimes painfully. It was written in the pulp magazine style. Ironically, it is too short. It's less than 200 pages and it would benefit from more expansion but 200 pages or less was the length of novels back then. Looking at the bloated 700 pagers that are common today, one wishes a happy medium could be found.

Slan is good. It's not great but it's well-worth reading, first because it's a fast-moving action packed story and then because underneath the action there is thought. One is left pondering how to make family ties stronger and how to avoid the fear of the other that leads to racism. If the world survives its current crises, which themselves are all based on some form of racism, religionism or nationalism, then Slan points to the task for the future. To find a way to embrace that which is strange and alien instead of wishing to destroy it.

* My source of information on these details is A.E. Van Vogt: Science Fantasy's Icon by H. L. Drake, published at Booklocker.com in 2001.