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Title: Nexialism vs. far-flung complex aliens
Review: Written in 1959 - wiseguy, hard SF space novel readers don't knock it yet! A.E. van Vogt presents, carries and completes a beautiful presentation about a roaming scientific spaceship visiting worlds strewn acorss the glaxay. His vision of aliens don't have the normal Golden Age hokiness than many books at the time have. The Space Beagle meets four species which are so different from the normal "two-arm, two-leg, slimy" alien. These aliens can control wavelengths or exist as pure energy or can project hallucinations, etc. The way these aliens interact or deceive humans is an excellent read.The crew of the Space Beagle are always on the brink of destruction, if it wasn't for Grosvenor and his mysterious science of Nexialism. Whole none of the crew understand his science, they view him as eccentric and unreliable. It's Grosvenor's struggle to have the others see that his science can work wonders between the other scientists sciences.
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