A. E. Van Vogt - Recognition

Recognition

In 1946, van Vogt and his first wife, Edna Mayne Hull, were co-Guests of Honor at the fourth World Science Fiction Convention.

In 1980, van Vogt received a "Casper Award" (precursor to the Canadian Aurora Awards) for Lifetime Achievement. In 1995 he was awarded the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA). There was controversy over how late in van Vogt’s lifetime the SFWA left it to bestow their highest award. Writing an obituary of van Vogt, Robert J. Sawyer, a fellow Canadian writer of science fiction remarked:

There was no doubt that van Vogt should have received this honor much earlier — the injustice of him being overlooked, at least in part because of damnable SFWA politics, had so incensed Harlan Ellison, a man with an impeccable moral compass, that he'd lobbied hard on the Sci-Fi Channel and elsewhere on van Vogt's behalf.

It is generally held that the “damnable SFWA politics” relates to Damon Knight, the founder of the SFWA, who abhorred van Vogt’s style and politics and thoroughly demolished his literary reputation in the 1950s.

Harlan Ellison writing in 1999 the introduction to Futures Past: The Best Short Fiction of A.E. van Vogt was more explicit:

…at least I was able to make enough noise to get Van the Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Award, which was presented to him in full ceremony during one of the last moments when he was cogent and clearheaded enough to understand that finally, at last, dragged kicking and screaming to honor him, the generation that learned from what he did and what he had created had, at last, 'fessed up to his importance.

…were the same ones who assured me that Van would never get the Grand Master until Damon Knight had gotten it first, because Damon had loathed Van's work and had, in fact written the essay that ridiculed Van and held him up to opprobrium for decades thereafter, and Damon having founded SFWA it would be an affront to him if Van got it first. Well, I don't know if that's true or not, though it is was common coin in the field for years; but Damon got the Grand Master award in 1994. And Van got it in 1995. As they say during sweeps week on television: coincidence or conspiracy?

In 1996, van Vogt was recognized on two occasions: the World Science Fiction Convention presented him with a Special Award for six decades of golden age science fiction, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame included him among its initial four inductees.

The works of van Vogt were translated into French by the surrealist Boris Vian (The World of Null-A as Le Monde des Å in 1958), and van Vogt’s works were “viewed as great literature of the surrealist school”.