Vandals of the Void-Jack Vance novel, book review
Vandals of the Void-Jack Vance novel Vandals of the Void is a 213 page novel published in 1953 by The John C. Winston Company. Vance mentions this novel in his autobiography where he informs us that his wife helped a great deal with the writing of it. Vandals of the Void was written as part of a series for younger readers, but adults need not shy away from it. It is a fast paced, easy to read, engaging, space opera type novel that should be of interest to most Vance fans. The protagonist here is a 15 year old, adventurous, precocious boy named Dick Murdock who lives on Venus with his mother but is traveling to the Earth's moon to be with his father who works there as the chief astronomer and is the founder of the "Cosmic Ray Research Institute." En route Dick hears about a legendary monster called a "basilisk" and encounters a space ship that has been ravaged by space pirates. The tale lacks Vance's witty, engaging dialogue, the plot is fairly simpl...