John DeChancie and Lydia van Vogt
On September 29, 2011, John paid a visit to the home of Lydia van Vogt, widow of famed SF writer A. E. van Vogt. High in the Hollywood Hills, the spacious house is full of mementos of the writer’s career, including the inlaid desk where “Van” wrote Slan, “Black Destroyer,” and other science fiction classics. Lydia is a wonderfully friendly woman with an amazing life story. During World War II she lived next door to Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun; after the war she was a translator for General Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was the famous Allied military chief who made it possible for Lydia to emigrate to the US, where she eventually met and married A. E. van Vogt.
John and two other writers had an enjoyable tea with Lydia, stuffing themselves with hors-d’oevres and feasting on Lydia’s stories of Van and Lydia’s own amazing life. A. E. van Vogt seeded the SF field with ideas still being mined by Hollywood today. Many of the ideas in media “sci-fi,” including the Alien movies and TV’s Star Trek, derived from van Vogt’s body of work. Lydia is still receiving revenue from Van’s literary estate. Paramount just renewed its option on The Voyage of the Space Beagle, the classic novel of space exploration that served as a template for many science fiction adventure stories coming after.
