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I. Children of Tomorrow

Last Look at Slan

Last time we looked briefly at the 1940 serialized novel “Slan” by A.E. van Vogt (later published as a book in 1946), an instant hit at the time, one it’s very hard to imagine either Stan Lee or Jack Kirby not reading, even if only to take the pulse of the moment with their target audiences. More likely, they read it for fun, because it would have been a much easier pleasure during the Golden Age of sf.

At the time, it was the most popular introduction to bookish American youths of the idea of the pariah elite, both benevolent and malevolent—think X-Men versus the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the way each reacts to a world that fears and hates them. In fact, this twofold analogy between Slan and Marvel’s X-Men is the clearest relationship between the two fictions. Beyond that, their similarities start to break down; slans are all telepaths and have superhuman physical traits; obviously, these standard powers are diversified among the mutants of Marvel. For the wider sf community, mutants were a trope for the hyper-intelligent; almost all of these fictional metahumans were superpowered by ultra-brain smarts and psi powers.

Slan became so popular among Golden Age sf readership that it whipped up an obvious catchphrase to describe itself: “Fans are slans.” Feel the incel vibes yet? Hounded and ostracized for their native genius and far-out imaginations, these early fans—at a time when indeed sf was not cool enough for school—were meant to identify with Vogt’s pariah elite, persecuted because of their unappreciated giftedness. So before we even get to the X-Men, we have here the early (Steve Ditko side of) Peter Parker—the most feverish incel of Marvel’s early Silver Age. [Read more…] about Science Fiction & The X-Men, Part 2: The Golden Age Context for the Original X-Men