A. E. van VOGT – The House That Stood Still. Greenberg, hardcover, 1950. Detective Book Magazine, Winter 1952. Beacon 298, paperback, September 1960, as The Mating Cry. Paperback Librar 52-873, paperback, November 1965 (cover art by Jack Gaughan). Carroll & Graf, paperback, January 1993.

   Van Vogt tries a clumsy hand at sex in the midst of a looseness in plot, and the result is predictably poor.

   A massive, imperturbable house, dating from the pre-Spanish days of California, gives its inhabitants eternal life. And naturally the inhabitants command economic power enough to maintain the house in their possession through the years. Crisis comes about when nuclear war of Earth threatens them, and the group splits on the question of strategy.

   There is a flavor of Spanish California in this book that is attractive, but the going of the arbitrary plot is jumpy and is not. There is no involvement withe the mixed-up characters, certainly not enough to bother seeing if the story really does fit together or to spend any time understanding a very poor ending.

   It took a long time to read this one.

Rating: *