Public Opinion Series

Slan by A.E. Van Vogt, 1940, Excerpt

A hundred thousand slans practically took over the world. It was beautiful job of planning, carried out with the utmost boldness. What you have to realize is that men as a mass always play somebody’s game – but not their own. They’re caught in traps from which they cannot escape. They belong to groups; they’re members of organizations; they’re loyal to ideas, individuals, geographical areas. If you can get hold of the institutions they support – there’s the method.

Civilization began to break down. There was an immense increase in insanity. Suicide, murder, crime – the graph of chaos rose to new heights. And, one morning, without knowing quite how it was done, the human race woke up to discover that overnight the enemy had taken control. Working from within, the slans had managed to take over innumerable key organizations. When you learn to understand the rigidity of institutional structures in our society, you’ll realize how helpless human beings were at first.