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About the Photo
This is a scan from page 122 of Van's autobiography Reflections of A.E. van Vogt, and comes right after the page with Van's favorite picture of himself. Indeed, both of them considered these two photos to be their "fantasy portraits," "our images [. . .] captured for posterity in a way that we should have wished to be the truth. The right angle, light and shading conceal the flaws; our expressions are idealized."
It's not known when this photo was taken, but a rough guess would be that it was in the 1950s. Van writes that Mayne usually did not wear makeup, but "for this particular photograph, she decided to give a lot of time to shading her face, and her lips and eyes."
I have come across a handful of other pictures of her, but this is indeed the best one, and the only one to be widely circulated.
Biographical Sketch
Edna Mayne Hull was born May 1st, 1905 in Brandon, Manitoba, her parents having recently immigrated to Canada from England. After working as a private secretary for an influential Texan living in Alberta, she moved back to Winnipeg, where she met Van at a writers' group. At that time he had written a plethora of confession stories and radio plays, and she had written articles for magazines. They got married on May 9th, 1939, shortly before his first story "Black Destroyer" was published.
For most of Van's writing career, Hull was her husband's typist. She had secretarial training, and was well versed in the use of the typewriter. Van, on the other hand, typed using his index fingers, poking away at the keyboard. As a result, her typing was much faster and more efficient than his. According to the official version of events, after typing out so many of his stories in the early '40s she began to get ideas for her own and under her husband's tutelage she wrote several stories and one novel, all of which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction and Unknown Worlds. Sadly, the truth seems to be that van Vogt himself wrote these tales under her name.
Hull had a life history of health problems. In 1939 she had an operation that involved the removal of her appendix, and the incision was sewn up incorrectly, a mistake which caused her great pain for many years. Throughout the '40s she was plagued by tumors and cysts, but starting in 1950 she — like Van — became heavily involved in Dianetics. For the next two decades she was overall an exceptionally healthy person, health which she attributed to Dianetics.
One of her closest friends succumbed to cancer in 1970, a malady that she herself contracted shortly thereafter. After several operations, the doctors diagnosed the cancer as terminal. Van however withheld this information from her, fearing that if she was aware of her condition, the cancer would only accelerate. She and her husband took a final trip to her homeland of Canada in 1973 to visit her siblings. It was shortly after this trip that the cancer began to spread, and her condition deteriorated over the next year and a half. She died on January 20th, 1975.
Disputed Authorship
There is clear evidence that A.E. van Vogt penned the stories credited to E. Mayne Hull. For a more detailed explanation of this, please read the section "Edna Mayne Hull" in the Storysource bibliography. Up until recently I firmly believed that she had written these stories and tried to spotlight her as a distinct author in her own right. The previous version of this page, which champions this view, is still available by clicking here and is mainly included for presenting the "official" version of things.
Works Credited to E. Mayne Hull
1 — "The Flight That Failed" (Astounding, December 1942) — sometimes Van is given credit as co-author
aka "Rebirth: Earth"
2 — "The Ultimate Wish" (Unknown Worlds, February 1943)
3 — "Abdication" (Astounding, April 1943) — sometimes Van is given credit as co-author
aka "The Invisibility Gambit"
Arthur Blord, a character that would appear in many of Hull's stories, was first mentioned in "Abdication."
4 — "Competition" (Astounding, June 1943)
The first of the Arthur Blord stories.
5 — "The Wishes We Make" (Unknown Worlds, June 1943)
6 — "The Patient" (Unknown Worlds, October 1943)
7 — "The Debt" (Astounding, December 1943)
The second of the Arthur Blord stories.
8 — "The Wellwisher"
Written for the December 1943 issue of Unknown Worlds but the magazine went out of business before it was published. This story remained unpublished until 1969.
9 — "The Contract" (Astounding, March 1944)
The third of the Arthur Blord stories.
10 — The Winged Man (Astounding, as two parts, in May and June 1944)
In 1966 Van did a re-write of this novel, and Doubleday published it as by both authors.
11 — "Enter the Professor" (Astounding, January 1945)
The fourth of the Arthur Blord stories.
12 — "Bankruptcy Proceedings" (Astounding, August 1946)
The fifth and last of the Arthur Blord stories.
13 — Out of the Unknown (Fantasy Publishing Company, 1948)
aka The Sea Thing and Other Stories
Three stories by Van and three by Hull
14 — Planets for Sale (Frederick Fell, 1954)
Sometimes printed with Van as co-author, and printed a few times with Van as the only author.
A fix-up compilation of the Arthur Blord stories, but not including "Abdication."
15 — "Research Alpha" (Worlds of If, July 1965)
Van Vogt and James H. Schmitz wrote this story, but during the final stages of writing Hull re-wrote a scene. Since this was such a minor contribution — and the change is more of an editorial one, than a collaborative — she is not given credit.
16 — The Proxy Intelligence and Other Mind-Benders (Paperback Library, 1971)
aka The Gryb
This collection of Van's short stories includes two by Hull.
Plot summaries for many of these stories can be read elsewhere on my site.
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