1. What is future shock? How might it apply to the plot of Slan?

2. What are the different views scientists have of how natural selection might work? Which of these would be represented in Slan?

3. What is the true history of relations between Homo sapiens, "true" slan, and tendrilless slan?

4. What aspects of Slan suggest that it is part of the Modernist literary movement? What aspects of the novel suggest that it is not?

5. Does Slan pander to any of the baser aspects of adolescent mentality?

6. Slan is a book of ideas. What are the scientific and social ideas it presents? Does it do a good job of presenting them?

7. What are the effects of environment and biology in individual human growth and development in Slan? Which is more important to the events in the novel?

8. Did van Vogt develop his...