Editing A. E. van Vogt (section)

==Early life==
Alfred Vogt (both "Elton" and "van" were added much later) was born on April 26, 1912, on his grandparents' farm in Edenburg, Manitoba, a tiny (and now defunct) [[Russian Mennonite]] community east of [[Gretna, Manitoba]], Canada, in the Mennonite [[West Reserve]].  He was the third of six children born to Heinrich "Henry" Vogt and Aganetha "Agnes" Vogt (née Buhr), both of whom were born in Manitoba and grew up in heavily immigrant communities.  Until he was four, van Vogt spoke only [[Plautdietsch]] at home.<ref name=panshin>Panshin, Alexei [http://www.panshin.com/articles/vanvogt/vanvogt1.html "Man Beyond Man. The Early Stories of A. E. van Vogt" (page 1)]. Retrieved August 29, 2010.</ref>

For the first dozen or so years of his life, van Vogt's father, Henry Vogt, a lawyer, moved his family several times within central Canada, moving to [[Neville, Saskatchewan]]; [[Morden, Manitoba]]; and finally [[Winnipeg]], Manitoba.  Alfred Vogt found these moves difficult, later remarking:

{{blockquote|Childhood was a terrible period for me. I was like a ship without anchor being swept along through darkness in a storm. Again and again I sought shelter, only to be forced out of it by something new.<ref name=panshin/>}}

By the 1920s, living in Winnipeg, father Henry worked as an agent for a steamship company, but the stock market crash of 1929 proved financially disastrous, and the family could not afford to send Alfred to college.  During his teen years, Alfred worked as a farmhand and a truck driver, and by the age of 19, he was working in [[Ottawa]] for the Canadian Census Bureau.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

In "the dark days of '31 and '32," van Vogt took a correspondence course in writing from the Palmer Institute of Authorship. He sold his first story in fall 1932.<ref>"Palmer Graduate Now Leading Author of Science Fiction," Palmer ad, ''[[The Author & Journalist]]'', October 1949, p. 19.</ref> His early published works were stories in the [[True Confessions (magazine)|true confession]] style of magazines such as ''[[True Story (magazine)|True Story]]''.  Most of these stories were published anonymously, with the first-person narratives allegedly being written by people (often women) in extraordinary, emotional, and life-changing circumstances.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

After a year in Ottawa, he moved back to Winnipeg, where he sold newspaper advertising space and continued to write.  While continuing to pen melodramatic "true confessions" stories through 1937, he also began writing short radio dramas for local radio station CKY, as well as conducting interviews published in trade magazines.  He added the middle name "Elton" at some point in the mid-1930s, and at least one confessional story (1937's "To Be His Keeper") was sold to the ''[[Toronto Star]]'', who misspelled his name "Alfred Alton Bogt" in the byline.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.icshi.net/sevagram/stories/keeper.php#top|title=To Be His Keeper by A. E. van Vogt – Sevagram|website=www.icshi.net}}</ref>  Shortly thereafter, he added the "van" to his surname, and from that point forward he used the name "A. E. van Vogt" both personally and professionally.