Two classic Van Vogt works, The Weapon Makers and The Weapon Shops of Isher form the complete story of Robert Hedrock and the Empire of Isher. They are about revolution through time travel, the right to bear arms, the end of the universe and the beginning of the next, and several other things per chapter. “Nobody, possibly with the exception of the Bester of The Stars My Destination, ever came close to matching Van Vogt for headlong, breakneck pacing, or for the electric, crackling paranoid tension with which he was capable of suffusing his work”, says Gardner Dozois