"The House That Stood Still" by A.E. van Vogt
Even if you don't know exactly what you'll get with each new van Vogt title, you usually have a reasonable idea of the direction in which it will be headed. Nineteen of these things seemed like enough, and yet here I am reading my twentieth because I can't resist the guy, even knowing with some certainty that every single van Vogt review from here on will open with a variation on this same paragraph. The bottom line is that whilst there may be an element of repetition involved, in apparent contrast to stories which are often surprisingly difficult to follow or even incoherent, when there's the chance of something at least as magnificent as a despotic caveman leading a group of Nazis who live on the moon, only an idiot would leave it sat forlornly upon the shelf of the store. There are no lunar national socialists here unfortunately, just the internal power struggles of a group of immortals resident in a house built by an alien robot in California around the year 300AD
