 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Jack Williamson" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(April 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Jack Williamson | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | John Stewart Williamson (1908-04-29)April 29, 1908 Bisbee,Arizona Territory, U.S. |
| Died | November 10, 2006(2006-11-10) (aged 98) Portales, New Mexico, U.S. |
| Pen name | Will Stewart Nils O. Sonderlund |
| Occupation | Writer, professor of English |
| Period | 1928–2006[1] |
| Genre | Science fiction |
John Stewart Williamson (April 29, 1908 – November 10, 2006) was an Americanscience fiction writer, one of several called the "Dean of Science Fiction".[2] He is also credited with one of the first uses of the termgenetic engineering.[3] Early in his career he sometimes used thepseudonymsWill Stewart andNils O. Sonderlund.[1]
Williamson was born April 29, 1908, inBisbee,Arizona Territory. According to his own account, the first three years of his life were spent on a ranch at the top of theSierra Madre Mountains on the headwaters of theYaqui River inSonora, Mexico. He spent much of the rest of his early childhood in western Texas. In search of better pastures, his family migrated to ruralNew Mexico in a horse-drawncovered wagon in 1915.[4] The farming was difficult there and the family turned to ranching, which they continue to this day nearPep. He served in theU.S. Army Air Corps inWorld War II as aweather forecaster.
As a child Williamson enjoyed storytelling to his brother and two sisters. As a young man, he discovered the magazineAmazing Stories, established in 1926 byHugo Gernsback, after answering an ad for one free issue. He strove to write his own fiction and sold his first story to Gernsback at age 20: "The Metal Man" was published in the December 1928 issue ofAmazing.[1] During the next year Gernsback published three more of his stories in the newpulp magazinesScience Wonder Stories andAir Wonder Stories, and separately published "The Girl from Mars" byMiles J. Breuer and Williamson asScience Fiction Series #1.[1] His work during this early period was heavily influenced byA. Merritt,[5] author ofThe Metal Monster (1920) and other fantasy serials. Noting the Merritt influence,Algis Budrys described "The Metal Man" as "a story full of memorable images".[6]
Early on, Williamson became impressed by the works ofMiles J. Breuer and struck up a correspondence with him. A doctor who wrote science fiction in his spare time, Breuer had a strong talent and turned Williamson away from dreamlike fantasies towards more rigorous plotting and stronger narrative. Under Breuer's tutelage, Williamson sent Breuer outlines and drafts for review.[4] Their first work together was the novelBirth of a New Republic in whichMoon colonies were undergoing something like theAmerican Revolution, a theme later taken up by many other SF writers, particularly inRobert A. Heinlein'sThe Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
Wracked by emotional storms and believing many of his physical ailments to be psychosomatic, Williamson underwent psychiatric evaluation in 1933 at theMenninger Clinic inTopeka, Kansas, in which he began to learn to resolve the conflict between his reason and his emotion.[4] From this period, his stories take on a grittier, more realistic tone.
By the 1930s, he was an established genre author, and the teenagedIsaac Asimov was thrilled to receive a postcard from Williamson, whom he had idolized, which congratulated him on his first published story and offered "welcome to the ranks".[4][7] Williamson remained a regular contributor to thepulp magazines but did not achieve financial success as a writer until many years later.
An unfavorable review of his novelSeetee Ship, which said his writing "ranks only slightly above that of acomic strip adventure", brought Williamson to the attention ofThe New York Sunday News, which needed a science fiction writer for a new comic strip.[8] Williamson wrote the resulting stripBeyond Mars (1952–55), loosely based onSeetee Ship, until the paper dropped all comics.
Beginning 1954 and continuing into the 1990s, Williamson andFrederik Pohl wrote more than a dozen science fiction novels together, including the series Jim Eden, Starchild, and Cuckoo.[1]Williamson continued to write as a nonagenarian and won both theHugo andNebula Awards during the last decade of his life, by far the oldest writer to win those awards.[4][9]
In his later years, he criticized attempts to write "serious" science fiction:[10]
Maybe because of my own background of writing commercial SF for so many years, I have a great deal of respect for good craftsmanship of the sort that commercial writers must develop. The labels you hear so much of—"commercial," "serious writer," "mainstream," "hack," "New Wave," "experimental"—are usually very misleading.
In my own field,Ed Hamilton andHank Kuttner and more recentlyBob Silverberg are all writers who formed a fine command of the SF genre early in their careers and who later on used this to do work that is more consciously "literary" and hence more admired by critics. But certainly the writing they did earlier was deservedly popular among SF fandom, who evidently found these works "serious" enough to merit reading.
I am opposed, however, to literary tricks that tend towards obscurity or artificial difficulty, though I can see arguments for that kind of approach. My own experience as a teacher of writing confirms my sense that new authors with artistic ambitions may find themselves scorning too many of the old forms and patterns simply because they blindly associate them with hack work. The point is that these patterns and structures form the basic vocabulary through which all SF writers must speak. That's one reason I'm not completely sympathetic with contemporary writers like Silverberg andChip Delany andTom Disch, who are clearly aiming to get themselves recognized as "serious" or mainstream authors.
Williamson received hisBachelor of Arts andMaster of Arts degrees inEnglish in the 1950s fromEastern New Mexico University (ENMU) inPortales (near the Texas panhandle), joining the faculty of that university in 1960. He remained affiliated with the school for the rest of his life. In the late 1990s, he established a permanent trust to fund the publication ofEl Portal, ENMU's journal of literature and art.[11] In the 1980s, he made a sizable donation of books and original manuscripts to ENMU's library, which resulted in the formation of a Special Collections department; the library now is home to the Jack Williamson Science Fiction Library, which ENMU's website describes as "one of the top science fiction collections in the world".[12] In addition, Williamson hosted theJack Williamson Lectureship Series, an annual lectureship where Guests of Honor and other noted authors give lectures, read from their works, and participate in lively panel discussions on a variety of topics.[13] The lectureship is still celebrated at ENMU each year. The Jack Williamson Liberal Arts building houses the Languages & Literature, Mathematical Sciences, History, Religion & Social Sciences, and Psychology & Political Science Departments of the university, as well as the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean's Office.
Williamson completed hisPhD in English literature at theUniversity of Colorado inBoulder, focused onH.G. Wells' earlier works, demonstrating that Wells was not the naive optimist that many believed him to be.
Williamson coined the word "terraforming" in a science-fictionstory published inAstounding Science Fiction in 1942.[14]
In 1947, Williamson was the first science fiction writer to incorporate the concept of theion thruster into a published story.[15] This technology was first successfully tested by NASA in 1964, first usedin a space mission in 1998, and has become routine for space probes.
The word "psionics" first appeared in print in Williamson's novellaThe Greatest Invention,[16] published inAstounding magazine in 1951.[17]
Williamson is also credited with one of the first uses of the term "genetic engineering".[18]
TheScience Fiction Writers of America named Williamson its secondGrand Master of Science Fiction after Robert Heinlein, presented 1976.[19][20]
After having been let go from ENMU during the university's financial crisis in 1977, Williamson spent some time concentrating on his writing, but after being named professor emeritus by ENMU, he was coaxed back to co-teach two evening classes, "Creative Writing" and "Fantasy and Science Fiction" (he pioneered the latter at ENMU during his full-time professorship days). Williamson continued to co-teach these two classes into the 21st century. After he made a large donation of original manuscripts and rare books from his personal collection to the ENMU library, a special collections area was created to house these and it was named the "Jack Williamson Special Collection".
In 1994 Williamson received aWorld Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.[19][21]
TheScience Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Williamson in 1996, its inaugural class of two deceased and two living persons.[19][22]
TheHorror Writers Association conferred itsBram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1998[23] and theWorld Horror Convention elected himGrand Master in 2004.[19]
In November 2006, Williamson died at his home inPortales, New Mexico, at age 98.[24] Despite his age, he had made an appearance at the Spring 2006Jack Williamson Lectureship and published a 320-page novel,The Stonehenge Gate, in 2005.
Minor planets5516 Jawilliamson and235281 Jackwilliamson are named in his honor.[25][26]
While attending aGreat Books course, Williamson learned thatHenryk Sienkiewicz had created one of his works by takingThe Three Musketeers ofAlexandre Dumas and pairing them withJohn Falstaff ofWilliam Shakespeare. Williamson took this idea into science fiction withTheLegion of Space.
Desperate for money, he searched for a quick source of income. While most pulps of the time were slow to pay, the recently restartedAstounding was an exception. However, they did not accept novels, so Williamson submitted three short stories and a novelette. Learning that they were also accepting novels for serialization, he sent inThe Legion of Space, which was published as ananthology in six parts. It quickly became a genre favorite, and was quickly collected into ahardcover.
The story takes place in an era when humans have colonized theSolar System but dare not go farther, as the first extra-solar expedition toBarnard's Star failed and the survivors came back as babbling, grotesque, diseased madmen. They spoke of a gigantic planet, populated by ferocious animals and the single city left of the evil "Medusae". The Medusae bear a vague resemblance to jellyfish, but are actually elephant-sized, four-eyed, flying beings with hundreds of tentacles. The Medusae cannot speak and communicate with one another via a microwave code.
The Falstaff character is named Giles Habibula. He was once a criminal, and can open any lock ever made. In his youth he was called Giles The Ghost. Jay Kalam (Commander of The Legion) and Hal Samdu are the names of the other two warriors. In this story, these warriors of the 30th Century battle the Medusae, the alien race from the lone planet of Barnard's Star. The Legion itself is the military and police force of the Solar System after the overthrow of an empire called the Purple Hall that once ruled all humans.
In this novel, renegade Purple pretenders ally themselves with the Medusae as a means to regain their empire. But the Medusae, who are totally unlike humans in all ways, turn on the Purples, seeking to destroy all humans and move to the Solar System, as their own world, far older than Earth, is finally spiraling back into Barnard's Star. One of the Purples, John Ulnar, supports the Legion from the start, and he is the fourth great warrior. His enemy is the Purple pretender Eric Ulnar, who sought the Medusae out in the first place, seeking to become the next Emperor of The Sun.
The Medusae conquered the Moon, set up their bases there, and went on to attempt conquest of the Solar System. The Medusae had for eons used a reddish, artificialgreenhouse gas to keep their dying world from freezing. The Medusae learned from the first human expedition to their world that the gas rots human flesh, and the Medusae use it as a potent chemical weapon, attempting ecological destruction by means of projectiles fired from the Moon. Their vast spaceships also have very effective plasma weapons, very similar to those theRomulans had in a Star Trek episode calledBalance of Terror.
The Legion works also featured a force field called AKKA which can erase from the Universe any matter, of any size, anywhere, even a star or a planet. AKKA was a weapon of mass destruction and the secret of it was entrusted to a series ofwomen. AKKA was used in the past to overthrow the Purple tyranny. It was also used to wipe out most of the Medusae, though they had tried to steal the secret. When they were wiped out, theMoon where they had established their base was erased out of existence. At the end of the story, John Ulnar falls in love with the keeper of AKKA, Aladoree Anthar, and marries her. Aladoree Anthar is described as a young woman with lustrous brown hair and gray eyes, beautiful as agoddess.
Williamson next wroteThe Cometeers which takes place twenty years afterThe Legion of Space in which the same characters battle another alien race, this one of different origin.
In this second tale, they fightThe Cometeers who are an alien race of energy beings controlling a "comet" which is really a giant force field containing a swarm of planets populated by their slaves. Theslave races are of flesh and blood, but none are remotely similar to humans. The Cometeers cannot be destroyed by AKKA, as they are incorporeal from the Universe's point of view and exist for the most part in an alternate reality. The ruling Cometeers feed on their slaves and literally absorb their souls, leaving disgusting, dying hulks in their wake. It is said that they do so, as they were once fleshly entities themselves of various species. Hence, the ruling Cometeers keep other intelligent beings as slaves and "cattle". They fear AKKA, though, as it can erase all their possessions.
They are defeated by the skills of Giles Habibula. Giles broke into a secret chamber guarded by complex locks and force fields that the incorporeal Cometeers could not penetrate. In it the ruler of the Cometeers had kept its own weapon of mass destruction, one that would cause the Cometeers to disintegrate. The ruling Cometeer kept this weapon to enforce its rule over the others of its kind. Once the Cometeers were destroyed, their slaves were ordered by the Legion to take the comet and leave the Solar System, and never return.
Another novel,One Against the Legion, tells of a Purple pretender who sets up a robotic base on a world over seventy light years from Earth, and tries to conquer the Solar System via mattertransporter technology he has stolen. In this storyrobots are outlawed, as they are inDune. The story also features Jay Kalam, lobbying to allow the New Cometeers to leave the Solar System in peace, as many people were demanding that AKKA be used to obliterate the departing swarm of planets once and for all.
In 1983, Williamson published a final Legion novel,The Queen of the Legion. Giles Habibula reappears in this final novel, which is set after the disbanding of the Legion.
An editor suggested that Williamson combine the ideas of contraterrene matter (antimatter) andasteroid mining, which inspired the Seetee (C-T) series of short stories written as Will Stewart.
In 1985, Mr. Williamson received a Hugo Award for his memoir, 'Wonder's Child: My Life in Science Fiction' (Bluejay Books, 1984). His 2001 novella 'The Ultimate Earth' won a Hugo, given by the World Science Fiction Society, and a Nebula Award, given by theScience Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
