Wilson “Bob” Tucker was involved in science fiction fandom and published an amateur magazine
for several years before making his first professional fiction sale. He was fairly productive during
the 1950s but wrote only intermittently after
that; about half of his novels are detective
thrillers. Although he wrote occasional short stories, almost all of his fiction is book length. The
Best of Wilson Tucker (1982) contains all of his
stories worth preserving. Tucker was famous for
using the names of other fans and friends for
characters in his work, and this practice has come
to be known as tuckerization.
Tucker’s first science fiction novel was The
City in the Sea (1951), a minor, sometimes awkward potboiler about a hidden refuge beneath the
ocean where a small group managed to survive a
nuclear war generations in the past, and the problems caused when they reemerge into the recovering surface world. The Long Loud Silence (1952)
was also set in the aftermath of a global holocaust,
but was considerably better constructed—and
rather suggestively graphic for its time, subtly implying that the survivors would need to resort to
cannibalism. In The Time Masters (1953), two immortal aliens have been secretly living among humans, guiding their progress throughout the
generations, one motivated by basically benevolent
principles, the other disposed in the opposite direction. Their shadow war is fought with human puppets who are unaware of the powers behind the
scenes. The sequel, Time Bomb (1955, also published as Tomorrow Plus X), one of the best of his
early novels, is a cleverly constructed story in
which someone in the future is killing selected individuals in the present by sending bombs back
through time to explode at the appropriate time
and place, offering a somewhat unusual problem
for the protagonists. Wild Talent (1954, also published as The Man from Tomorrow) tells the story of
a man with psi powers secretly living among ordinary humans. The scenario is a less melodramatic
variation of The Power (1956) by Frank ROBINSON.
The Lincoln Hunters (1958) also involves time
travel, but Tucker’s writing had become considerably more sophisticated by the late 1950s. This
time scientists from a repressive future society
travel back to the 19th century to record a lost
speech by Abraham Lincoln, but in the process
they initiate changes that cause major alterations
to their home time. Tucker exerted considerable
effort to accurately depict the Civil War setting,
and the contrast between that era and the mildly
dystopian future is quite striking. To the Tombaugh
Station (1960) is a slight but effective story of murder aboard a spaceship.
Tucker concentrated on detective stories during the 1960s. His next science fiction novel, The
Year of the Quiet Sun, another story of time travel,
this time forward, did not appear until 1970. The
protagonist is a black man who finds himself in a
world sharply divided following a racial war, and
his own racial identity causes serious difficulties.
This is generally considered Tucker’s best novel,
and blends a wide mix of historical research, social
commentary, and imagery drawn from other
sources, in this case mostly biblical, into a coherent
whole. Ice and Iron (1974) followed, set in the early
stages of the next ice age. Scientists studying the
advancing glaciers discover the bodies of individuals who have apparently been sent back through
time from the future. Tucker’s last novel was Resurrection Days (1981), in which a contemporary man
is revived in a dystopian future in which only
women have free will. His presence disrupts things
in a predictable but not very convincing fashion.
During the 1950s, Tucker was a reliable writer
whose work was squarely in the mainstream of science fiction, and who wrote in a consistent, clear
prose style but who rarely rose above simple storytelling. The Lincoln Hunters suggested a promising
potential, but his emerging talents did not develop
as they might have. Although The Year of the Quiet
Sun was an even greater step forward, his subsequent novels were of considerably less interest. He
secured a place of honor in the field’s history, but
his relatively small body of science fiction leaves
his future reputation uncertain.