Jack Williamson’s active writing career has extended
over the course of 76 years, beginning with his first
sale in 1928. He quickly became a regular contributor to pulp magazines, sometimes collaborating with
more experienced writers. Some of this early work
was heavily influenced by the lost world novels of A.
Merritt, as in The Green Girl (1930), while others
tended to be early forms of hard science fiction, like
Birth of a New Republic (1931). This novel was a collaboration with Miles J. Breuer and tells the story of
a colony on the moon that gains its independence
from Earth, anticipating classic novels like The
MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS (1966) by Robert A.
HEINLEIN. Dreadful Sleep (1938) was a story of an
alien intelligence sleeping under the ice of Antarctica, a story reminiscent of the work of H. P. LOVECRAFT. Much of Williamson’s fiction from this era is
quite dated by contemporary standards, but a few
individual pieces are still interesting, such as, “The
Moon Era” (1932) and “Non-Stop to Mars” (1939).
Williamson’s most important work from his
early career consists of two separate series. The
first was an open imitation of Edward E. SMITH’s
novels, and consists of The Legion of Space (1934),
The Cometeers (1936), and One Against the Legion
(1939). A short story and another novel, The
Queen of the Legion (1983), were added later, but
are of only marginal interest. The series follows the
adventures of a group of colorful characters as they
travel rather implausibly around the galaxy, saving
Earth from various dangers. Despite the simple
plotting and rather colorless setting, the Legion of
Space series is far more successful in making its
characters come to life than was common in pulp
space opera of that era. A second sequence includes The Legion of Time (1938) and After World’s
End (1939), a surprisingly sophisticated exploration of alternate time lines, although the characters in this instance were less interesting.
By 1940, Williamson had become a much
more accomplished writer. Dome Around America
(1941 magazine appearance as Gateway to Paradise)
is set in a future time when Earth’s ecology has
become so damaged that it cannot sustain human
life, and the remnants of the human race live in
domed cities. He would go on to write much of his
most memorable work during the 1940s, including
the Seetee series: Seetee Ship (1942–43/51) and
Seetee Shock (1949/50), both originally published
under the name of Will Stewart. The series tells
about the discovery of antimatter and its repercussions, and more importantly THE HUMANOIDS
(1949), wherein humans create a race of robots
to protect themselves from their own failings, and
discover that by doing so they have surrendered
their basic freedom. A much later sequel, The
Humanoid Touch (1980), reexamines the original
concept from a fresh perspective.
Williamson was considerably less productive
during the 1950s. Dragon’s Island (1951, also published as The Not-Men) is a moderately interesting
novel of genetic engineering. He also collaborated
with Frederik POHL for a series of three aboveaverage, young adult novels set in a future in
which the oceans are being explored. These are
Undersea Quest (1954), Undersea Fleet (1956), and
Undersea City (1958). His short stories were less
frequent, but much more sophisticated, and included
several very fine efforts including “Guinevere for
Everybody” (1956) and “The Peddler’s Nose”
(1951). A selection of these were collected as The
Trial of Terra (1962), packaged rather awkwardly as
an episodic novel. Most of Williamson’s output
during the 1960s would continue to be collaborations with Frederik Pohl, including the Starchild
trilogy—The Reefs of Space (1964), The Starchild
(1965), and Rogue Star (1969). Bright New Universe
(1967), written alone, has one of Williamson’s
most interesting protagonists, although the story of
his quest to find proof of alien intelligence is less
than enthralling.
The early 1970s saw a sharp increase in the
volume of his writing. The Moon Children (1971)
was a rather pallid story of children developing
psi powers, but the publication of two collections
of his short stories—The Pandora Effect (1969)
and People Machines (1971)—reawakened interest
in his work. Unfortunately, throughout the next
decade, most of Williamson’s new fiction was
disappointing, even his further collaborations with
Frederik Pohl. The exception was Brother to
Demons, Brother to Gods (1979), in which an alien
race attempts to recreate extinct humanity, with
some startling results. It otherwise seemed that he
had lost the vigor and originality that had characterized his earlier work. That perception was underscored by Queen of the Legion, a pale extension
of the original adventures of the Legion of Space.
The 1980s saw Williamson’s career reinvigorated. In Manseed (1982), humans develop cyborgs
to pilot ships around the galaxy and spread
humanity to the stars, but they fail to anticipate
what might happen when their cyborg creations
encounter aliens. Lifeburst (1984) reverses the process, with cyborgs created by aliens who eventually
fall prey to their own servants, who expand
through space and discover the human race. Humanity, on the verge of defeat, forges an alliance
with another civilization in the sequel, Mazeway
(1990). Firechild (1986) pits genetic engineers
against religious fundamentalists and provides a
bitter indictment of those who would use faith as a
tool for personal aggrandizement.
Beachhead (1992) is a traditional story of the
first expedition to Mars, updated to include a more
modern view of that planet’s physical nature. The
expedition runs into a predictable variety of problems, but the story is still thoroughly enjoyable.
Demon Moon (1994) is a planetary romance that
impinges on fantasy at times, although everything
is ultimately rationalized. The Black Sun (1997)
takes human explorers to a world shrouded in ice,
where they stir a dormant intelligence to activity.
A small town declares itself independent of the
U.S. government in The Silicon Dagger (1999),
thanks to the invention of an impenetrable force
field. All life on Earth is destroyed by a rogue meteor, but a few humans survive on the Moon,
where they use cloning to reproduce themselves in
a long-term project to reclaim the world in Terraforming Earth (2001).
Many of Williamson’s early stories are collected in The Early Williamson (1975). Other examples of his work can be found in The Best of Jack
Williamson (1978), The Alien Intelligence (1980),
Into the Eighth Decade (1990), The Metal Man
(1999), Spider Island (2002), and Dragon’s Island
and Other Stories (2002). He began his career by
imitating writers whose work he admired and has
since lived to see other writers inspired by some of
his own stories. The Humanoids is unquestionably
his best known novel, a gentle but still chilling
variation of the Frankenstein story. His continued
vigor is demonstrated by the fact that he won both
the Hugo and Nebula Awards for his novella, “The
Ultimate Earth” (2000). Of his other recent stories, “The Engines of Creation” (1999) and “Black
Hole Station” (2004) are also outstanding.