Jack Williamson might be the longest working Pulp SF writer in history, writing from 1928 (“The Metal Man”, Amazing Stories, December 1928) to The Stonehenge Gate (in Analog, January-April 2005). Nine decades of story-telling from the Pulps to comic strips, to a career as an academic and finally his Grand Master years when he continued to produce relevant and exciting novels. Like Edmond Hamilton, his friend, Jack wanted to be a writer who made a living writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. He didn’t want to write Westerns to pay the bills. (Jack grew up on farms in New Mexico and was better qualified to write Westerns than most.) Like Murray Leinster and many other Science Fiction writers, Jack would have liked to have had a career in Science but wrote fiction instead.
The Early Jack Williamson, a collection from 1978, largely defines the first phase of Williamson’s career, December 1928 to December 1933. The year 1934 begins the second stage of Jack’s career, based on the publication of his first famous novel, The Legion of Space. The five years before that serial in Astounding Stories, were largely the Hugo Gernsback years for Jack, though he also sold to all the other editors as well. These early days were also the A. Merritt imitating years, something he begins to move away even before 1934.
His love of all things Merritt led him to write the master of fantasy. He wrote a fan letter that began a collaboration called The Purple Mountain:
Somehow, I persuaded A. Merritt to let me collaborate with him on a serial for Argosy, which was then one of the top adventure pulps, paying five or six cents a word. Merritt was still my idol, and I vividly recall my elation over his letters of advice and comment. The plot for our planned novel was my own and perhaps a bit wild. Our explorers, somewhere in the deserts of Asia, were to discover an enormous crystal mass that had developed a mind and will of its own. At school that fall, I spent the four-day Thanksgiving recess writing 20,000 words of the story, The Purple Mountain.
The collaboration remains an unwritten tale:
Merritt never returned the manuscript, and I suppose it no longer exists. His comment was short and not very committal. Then the associate editor of the American Weekly, the Sunday supplement for the Hearst newspaper chain, he explained that he had little time for fiction. That outcome isn’t very surprising, when I look back at it now. I had neither seen our Asian setting nor even read much about it. The human characters were so vague I can’t recall them. The writing must have showed my driving urgency. Clearly I had been trying too hard to lean on Merritt.
Despite this rejection, Williamson went on to write many Merritt-esque pieces including Golden Blood for Weird Tales and “The Green Girl” for Amazing Stories. These stories are filled with certain elements garnered from Merritt’s novels like The Moon Pool (1919), The Face in the Abyss (1931), The Dwellers in the Mirage (1932) as well as stories like “The People of the Pit” (1918). Merritt like to set his stories in remote places, often the Arctic or Antarctic, with a strange survival who is benevolent but in conflict with an ancient evil. Jack manages to use these elements again and again without feeling like he is repeating himself.
1927
“Letter” (Amazing Stories, October 1927) was Jack’s first fan letter. He applauds H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds then gives the thumbs down for “The Ultra-Elixir of Life” then he suggests a coated frontispiece to make the magazine more attractive. Hugo poo-poos the idea as too expensive.
1928
“Scientifiction, Searchlight of Science” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1928) is Jack’s prize-winning guest editorial for which he received $50. His main idea is that Science Fiction should create images of what is possible in the future.
“Letter: Some Constructive Criticism” (Amazing Stories, October 1928) begins with Jack pointing out the poor math of the idea of “a fourth dimension”, then he goes on to give his support for Frank R. Paul as artist, applauds the SF club constitution and finishes with ideas for future writing contests.
“The Metal Man” (Amazing Stories, December 1928) has an aviator fly into a weird area dominated by an alien creature. The result of this exposure turns his body into metal. For more on this story, go here.
1929
Miles J. Breuer
In 1929, Jack’s involvement with the American Interplanetary Society lead to collaborating with Dr. Miles J. Breuer M. D. (1883-1945) from Lincoln, Nebraska. Breuer wrote Science Fiction in his spare time. Jack admired Breuer’s “competent workmanship” and asked to be taken on as a kind of apprentice. Twenty-three years older than Williamson, Breuer offered the young writer someone with whom to refine his writing. The pair split all moneys earned fifty-fifty. Jack described their writing process:
We did a short story together, then a novel. After we had discussed ideas in an exchange of letters, I did the writing. He revised and criticized. This work with him, I think, was a good antidote to the overblown romanticism of Merritt. He insisted on a clear sense of reality and strong thematic values, and he taught me to curb my tendencies toward wild melodrama and purple adjectives.
“The Girl From Mars” (Stellar Science Fiction Series, 1929) with Miles J. Breuer
“Letter: The Amazing Work of Wells and Verne” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Winter 1929) has Jack discuss how these two giants of SF predicted future technology like airplanes and poison gas.
“Letter: A Reader Who Wants Short Stories” (Amazing Stories, June 1929) has Jack championing shorter works. He calls Merritt’s The Moon Pool the longest and best thing he has read of novel length.
“What Science Fiction Means to Me (Tremendous Contribution to Civilization)”(Science Wonder Stories, June 1929) wins Williamson an Honorable Mention (no cash). Jack repeats what he said in “Searchlight” and plugs space travel.
“The Alien Intelligence” (Science Wonder Stories, July August 1929) was reprinted in Captain Future Spring Summer Fall 1942 and Wonder Story Annual, 1951
“The Second Shell” (Air Wonder Stories, November 1929)
1930
“Letter: Race Memory Has No Record of Death” (prize winner) (Science Wonder Stories, January 1930) received third prize ($5.00) for this letter. He points out two errors in “Into the Subconscious”.
The Green Girl (Amazing Stories, March April 1930) For more on Plant Monsters in Amazing, go here.
“Letter: More Preferences” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930) was Jack’s first letter to someone other than Hugo Gernsback. He congratulates Harry Bates on the second issue, liking stories by Harl Vincent and S. P. Meek. He didn’t care for Hugh B. Cave’s “The Corpse on the Grating”. He suggests getting the kinds of stories that Merritt, Service, Taine, E. E. “Doc” Smith and H. G. Wells wrote. For more on early Astounding writers, go here.
“The Cosmic Express” (Amazing Stories, November 1930)
1931
“The Prince of Space” (Amazing Stories, January 1931)
“The Meteor Girl” (Astounding Stories, March 1931)
“The Lake of Light” (Astounding Stories, April 1931)
“Through the Purple Cloud” (Wonder Stories, May 1931)
” Letter: The Earth’s Tail” (Wonder Stories, June 1931) has Jack make a short scientific suggestion to W. E. Wilson.
“The Doom From Planet 4” (Astounding Stories, July 1931) For more on this story, go here.
“Twelve Hours to Live” (Wonder Stories, August 1931) For more on Hugo’s plant monsters, go here.
“The Stone From the Green Star” (Amazing Stories, October November 1931)
The Birth of a New Republic (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Winter 1931) with Miles J. Breuer
1932
“Wolves of Darkness” (Strange Tales, January 1932) is a brilliant take on werewolves with an Sf angle.
“The Moon Era” (Wonder Stories, February 1932) For more on this story, go here.
“The Pygmy Planet” (Astounding Stories, February 1932)
“Red Slag of Mars” (Wonder Stories Quarterly, Spring 1932) with Laurence Schwartzman. For more on Hugo Gernsback’s Interplanetary Story Contests, go here.
“Letter” (Amazing Stories, June 1932) is a writer’s letter, not a fan letter. He responds to criticism of his “The Stone from a Green Star”. He backs up his ideas by mentioning scientists who have worked with rejuvenation of cells.
“Letter” (Weird Tales, July 1932) was his first letter to Farnsworth Wright. He gives a thumbs up for David H. Keller’s “The Last Magician”.
“The Lady of Light” (Amazing Stories, September 1932)
“The Electron Flame” (Wonder Stories Quarterly, Fall 1932)
“The Wand of Doom” (Weird Tales, October 1932) For more on Williamson in Weird Tales, go here. For more on giant spiders in Weird Tales, go here.
“Letter” (Astounding Stories, November 1932) has Jack address the science of his story “The Pygmy Planet”. Again, no longer writing as a fan, he explains about gravitation. He also compares SF to a game in which the writer makes a supposition and then has to prove it to the reader.
1933
“Letter” (Weird Tales, January 1933) Jack gives his appreciation for the art of J. Allen St. John and the writing of Clark Ashton Smith.
“Huge Skull Gazes Weirdly from Ad Building Window” (New Mexico Lobo, January 13, 1933)
“In the Scarlet Star” (Amazing Stories, March 1933)
“Salvage in Space” (Astounding Stories, March 1933)
Golden Blood (Weird Tales, April May June July August September 1933) is a wonderful Merritt-style novel. For more on this novel, go here.
“We Ain’t Beggars” (New Mexico Quarterly, August 1933)
“The Plutonian Terror” (Weird Tales, October 1933) For more on this story, go here.
“Dead Star Station” (Astounding Stories, November 1933)
“Terror Out of Time” (Astounding Stories, December 1933)
“Letter” (Weird Tales, December 1933) Jack champions the art of Margaret Brundage, “The Vampire Master” by his pal, Edmond Hamilton and Robert E. Howard’s “Black Colossus”.
Conclusion
The early Williamson shows a writer actively engaged during this six or so year period, writing letters, reading all the Pulps, championing the works that he feels are good while not afraid to point out what doesn’t please him. His own work begins modestly but grows very quickly to full-blown novels. He collaborated with A. Merritt (unsuccessfully) and Miles J. Breuer (more successfully) but usually worked best on his own.
The Best of Jack Williamson includes “The Metal Man” and “Dead Star Station”. Considering how long Williamson’s career was, this is surprising. It is reasonable to expect his later work would be more impactful (though also more reprinted.) Williamson would go onto create the concept of anti-matter in his Seetee series, to coin the term “terraforming”, to develop the ultimate robots in the brilliant “With Folded Hands”, all actual aspects of his original editorial on how SF shapes the future.
I enjoy all of Jack’s work but there is a special magic in these early works for me. His creative openness is fun for me, as is his Merrittesque plots and characters. For some, this may seem imitative, but Williamson uses them creatively, not slavishly. A story like “The Moon Era” doesn’t feel like a hodgepodge of Wells and Merritt but a fresh, new thing. Williamson’s talent stands out no matter the tale’s inspiration. He had many decades after these early ones to do so much more but it all started here.
