<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

John Stewart Williamson (April 29, 1908 – November 10, 2006), Now the dean of science fiction, Jack Williamson has been publishing since fiction since Hugo Gernsback printed his first story for Amazing Stories in 1928. Early on in his career Williamson was known for the highly visual quality of his writing and the large number of cover illustrations given over to his work by the pulp magazines of the day. He was a subtle innovator, being among the first to develop sympathetic, non-humanoid aliens. Isaac Asimov singled out Williamson's "The Moon Era" (from a 1932 issue of Wonder Stories) in his anthology Before the Golden Age (1974) as the first story to portray such an extraterrestrial.

In the mid-1930's Williamson produced The Legion of Space (1934), a space opera of the sort created by Edward E. Smith, but with more rounded -- if pulpy -- characters than Doc Smith could muster. At the very beginning of John Campbell's days as editor of Astounding in 1938, Williamson wrote a transitional work, The Legion of Time, that was a grand adventure in time travel but with stronger characterization than had been the norm in the heyday of Hugo Gernsback 10 years earlier.

The first of Williamson's mature works was Darker Than You Think (which appeared in Astounding's short-lived companion magazine, Unknown Worlds, in 1940, and was published in book form in 1948). This is a dark science fantasy based on the conceit that witchcraft was a genetic mutation nearly eliminated from mankind before the dawn of history. As the main character learns to his chagrin, he carries the gene. Compelling and highly visual, it remains a mystery why it has never been adapted for film.

Perhaps Williamson's greatest novel is The Humanoids (which appeared in Astounding in 1947-48 and was revised for book publication in 1949). This is a novel of paranoia about the ultimate results of automation. Should mankind give up its individuality in order to live in a controlled environment in which there would no longer be any conflict? Williamson's answer is a disturbing "no."

During the 1950's and '60's, a great deal of Williamson's work was in collaboration with others, notably Frederik Pohl; their novel The Reefs of Space (1964) and its sequels provided an updated kind of space opera long after the form seemed moribund. Of Williamson's later works, we would note that Manseed (1983) is particularly compelling.

Williamson took a Ph.D. in English, and his dissertation, H. G. Wells: Critic of Progress (1973), is worth reading as well.