Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Startling Stories November 1939

Continuing our tribute to Jack Williamson (1908-2006), the Magazine of the Week is the November 1939 issue of Startling Stories, with cover story "The Fortress of Utopia" by Williamson, a story he remembered fondly in a
1999 Interzone interview.

I thought this magazine would be a fitting one to honor Jack Williamson, not only because I love the cover's science fictional variation on the story of Noah's Ark (even if it is not quite so garish a cover as last week's), but because the magazine contains a profile of Jack Williamson in which he boasts of recently passing one million words published in his career. There is no telling how many millions more words he wrote between then and his most recent novel, The Stonehenge Gate (2005).

From 1928 on, Jack Williamson was one of the regulars of the science fiction pulps until the market shifted to paperbacks. It is remarkable that he was then able to reinvent himself as a more sophisticated writer and continue his career for another half-century. Next week we will honor another mainstay of the science fiction pulps who recently passed away, a writer who was not inclined to make that transition after the pulp magazines disappeared and had written only sparingly since the 1950's.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: The Green Girl by Jack Williamson

The Book of the Week is The Green Girl by Jack Williamson, who passed away Friday at the age of 98.

Jack Williamson made a great many contributions to the world of science fiction and fantasy, including such classics as Darker Than You Think and The Humanoids. He coined the term "terraforming" and wrote the first stories involving the modern concepts of androids and anti-matter (which he called "contraterrene" or "C-T" matter). But Williamson will probably forever be best remembered for the incredible longevity of his career. Jack Williamson sold his first story in 1928 and was an established author with dozens of published works to his credit before Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein even made their first sales. (Isaac Asimov was thrilled to receive a congratulatory post card from Williamson after Asimov's first story was published.) Yet he continued to write impressive and important fiction into the 21st Century, publishing works in nine different decades. He won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novella for his story "The Ultimate Earth," published in 2000, 72 years after his first story.

Williamson held a PhD in English literature from the University of Colorado and taught full-time at Eastern New Mexico University from 1960 to 1977. After that, he taught part-time and organized the Jack Williamson Lectureship Series, an annual program inspiring a new generation of writers since 1977. Jack Williamson was the second person ever named "Grand Master" by the Science Fiction Writers of America (Heinlein was the first). He was also named Grand Master by the World Horror Society, received the World Fantasy Award for life achievement, and has been inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

As you can see from the Book of the Week, Avon Fantasy Novel #2 printed in 1950, Jack Williamson was one of the authors who helped science fiction and fantasy break into the new paperback fiction market. He was already very familiar to SF readers at the time thanks to his pulp fiction, an example of which we will see next week.