ack Williamson's first short story, "The Metal Man," was written 75 years ago. Jack Williamson's final short story—amazingly, like a thing out of science fiction itself—has yet to be written.
I recently traveled to Portales, N.M., for the 27th annual Jack Williamson Lectureship series so that I could join in the celebration of this literary milestone. The friends, fans and family who gathered there were doing more than just looking back on a life well lived. We were also standing in awe of the future, for there is still plenty of new Williamson ahead of us. Jack is hard at work on a new book due to his publisher before the year is out, and he is cooking up further ideas for future stories to write once his 55th novel, The Stonehenge Gate, is done.
I carried along a talisman when I went out west. That's it in the picture with Jack and me: a copy of the December 1928 Amazing Stories held gingerly between us. In a note accompanying Jack's first story, the publisher wrote, "Unless we are very much mistaken, this story will be hailed with delight by every scientifiction fan. We hope Mr. Williamson can be induced to write a number of stories in a similar vein." Hugo Gernsback's predictive powers were never more on target, which is why I was so pleased to have Jack autograph the magazine for me three quarters of a century after he'd first forged "The Metal Man."
In the image above, I'm about half Jack's age, something I'm particularly aware of today, since this issue of Science Fiction Weekly coincidentally goes live on my birthday. Most of us use those days to judge whether we're happy with our lot, and if we've accomplished the things we first set out to do. With Jack approaching his own milestone—he will turn 95 on April 29—how can I have any complaints, when his approach to life is one of such humility and good cheer? The example of how best to live a science-fictional life is set out right before me. In that regard, Jack Williamson is a flesh-and-blood instruction manual.
Walking through Williamson's world
The day after the official event on the campus of Eastern New Mexico University, many of us caravaned to the Williamson ranch, carefully dodging rolling tumbleweeds. The Williamson family graciously opened up their home to us so that we could see where a Grand Master began.
We saw the homestead at which Jack and his family arrived in a covered wagon back in 1915. We startled a sleepy white owl there, which took off into the clear blue sky, obviously confused to see a gaggle of science-fiction writers and editors wandering through the sagebrush. (Luckily, we did not disturb any of the rattlesnakes that we were warned might be sunning themselves nearby.)
I was moved to stand in the shack, built with Jack's own hands, in which he wrote many of his early stories. It was more than just a visit; it felt like a pilgrimage. This was where genetic engineering was born, and terraforming, and a host of other concepts that changed the way we perceive the universe. We did many things at the ranch that day, but I kept going back to that pine shack again and again as that afternoon went on. I stood in silence for long moments, wondering what it had been like to sit there in the desert as a young man and stare off into the possible future—and then to construct that future out of words.
As I looked around at the bare bookcases which had once held Jack's library, and through the window out at the sand and yucca, I realized that, hanging around there, I was doing more than merely standing in the house that Jack built, for a house was not all that he built.
Every day, I am also working in a field that Jack built, and each one of us is living in a world that Jack built.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science
Fiction Weekly back in 1974, when he began working as an assistant editor at
Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in
the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the
award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, in addition to editing
Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit. Currently, he also edits SCI
FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel. His short stories can be found in the recent anthologies Angel Body and other Magic for the Soul and The Book of More Flesh.
