Jack Williamson

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Jack Williamson bigraphy, stories - American science fiction writer

Jack Williamson : biography

April 29, 1908 – November 10, 2006

John Stewart Williamson (April 29, 1908 – November 10, 2006), who wrote as Jack Williamson, was an American science fiction writer, often called the "Dean of Science Fiction" after the death of Robert Heinlein in 1988.. SFWA Pressbook. Retrieved 2007. Early in his career he sometimes used the pseudonyms Will Stewart and Nils O. Sonderlund.

Early life

Williamson was born April 29, 1908 in Bisbee, Arizona Territory, and spent his early childhood in western Texas. In search of better pastures, his family migrated to rural New Mexico in a horse-drawn covered wagon in 1915.Williamson, Jack. Wonder’s Child: My Life in Science Fiction (Benbella Books, 2005) The farming was difficult there and the family turned to ranching, which they continue to this day. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II as a weather forecaster.

Academic career

Williamson received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in English in the 1950s from Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU) in Portales (near the Texas panhandle), joining the faculty of that university in 1960. He remained affiliated with the school for the rest of his life. In the late 1990s, he established a permanent trust to fund the publication of El Portal, ENMU’s journal of literature and art. In the 1980s, he made a sizable donation of books and original manuscripts to ENMU’s library, which resulted in the formation of a Special Collections department; the library now is home to the Jack Williamson Science Fiction Library, which ENMU’s website describes as "one of the top science fiction collections in the world".. Golden Library Special Collections. Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU). Retrieved 2007. In addition, Williamson hosted the Jack Williamson Lectureship Series, an annual panel discussion in which two science fiction authors were invited to speak to attendees on a set topic. The Jack Williamson Liberal Arts building houses the Mathematics, Art, and Languages & Literature Departments of the university.

Williamson completed his Ph.D. in English literature at the University of Colorado in Boulder, focused on H.G. Wells’ earlier works, demonstrating that Wells was not the naive optimist that many believed him to be. In the field of science, Jack Williamson coined the word terraforming in a science-fiction story published in 1942 in Astounding Science Fiction.

Writing career

As a child Williamson enjoyed storytelling to his brother and two sisters. As a young man, he discovered the magazine Amazing Stories, established in 1926 by Hugo Gernsback, after answering an ad for one free issue. He strove to write his own fiction and sold his first story to Gernsback at age 20: "The Metal Man" was published in the December 1928 issue of Amazing. During the next year Gernsback published three more of his stories in the new pulp magazines Science Wonder Stories and Air Wonder Stories, and separately published "The Girl from Mars" by Miles J. Breuer and Williamson as Science Fiction Series #1. His work during this early period was heavily influenced by A. Merritt,Moskowitz, Sam. "Jack Williamson: Four-Way Pioneer". Amazing Stories, October 1964. author of The Metal Monster (1920) and other fantasy serials. Noting the Merritt influence, Algis Budrys described "The Metal Man" as "a story full of memorable images"."Galaxy Bookshelf", Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1967, p. 190.

Early on, Williamson became impressed by the works of Miles J. Breuer and struck up a correspondence with him. A doctor who wrote science fiction in his spare time, Breuer had a strong talent and turned Williamson away from dreamlike fantasies towards more rigorous plotting and stronger narrative. Under Breuer’s tutelage, Williamson would send outlines and drafts for review. Their first work together was the novel Birth of a New Republic in which Moon colonies were undergoing something like the American Revolution—a theme later taken up by many other SF writers, particularly in Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.