The conscious use and exploration of well-defined ideas marks the fiction of Jack Williamson. Those guiding ideas—and his indebtedness to H. G. Wells—may be discerned in any discussion of his recent study, H. G. Wells: Critic of Progress. Although Wells may be the better artist, the complexity of Williamson's own fiction can go far beyond Wells's, and the experience he presents in "With Folded Hands," The Humanoids, and Bright New Universe is as large and satisfying...

Everyone would agree, I think, that the events in ["The Legion of Time"] are impossible. About that there can be no serious argument—nor that this does not rule the story out of serious consideration. Such being the case, let us consider it seriously. In so doing, I want to bear in mind not only the virtues and faults of this particular story, but to examine it as a typical work of science fiction.

The first intimation that [Jack Williamson] had finally made the grade as a professional writer came without notice … when he received the December, 1928, AMAZING STORIES. The cover, by Frank R. Paul, depicted a scene from Williamson's story The Metal Man. The editor clearly recognized Williamson's literary deity in his blurb: "Not since we published 'The Moon Pool' has such a story as this been published by us." The Metal Man concerned radioactive emanations...

Williamson began writing in Gernsback's Amazing and never looked back. He was much influenced by Abe Merritt, and managed to assimilate Merritt's sense of colour and movement without taking over the fairies as well. His output was fairly prolific, as outputs needed to be if one was to live by writing sf in a field where Amazing and Wonder were paying half a cent a word on publication. His greatest early success was with a serial in a 1934 Astounding, The Legion of Space, a Goshwow! epic which ...

["Star Bridge," originally published in 1955,] is not a recognized "classic" of that period. According to the reference works I consulted, it stirred no controversy, won no awards, added nothing to the reputations of its authors. Not only had I never read it before, I had not even heard of it. I mention these facts only to help the reader understand my astonishment at discovering that this obscure collaboration between Williamson and [James E.] Gunn reads more like a collaboratio...

Jack Williamson has added one more to his "Legion of Space" trilogy: The Queen of the Legion. He needn't have bothered. His effort is trite and superficial. It satisfies no sense of wonder, suspends no disbelief. His characters seem little better than puppets on a stage. He has done much better. What's the problem?…

Williamson wrote [the 11 stories in "The Early Williamson"] between 1928 and 1933, back when Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories were bringing a new category to the pulps—what Williamson called "scientifiction" in 1928 and Hugo Gernsback refined to "science-fiction" a year later. The lethal powers of radiation are vividly described in "The Metal Man," in which the hero discovers a rich source of radium dust but becomes metallicized in the pro...

The stories in [The Early Williamson] date from 1928 through 1933. They are not modern science fiction…. No writer today … traces more clearly the evolution of SF from a sort of clumsy hobby, through the slam-bang pulp era, and into something with aspirations toward permanence. These are generally not stories to be taken quite seriously anymore as things in themselves, although there is some surprisingly good reading and solid entertainment here; the past is not a wasteland, even by our curren...

For the novice in science fiction, "seetee" means contra-terrene, referring to matter in which the positive and negative charges are reversed from the familiar earthly pattern. Mr. Stewart, the great exploiter of the theme, published a very bad novel a year or so ago called "Seetee Shock"; he's now redeemed himself by rewriting into a good book ["Seetee Ship"] several of the magazine stories in which he first introduced the notion. Better editing would have h...

[In "Manseed"] another old master performs masterfully in his first novel in some years. The Raven Foundation seeks to perpetuate the human race by sending thousands of tiny "seedships" into space. Each ship can produce a half-human, half-robot Defender as needed to guide the mission and protect the unborn colony, and this is the story of one Defender and his tribulations. Williamson conveys the anguishes and conflicts of the Defender eloquently, as his human memories show him wh...

[The Moon Children is an] excellent novel; it fairly glitters with imaginative devices and captures perfectly the sense of alienness, of other worlds, that makes it peculiarly science fiction. The characters are very strange, yet they become absorbingly real, so much so that you will hate to leave them. The story tells of three strange children born to astronauts after their return from a moon flight where they were exposed to some strange crystals from outer space. The children, two beautiful, one a shaggy...

["The Queen of the Legion"] is the fourth volume in Jack Williamson's classic Legion of Space trilogy. The three books were originally serialized in Astounding in the 1930s; now, more than 40 years later, Williamson has written a novel whose mood and style is of a piece with its predecessors, even given its innovative female protagonist…. Pure and simple space opera, and old-timey space opera at that, this book is not for everyone, but fans with a nostalgic bent should enjoy it. ...

["Dragon's Island"] falls into the suspense-melodrama category, and very satisfactorily. The science element involves "genetic engineering," the deliberate manipulation of genes to produce new biological results—even a new race of mankind. The melodrama involves private detectives, amnesia, switches of identity, an ambiguous heroine and other standard devices so nicely calculated and integrated that they seem fresh and exciting. The story happens in no vast intergal...

[The Legion of Space, first published in 1935,] is a classic adventure story of three men who set out on a seemingly impossible quest through unknown space and across a horrible planet to rescue a girl who possesses the secret that can save mankind from a dread alien menace. Giles Habibula, one of the three, is a marvelous comic figure. Even today, the suspense works. If you've never read it, you've missed a fine story. (p. 171) Lester del Rey, in a review of "The Starchild...