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Wonder's Child: My Life in Science Fiction (1984)

par Jack WILLIAMSON

Autres auteurs: Voir la section autres auteur(e)s.

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Telling much more than the story of a single man's life and work, this autobiography is an amazing look at the entire 20th century from the eyes of one of the greatest voices in science fiction. This story of a man plagued with a perpetual sense of wonder at the world around him begins with Williamson's youth and his family's struggle to survive on farms in the arid southwestern United States. Early attempts at education, the publication of his first story, his service in the Pacific during World War II, and his eventual success in the genre of science fiction are all detailed to tell the life of this Hugo Award-winning author.… (plus d'informations)
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“If the reader isn’t interested, early and firmly, all else is lost.” — Jack Williamson


His family was barely removed from the Great Frontier, and they traveled by covered wagon. Eking out a living in isolated areas far from people would have a profound effect on Jack Williamson’s life. It cut him off from nearly all social interaction as a young boy, making him green and awkward in relating to people later. When he saw the cover of the new magazine, Amazing, on a trip into town, it fueled his imagination, and for his entire life, that world was a larger part of him than any other.

Williamson’s candid bio reveals a decent man of science and wonder, but a man so in conflict with himself it spawned a published medical paper. Yet Jack Williamson became one of the greatest writers of science fiction the genre has ever known, helping it to grow and flourish. Conflicted with society, with himself, socially awkward, he lived and breathed science fiction, cherishing the friends he made — the list of science fiction greats is staggering — with whom he could talk all night. He could easily have gone into scientific research — he had an opportunity — but he chose to write about it instead, weaving science — some of which was not yet reality — into entertaining pulp stories that had great movement, and greater heart.

As science fiction began changing, the Golden Age of it fast approaching, the inner conflict became to much, and a dry spell ensued. Williamson could toil, and make outlines, but needed to collaborate with Frederik Pohl in order to keep his hand in. He went back to school, earning degrees, eventually becoming a teacher of science fiction — because for Jack Williamson there was always science fiction. Finally, when he burst out creatively again, he merged his pulp side with astounding ideas, bridging the gap between science fiction’s past, and its present and future. Along the way — much later in life than most — he married Blanche, a girl he’d known since childhood. They made a home together, traveled, and led a full and happy life, until tragedy struck. A car wreck, with Jack at the wheel, perhaps age a factor. A man whose passion was mostly for science fiction, loved her very much, and lived with guilt. He felt his life was over when she died, but friends and family brought him back. Like the man himself, there is a likability to his bio, a laconic friendliness, but also a reserve. He is candid, honest, and lets you see, but he doesn’t let you get too close to those personal things.

A good example of this is his candidness about his awkwardness socially. Those involved in science fiction’s early days were a different breed. They were close, supportive (at least the writers). Most were men, but there were a couple of women as well. Jack was friends with them too, but science fiction came first — perhaps because he was more comfortable in space than with people, especially the opposite sex. He found a home in science fiction, with those who shared his great love and passion. They had a little club, a gathering really. Heinlein, Leigh Brackett, a slew of greats. In a story made all the more amusing by Williamson’s matter-of-fact telling, he recounts how he would sometimes bring the young Ray Bradbury to these dinners. Other times he would not because Bradbury was just so enthusiastic, so “loud” that Leigh Brackett would ask Williamson not to bring him along on a particular week.

From the very outset, Jack Williamson, first and foremost, kept readers interested. He began so early in science fiction’s infancy it was not yet called such; it was called scientifiction. All science fiction sprung from the early pulp magazines like Amazing, and some of the best of those stories, the most influential, came from Jack Williamson. Made the second Grand Master by Science Fiction Writers of America (the first recipient was his friend Bob Heinlein), his career extended from the pulp magazines, through the Golden Age of science fiction, and into modern times. As it turned out, the actual term, genetic engineering, had been used a short time before Williamson used it in 1951. Yet all the way back in 1937, in a story called Spider Island, Williamson wrote about genetic engineering, calling it genetic process. He is given credit for the term terraform, however, which is widely used today. Together with Frederik Pohl, he wrote a story about human organ transplantation before it was a reality. Such were the days of wonder:

“A story doesn’t work unless I believe it, unless it is something I want to say, unless it springs from my own emotion and experience, unless I can identify with the people. The stories that work come to life as I write them, the people as real as those I meet every day. When a novel is done, I always feel a pang of loss at parting from good friends.”

You can feel that when you read a Jack Williamson story, whether it is a classic like With Folded Hands or an enjoyable pulp story from the early 1930s. Even his later works, rich with ideas, more sophisticated that before, were full of movement. It was one of the pulp elements that he never lost. It makes him more accessible than many of the science fiction greats, and somehow, in modern times, that has become a knock on him. It is terribly unfair. Williamson addresses that type of criticism here in his bio, in a kind manner, but he is also to the point. He speaks of a long critique of Legion of Time, and how too often great works are not judged within their context, their time and place, modern audiences wanting to apply the “now” to something written when science fiction was still in those days of wonder when much of the technology did not yet exist:

“The article is half the length of the novel. Perhaps I should have been flattered that he had chosen a story of mine (Legion of Time) for dismemberment, yet I couldn’t help feeling that he was using a sledgehammer to flatten an unsuspecting gnat.”

Asimov in fact was much harsher concerning criticism from readers, and both men were right. Williamson also speaks about the importance of science fiction, which he taught in academia, fighting for its acceptance in those circles as an important genre:

“Science fiction remade my life when I found it long ago in those early pulp magazines where it was being invented.”

“With very few taboos, it (Science Fiction) can deal with nearly every social and moral and technical problem that the human race meet, from nearly any point of view.”

“Taken as prophecy {SF} is the wrong way to take it. I think most future fiction tends too far toward the dark side. That’s an unfortunate accident. Reader interest demands conflict. Without the presence of evil and the battle to defeat it, there is no story. We tend to magnify the evil. Sadly, that fosters a habit of pessimism.”

“In times that sometimes disturb me, I try to see the international appetite for science fiction as a sign of widening awareness, at least a spark of hope that our threatened world can somehow sense its dangers in time to save itself.”

Williamson talks about the effect of unleashing the Bomb, and how science fiction writers were some of the first to realize how sobering and potentially dangerous all they’d dreamed and been writing about had now become. On very rare occasion, mostly in the section added years after the first printing, Williamson gets a bit political, and I didn’t necessarily agree on every point. I found his take on beliefs and religion much softer and more amenable than Asimov’s or some others, yet he obviously felt conflicted there, as well, because of his background and that of his parents. Following the added section covering the years after this was first published, there is a short diary of Williamson’s time during the WWII. He enlisted despite having a deferral from his doctor.

What this bio is mostly, however, is a magnificent, easygoing look at those early days of wonder, as Jack Williamson experienced them. He almost glosses over the importance of some of his own submitted stories. He’d make three hundred bucks one year, fourteen hundred the next. Each time he had money, he’d ride the rails like a hobo, wanting to see some of the world, because he knew it might give him a story. He talks about the early pulp magazines, the other men (and women) submitting stories, and the editors of those magazines. These are big names, famous names to science fiction lovers who appreciate its history and beginnings. Basically you live year to year with Williamson as it relates to science fiction, which for many years, was all Williamson had. The stories, the struggles, the paltry payments, the people he got to know. It doesn’t go deep, because that would be too personal, but you get the feeling that science fiction really did give Jack Williamson a life, perhaps as much as his wife did later down the line.

If you have some knowledge of pulp science fiction, and the Golden Age of science fiction, I think you’ll enjoy this more than if you don’t. If you’re a fan of Jack Williamson, as I am, this is a must. Each chapter begins with the great accomplishments or happening of the years covered in the chapter, which is also fascinating. There is so much wonder here, that it gives the reader a sense of melancholy, a longing for those days. Yet only occasionally does Williamson himself go there, as he does in talking about the evolution of science fiction as it escaped its pulp origins:

“The sense of wonder is almost gone, along with the thrill of discovery and the alluring hopes of better things to come. Possible futures now seem trite or, more often, dreadful.”

Yet there is optimism, especially when Williamson talks about the bright young people in his classes. Wonder’s Child is in essence, a life in science fiction. It’s candid, matter-of-fact, and you get a sense of Williamson himself. Some will no doubt expect some deeper delving, but that just wasn’t Williamson’s nature. Wonder’s Child is a chronicle of science fiction from its early days to modern times, through one man’s eyes. I can think of no one better to show it to us than the man who was the final link to those days of wonder. ( )
  Matt_Ransom | Oct 6, 2023 |
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Nom de l'auteurRôleType d'auteurŒuvre ?Statut
WILLIAMSON, Jackauteur principaltoutes les éditionsconfirmé
JOHNSON, Kevin EugeneArtiste de la couvertureauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé

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Telling much more than the story of a single man's life and work, this autobiography is an amazing look at the entire 20th century from the eyes of one of the greatest voices in science fiction. This story of a man plagued with a perpetual sense of wonder at the world around him begins with Williamson's youth and his family's struggle to survive on farms in the arid southwestern United States. Early attempts at education, the publication of his first story, his service in the Pacific during World War II, and his eventual success in the genre of science fiction are all detailed to tell the life of this Hugo Award-winning author.

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