Finding a New Author
I was looking around through some of the pulps that I had grabbed Poul Anderson stories a few weeks ago, and one name kept popping up: Jack Williamson. Well, the name was vaguely familiar but I didn’t remember reading any of his stuff, so I took a look at “The Equalizer,” and then I got curious.
Turns out Williamson was a huge sci-fi writer, working from 1926 all the way up through at least 2005, mere months before he passed away in 2006. He coined terms like “genetic engineering” and “terraforming,” according to various sources.
So I thought I’d check out one of his early works, and then one of his later (but still free to read) works. I found a copy of the 1929 novel The Alien Intelligence over at the Gutenberg Project, and I decided on his July 1947 novelette With Folded Hands… as his later work.
And wow, you really can tell the difference that comes from almost 20 years of experience.
The Alien Intelligence
The Alien Intelligence is not a bad book. It’s not great, either. It feels very derivative, partly of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, and partly of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars. Then there’s a bit of H.G. Wells in there, specifically War of the Worlds.
Now, these are all good sources. And it’s okay to derive some inspiration from the works of earlier authors. But derivative works either need to make a strong effort to distinguish themselves, or they run the risk of living in the shadow of what they’re borrowing.
The Alien Intelligence has a few good ideas. The best big idea is the silver liquid, a strange compound of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and noble gases which serves multiple purposes, the most basic of which is as a rocket propellant. But it can also do some kind of mind control, although we get very few details about this in the book.
An honorable mention is the idea that air and clay could be used as sources for carbon dioxide and silica, respectively, to synthesize rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. With such technology, a people could use what we think of as precious gems to make buildings, weapons, etc. It’s a neat idea but it’s not deeply explored.
Williamson also pokes at a few relatively new ideas in the book. For instance, he talks about television, which had been bouncing around as an idea for a while, but had a fairly groundbreaking demonstration just a few years earlier, in 1926.
Liquid rocket propulsion was also a fairly new idea, and Williamson uses it as well.
The problem with The Alien Intelligence is that it has very little depth. Winfield, our main character, has very little originality and is mostly driven by circumstances. He can be trusted to shoot guns at bad guys, but not much else.
Character interactions are simple and shallow. There’s even a point where Winfield is blissfully ignorant of the implications of the actions of another character. He stands there dumbly until there is a fait accompli, and then he reads a note and says, “My how silly of me!” more or less.
Except for the silver fluid, very little is done with the big ideas Williamson introduces in this book. The Crystal City Astran is covered in just a few pages, with almost no detail about the city or its people.
Objects are identified with a few stark visual points and little else. The lack of detail makes the whole world feel kind of smooth.
Descriptions are often flowery, but use relatively common, generic terms. Then, sometimes Williamson is strangely redundant or wordy. We have him mentioning “black obsidian” and that something is “green in color.”
Well, what else would it be green in?
Except for one encounter, combat is vague and abrupt. One fight with a Purple One is handled with urgency and detail. The other battles remind me of how early John Carter basically wiggled his sword at bad guys, at least according to Burroughs while he was a relative novice.
Early on, we have repetitive and desensitizing use of the word “infinite,” in a few different forms.
Many of these issues improve significantly over the course of the book, and by the second half, it seems as though Williamson has found his voice. But the first half can be downright clumsy, and I don’t know whether it’s a result of inexperience or poor editing. In any case, it significantly detracts from the story.
With Folded Hands…
With Folded Hands… is very different. This novelette was written around 18 years after The Alien Intelligence, and it’s plainly obvious that Williamson’s style has improved greatly. Instead of vague or redundant terms, we get sharp and precise descriptions appended to nouns when necessary. We have a “weedy vacant block,” a “sweet thin voice,” and a “gaunt stranger, with his dark shaggy hair, emaciated face, and threadbare garb.” Gaunt and emaciated get close to redundant, but you can see that these words are precise and often support each other. A vacant block is not necessarily weedy, and so on.
In addtion, the plot of this novelette is much more tightly focused, with a more opinionated main character. The story has a thread of sardonic humor running through it, and the stakes are cleverly escalated, from a new competitor in town to a potential threat to humanity!
The big idea of With Folded Hands… is also kind of special. It’s a “Prime Directive.” Before this term became a part of Star Trek lore, Williamson used it in this story. Apparently the first known use was in 1940 by the Washington Post. Williamson, according to the sources I could find, was the first to use it in science fiction.
Williamson focuses on this idea and its implications, digging into the consequences of a particular Prime Directive’s wording quite deeply. He also highlights the subjective nature of harm, and the difference between short-term convenience and long-term happiness.
The character Sledge in the story is handled well. Mysterious at first, then with a barely believable backstory he provides, and eventually some information that connects him to the other main conflict, that between Underhill, our narrator and mechanoid seller, and the strange humanoid assistants that appear in his town one day.
I won’t spoil more than that, but suffice it to say that With Folded Hands… is an excellent story, and shows in stark contrast what years of experience can do to an author… I mean in a good way, honest! In that sense, it’s a little inspiring.
Both books are available for free today.
The Alien Intelligence can be found here.
With Folded Hands… can be found here.
As always, check out the embedded video for more spoilers, if you want them.
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