Introduction to Darkness Falling

Jack Williamson has been my friend for just about 40 years.

Believe it or not, he’s been science fiction’s friend for twice that long. When you speak of the history of science fiction, you’re speaking, to some degree, of the history of Jack Williamson. He is a gentle and unassuming man who seems completely unaware that he is truly a giant in our field—but take my word for it: he’s one of the tallest. (Or don’t take my word. Read the book instead.)

Hugo Gernsback created the publishing category of science fiction with Amazing Stories in 1926. One look at it was all Jack needed to know what he wanted to do with his life. His first effort, The Metal Men, appeared in the December, 1928 Amazing—and we’re reprinting it here to show you where he started and just how far he’s come.

By 1931 Jack had expanded his markets to include Wonder Stories, and we’re bringing you “Twelve Hours to Live!” from those bygone days.

For a while it seemed that Jack and his pal Edmond Hamilton were taking turns destroying and saving the galaxy every other month, but Jack’s work was never that one-dimensional. To prove it, he began writing for Weird Tales. Despite its name, it was publishing the most literate stories in the fantastic field, and Jack was there with “The Wand of Doom” in 1932.

Jack was too much in demand and too prolific to stay within one branch of the field, or even one publisher within a branch, so along with selling to all the science fiction magazines, he not only found time to write for Weird Tales but also its rival, Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, where “Wolves of Darkness” appeared in 1932.

Astounding, destined to become the most influential magazine in science fiction history, was just getting its feet wet in 1933. Jack helped it along with “Terror Out of Time.”

It was when John Campbell took over the helm of Astounding that it became the behemoth we all know about. A number of writers couldn’t adjust to Campbell’s vision of science fiction, and they fell by the wayside. Needless to say, Jack wasn’t one of them. Perhaps his greatest single work of science fiction, clearly his most influential, and probably among the half-dozen most important novellas ever produced in the field, was “With Folded Hands.” You’ll find it waiting for you—I’m inclined to say “patiently, with folded hands”—in the pages up ahead.

Jack kept moving, changing, and improving with the times. For the most part he stuck to novels, but every now and than he’d lay a short story on a major market, just to prove he hadn’t lost the touch, as with “Jamboree,” which he produced in 1969 for Galaxy.

When Harlan Ellison was assembling The Last Dangerous Visions, Jack was an obvious choice—a top-notch and always-innovative science fiction writer who had survived half a dozen evolutions of the field and could be expected to add his might to the New Wave as well. Jack responded with “Previews of Hell.” Although the anthology has never been published, we’re proud to bring you the story in this collection.

Of all the magazines ever to appear in this field, my personal favorite was John Campbell’s short-lived Unknown—and of all the stories Jack ever wrote and all the stories Unknown ever ran, my favorite is “Darker Than You Think.” I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled we are to be able to bring you the original magazine version.

I think the highest compliment you can give someone regardless of his profession is that he is not content to rest on his laurels, that he works at improving every day of his life. To me, Jack Williamson is the perfect exemplar of that. “The Metal Man” has its crudities, but it was good enough to sell. The work in the 1930s showed greater craft and more control of his material. The unquestioned classics, “With Folded Hands” and “Darker Than You Think” were produced in the 1940s.

And still he continued to work and to improve. The Jack Williamson who wrote those two novellas probably couldn’t have written “Previews of Hell” as skillfully as the Jack Williamson of the early 1970s did.

In 1975 Jack became only the second writer in history to be given the Nebula Grandmaster Award for lifetime achievement by the Science Fiction Writers of America. In 1977 he was the Worldcon Guest of Honor.

A nice way to cap off a career. Now he was free to sit around basking in the sun and sipping cool drinks.

Did he?

If you think so, you don’t know Jack Williamson.

Jack won the 1985 Hugo for the Best Non-Fiction Book. He was 77 at the time.

And was that the end of it?

Not a chance.

In 2001, at the ripe young age of 93, Jack beat a stellar field to win the Hugo for Best Novella.

He is not only the universally-acknowledged Dean of Science Fiction, but he’s a dean who is never content to rest on his laurels. He is the walking history of science fiction, not because he knows that history (though of course he does), but because he created such a large portion of it.

Enough. Start reading the stories and see exactly how he did it.