Seetee Ship
Seetee Ship is a science fiction novel by American writer Jack Williamson, writing under the pseudonym Will Stewart. The second in the Seetee series, it is a fix-up adapting two stories previously published in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, "Minus Sign" (first published in the November 1942 issue) and "Opposites—React!" (two installments in January and February 1943).
 Dust-jacket from the first edition | |
| Author | Will Stewart |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Edd Cartier |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Gnome Press |
Publication date | 1951 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 255 |
Seetee Ship was initially released in 1951 by Gnome Press[1] in an edition of 4,000 copies, and had subsequent reprintings from several publishers, including an omnibus edition.
Seetee Series
Williamson's Seetee series is set in a future where space-dwelling miners attempt to harvest asteroids composed of CT or "contraterrene" matter (an obsolete term in physics) which today would be called antimatter.
Though Seetee Shock (1949) was the first of the Seetee novels to be published in book form, it is set in a later period than Seetee Ship. In "Minus Sign," from which the first part of the book was adapted, spatial engineer Rick Drake continues his father's quest to tame seetee, but becomes entangled in the interplanetary politics of energy shortage. The second part of the book is adapted from the 1943 story "Opposites—React!" in which a contraterrene alien artifact is discovered, and competing parties race to reach it and learn its secrets.[2] The book's plot differs somewhat from the magazine version, particularly in incorporating the speculation that time would run backwards in the neighborhood of a contraterrene object.
The first story in the Seetee series, "Collision Orbit" (July 1942 Astounding Science Fiction), was not collected in either of the Gnome Press books.
The comic strip Beyond Mars is also set in the Seetee series.
Reviews
Groff Conklin gave Seetee Ship a mixed review, finding it "a good story if you can bear ploughing through pages of literary corn starch."[3] P. Schuyler Miller noted that Williamson's rewrite of the stories into a more cohesive novel was "an excellent job of unification."[4] New York Times reviewer Villiers Gersen, however, commented that "it is a pity that the quality of Stewart's writing . . . ranks only slightly above that of a comic-strip adventure."[5]
References
- Seetee Ship, The Gnome Press Release. Retrieved 26 December 2017.
- William S. Higgins, "The Road to Seetee," in Jack Williamson, Opposites—React!, Haffner Press, 2010, p. 23-24
- "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf," Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1951, p.100
- "The Reference Library", Astounding Science Fiction, November 1951, p.118
- "Realm of the Spacemen", The New York Times, October 7, 1951
Sources
- ISFDB listing: Seetee Ship
- Chalker, Jack L.; Owings, Mark (1998). The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Bibliographic History, 1923-1998. Westminster, MD and Baltimore: Mirage Press, Ltd. p. 299.
- Williamson, Jack; Higgins, William S. (2010). Opposites—React!. Royal Oak, Michigan: Haffner Press. p. 158.
- Contento, William G. "Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections". Retrieved 2008-02-25.