Seetee series
 Dust-jacket from the first edition | |
| Author | Will Stewart |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Edd Cartier |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction short stories |
| Publisher | Gnome Press |
Publication date | 1951 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 255 pp |
Seetee Ship is the second of two science fiction novels by Jack Williamson, writing under the pseudonym Will Stewart. 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).
Seetee Ship was released in 1951 by Gnome Press in an edition of 4,000 copies. 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.
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. 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 "Opposites—React!" in which a contraterrene alien artifact is discovered, and competing parties race to reach it and learn its secrets.[1]
The first story in the Seetee series, "Collision Orbit" (July 1942 Astounding Science Fiction), was not collected in either of the Gnome Press books.
Groff Conklin gave Seetee Ship a mixed review, finding it "a good story if you can bear ploughing through pages of literary corn starch."[2] P. Schuyler Miller noted that Williamon's rewrite of the stories into a more cohesive novel was "an excellent job of unification."[3] 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."[4]
Footnotes
- ^ 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
References
- 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.