Group items tagged

Grand Master Nebula Award

Darker Than You Think

Wonder’s Child

Carter Stewart

Nonstop to Mars

Dead Star Station

The Metal Man

The Legion of Space

The Girl from Mars

The Meteor Girl

Dead Star Station

‘No one can predict the future, he can only point the way.’

No cameras. No gift shop. No littering or trespassing or whining. What kind of tour is this?

“He predicted ‘a new Golden Age of fair cities, of new laws and new machines,’” Tonia was saying, “‘of human capabilities undreamed of, of a civilization that has conquered matter and Nature, distance and time, disease and death.’”

Portales is right on the road to nowhere.

Jack Williamson

Amazing Stories

The Legion of Time by Jack Williamson

She picked up the book. “The guy who wrote this lives in Portales?” she said. “Really?”

But at least now I had something to read. I went back to the Portales Inn and up to my room, opened a can of Coke and all the windows, and sat down to read The Legion of Time, which was about a girl who’d travelled back in time to tell the hero about the future.

“The world is a long corridor, and time is a lantern carried steadily along the hall,”

“If time were simply an extension of the universe, was tomorrow as real as yesterday? If one could leap forward—”

What if that was why she kept pausing when she talked, because she had to remember to say “Jack Williamson is” instead of “Jack Williamson was“, “does most of his writing” instead of “did most of his writing,” had to remember what year it was and what hadn’t happened yet?

“‘If the field were strong enough,’” I remembered Tonia saying out at the ranch, “‘we could bring physical objects through space-time instead of mere visual images.’” And the tour group had all smiled.

What if they were the physical objects? What if the tour had travelled through time instead of space?

The book talked about quantum mechanics and probability, about how changing one thing in the past could affect the whole future. Maybe that was why they had to come when Jack Williamson was out of town, to avoid doing something to him that might change the future.

Even if they were tourists from the future, there was no reason to travel back in time to see a science fiction writer when they could see presidents or rock stars. Unless they lived in a future where all the things he’d predicted in his stories had come true. What if they had genetic engineering and androids and spaceships? What if in their world they’d terraformed planets and gone to Mars and explored the galaxy? That would make Jack Williamson their forefather, their founder. And they’d want to come back and see where it all started.

“Wow! Lined up and waiting to get in! This is a first,” he said, which answered my first question. I asked it anyway. “Do you get many visitors?”

“A few,” he said. “Not as many as I think there should be for a man who practically invented the future. Androids, terraforming, antimatter, he imagined them all. We’ll have more visitors in two weeks. That’s when the Williamson Lectureship week is. We get quite a few visitors then. The writers who are speaking usually drop in.”

“Let me show you around,” he said. “We’re adding to the collection all the time.” He took down a long flat box. “This is the comic strip Jack did, Beyond Mars. And here is where we keep his original manuscripts.” He opened one of the filing cabinets and pulled out a sheaf of typed yellow sheets. “Have you ever met Jack?”

“Oh, the nicest man you’ve ever met. It’s hard to believe he’s one of the founders of science fiction. He’s in here all the time. Wonderful guy. He’w working on a new book, The Black Sun. He’s out of town this weekend, or I’d take you over and introduce you. He’s always delighted to meet his fans. Is there anything specific you wanted to know about him?”

“This person who told me about the drugstore, they mentioned something about Number 5516. Is that one of his books?” “5516? No, that’s the asteroid they’re naming after him. How’d you know about that? It’s supposed to be a surprise. They’re giving him the plaque Lectureship week.” “An asteroid,” I said. I started out again. “Thanks for coming in,” the librarian said. “Are you just visiting or do you live here?” “I live here,” I said.

“I know how you felt when you saw that Amazing Stories in the drugstore,” I’d tell him. “I’m interested in the future, too. I liked what you said about it, about science fiction lighting the way and science making the future real.”

That night the girl‭ swallows the glow of the harvested gem,‭ ‬and her nine tails fall away to lie discarded at her feet.‭ ‬She gazes‭ ‬down‭ at her unshifting hands and is puzzled ‎         ‏to find herself ‎         ‏weeping.

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