When reading a book you have to take the time it was made, the context into account. And this is especially true with Science Fiction. Jack Williamson is one of the great classic SF writers, and one of the marks of good writing is that it ages well. In the case of Seetee Ship, which was first published in 1951, this comes to light very clearly. While his writing is for more complex than someone like Heinlin, and more astute than someone like Bova, some of the nuances found here are more than a little offsetting.
The story concerns Seetee, which is the phonetical pronunciation of C.T., which is itself an acronym for Contraterrene; which is known in more secular circles simply as anti-matter. I can’t imagine the theory of anti-matter had been around too long before Williamson wrote this short novel, but the premise (albeit flawed by modern science) goes like this: anti-matter (Seetee), is matter with a reversed magnetic field; meaning the electrons are positively charged. This leads to a cataclysmic explosion if Seetee ever comes into contact with normal matter. Ok, there’s the science stuff, and now the fiction, there was at once point according to Williamson a fourth planet in our solar system, Adonis, but when a rogue Seetee meteor crashed into it Adonis exploded forming our well known asteroid belt. Half the rocks in the belt are terrene, half are made of Seetee. And our story follows some of the brave mean and women who mines these deadly rocks. These rock rats are slowly uncovering the mystery behind Seetee as they attempt to construct a safe contraterrene bedplate, upon which a Seetee power reactor might be built. The problem though, in order to tap this unimaginable power, they must find a way to touch the Seetee. How do even begin to create tool with which to forge a bedplate if you can’t ever touch the stuff.
Into the mix young Rick Drake is thrown, a spatial engineer, and life long rock rat. Rick must try to uncover these secrets, while outwitting the many inter-solar political factions which are tottering on war, any of which would do anything to get their hands on Seetee weapons. Everything comes to a head when an alien space vessel appears out of apparent nothingness, possibly created by contraterrene beings. Rick, must investigate this strange ship, and find the secret to Seetee power before the dangerous company man Paul Anders, or the Jovian Soviet agent von Falkberg, arrive to stop him and seize the power for their own insidious purposes.
The problems with this story are twofold. Firstly, although this is little more than a gripe and can be explained to a degree, is the dialogue. The expression, phrasing, and especially the attitudes are completely chauvinistic. I understand that this book was written in the 50s, but I just don’t get how, a SF writer can accept that in the future man and women will work side by side as something like equals, and yet still write completely male oriented dialogue. The women in this book are weak and unrealistic. They pander to the men; and are there for the most part to create excuses for nervous tension. My second problem with this novel, which can’t be so easily explained away, is the structure. The first half of the story follows Rick Drake, the hero. But throughout the entire second half we only see the story from Paul Anders point of view. Isn’t he the bad guy? Why did Williamson spend 100+ pages letting me get to know and sympathise with Rick to just abandon him? I understand looking in on the antagonist from time to time, but it just never stopped. This is a real narrative flaw with the story. And at the end of the day, it pretty much spoiled my interest.
This is a decent pulp scifi book. It’s pretty quick to read at 250 pages, and the potentially confusing plot line gets sorted out succinctly at the beginning, but the second half of the novel really disappoints. Maybe Williamson was still finding his voice as a writer, or maybe he just got bored with the hero. But whatever the reason, the story suffers, and by the end I just didn’t care anymore.
Rating:
