Jack Williamson

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Jack Williamson
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22 First Quotations from Jack Williamson

android n. 1936 J. Williamson Cometeers in Astounding Science-Fiction Aug. 146/2 The traffic that brought him such enormous wealth was the production and sale of androids…. [He] had come upon the secret of synthetic life. He generated artificial cells, and propagated them in nutrient media, controlling development by radiological and biochemical means.
areological adj. 1932 J. Williamson & L. Schwartzman Red Slag of Mars in Wonder Stories Quarterly Spring 395/2 Dr. Eldred…was head of the Eldred Areological Expedition, which sailed…six years ago, for the planet Mars.
gate n. 1931 J. Williamson Through the Purple Cloud in Wonder Stories May 1408/1 The purple circle that came in front of the plane looked just like that… We have seen the gate to our world opened again—I am sure of it.
genetic engineering n. 1951 J. Williamson Dragon’s Island xxiii. 180 I was expecting to find that mutation lab filled with some sort of apparatus for genetic engineering.
ion drive n. 1947 J. Williamson Equalizer in Astounding Science Fiction Mar. 18/1 Lifecraft 18 was a trim steel missile… It had its own ion drive, a regular crew of six, and plenty of additional space for our party.
planetary engineer n. 1932 J. Williamson Electron Flame in Wonder Stories Quarterly Fall 88/2 Bought the satellite for his private estate. Had planetary engineers make all modern improvements.
planetary engineering n. 1936 J. Williamson Cometeers in Astounding Stories July 129/1 Planetary engineering is expensive, Bob…especially when the equipment would have to be brought so far. It would have been nearly impossible for any one to develop such a remote asteroid secretly.
pleasure planet n. 1939 J. Williamson After World’s End in Marvel Science Stories Feb. 42/2 The pleasure planet was itself a gorgeous jewel, covered with tell-tended gardens of many-hued vegetation, and with the magnificent palaces, triumphal arches, and colossi erected by a thousand generations of universal rulers.
prime directive n. 1947 J. Williamson With Folded Hands… in Astounding Science Fiction July 18 ‘I prefer to run my own business, and support my own family, and take care of myself.’ ‘That is impossible, under the Prime Directive…. Our function is to serve and obey, and guard men from harm. It is no longer necessary for men to care for themselves.’
psionic adj. 1951 J. Williamson Man From Outside in Astounding Science Fiction Mar. 130/1 The psionic translators rendered his name as Bowman, but its original clicking consonants were unpronounceable.
psionics n. 1951 J. Williamson Greatest Invention in Astounding Science Fiction July 79/1 If they had known psionics, their children would never have relapsed into savagery.
seetee n. 1942 ‘W. Stewart’ Collision Orbit in Astounding Science Fiction July 81/2 For ‘seetee’, to the engineer’s mind of old Jim Drake, meant power. Terror to others, to him it was atomic energy, priceless and illimitable. The whole meteor belt was rich in contraterrene drift. ibid. Molecules of any gas reacted with seetee, in deadly flame.
sentience n. 1 1931 J. Williamson Stone from Green Star in Amazing Stories Nov. ix. 739/2 ‘We are dealing with an utterly alien world,’ Midos Ken said several times. ‘There is sentience here—but sentience in no familiar body. We must be prepared to deal with manifestations of intelligence that are unfamiliar or even inconceivable to the human mind.’
space-burned adj. 1942 ‘W. Stewart’ Collision Orbit in Astounding Science-Fiction July 81/1 But a slow brown smile softened old Jim Drake’s rugged, space-burned face, and the old, eager light came slowly back to his eyes. [Ibid. 82/1] Drake pushed away his papers, with awkward space-burned hands.
spaceport n. 1930 M. Breuer & J. Williamson Birth of a New Republic in Amazing Stories Quarterly Winter 29/1 The space-ports at the three great cities, were, of course, occupied or blockaded by the Tellurian fleets; and Doane was obliged to make his bases of operations the lonely craters that once had been pirate strongholds.
subetheric adj. 1938 J. Williamson Legion of Time in Astounding Science-Fiction May 22/2 Mere probability is all that is left. And my first actual invention was a geodesic tracer, designed for its analysis. It was a semi-mathematical instrument, essentially a refinement of the old harmonic analyzer. Tracing the possible world-lines of material particles through Time, it opened a window to futurity…Here is the chronoscope…The latest development of the instrument. Scansion depends upon a special curved field, through which a sub-etheric radiation is bent into the time-axis, projected forward, and reflected from electronic fields back to the instrument. A stereoscopic image is obtained within the crystal screen, through selective fluorescence to the beat frequencies of the interfering carrier waves projected at right angles from below.
subspace n. 1937 J. Williamson Released Entropy in Astounding Stories Aug. 17/2 Yet, swift as was the Silver Bird, plunging through millions of miles in a second, drawn into a tiny subspace of her own by the field warp of the kappa coils, seven years had passed before she approached her destination.
terraform v. 1942 J. Williamson Collision Orbit in Astounding Science-Fiction July 82/1 He had been the original claimant of Obania, forty years ago; and Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock, only two kilometers through—by sinking a shaft to its heart for the paragravity installation, generating oxygen and water from mineral oxides, releasing absorptive gases to trap the feeble heat of the far-off Sun.
terraformed adj. 1942 ‘W. Stewart’ Minus Sign in Astounding Science-Fiction Nov. 47/2 Rick omitted breakfast and hurried to the laboratory, just under the crown of the terraformed hill.
terraformer n. 1942 ‘W. Stewart’ Minus Sign in Astounding Science-Fiction Nov. 51/2 Beyond a hidden doorway a guarded elevator dropped them to the terraformer room at the center of gravity.
terraforming n. 1942 J. Williamson Collision Orbit in Astounding Science-Fiction July 85/2 Smaller… Less than a tenth the mass. There’s plenty of time to land a terraforming crew, to install a new-type directional drive. It’s a job for the guard.
warp n. 1936 J. Williamson Cometeers in Astounding Stories May 22/2 Every atom of ship load and crew was deflected infinitesimally from the space-time continuum of four dimensions, and thus freed of the ordinary limitations of acceleration and velocity, was driven around space, rather than through it, by a direct reaction against the space warp itself.