From the Bookshelf: Seetee Ship
Nov. 30th, 2017 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerJust because an unfortunate and complicated confluence of events makes it harder than it once was for me to look at the title or cover of a science fiction novel and think "I haven't read that one yet, but I want to now" doesn't mean I won't take a close swing by the science fiction table at any particular used book sale. At one sale this fall, I did seem to get lucky. When I saw an old paperback named Seetee Ship, I remembered having heard of it, and also that "seetee" wasn't an alien name but a vocalization of "CT," the abbreviation for "contraterrene," an old and at least science-fictional name for "antimatter." I went ahead and bought the book by Jack Williamson, who I knew to have made the transition from writing the original sort of "space opera" (before that at first dismissive name had even been coined) to staying active in the field well into the twentieth century. Intent on adjusting my expectations as required, I started reading.
The copyright notice explained the novel had been published in 1951, but based on stories from Astounding Science Fiction. I kept that date in mind sorting out the world-building, which involved a colonized asteroid belt that just happens to be dusted with "seetee" antimatter setting off frequent deadly explosions (the antique bit of science fiction that supposed the asteroids to be fragments of an exploded planet is explained here by an antimatter world from outside the solar system, bigger, deadlier, and more fanciful than our actual recent visitor, blowing it to fragments). With the fissionable elements in the asteroids running out, though, putting antimatter to use was something some characters in the novel were trying to sort out. (The exhaustion of vital yet irreplaceable resources is a familiar general worry in science fiction, although one that sort of surprised me associated with that particular moment, until I did happen to think not just of The Space Merchants but a joke in "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century"... Anyway, there was one example of everything out in the asteroids being unbelievably expensive when someone had to order an eight-dollar lunch with a one-dollar cup of coffee.) In a decade and a half, Star Trek would be invoking antimatter as a power source, a familiar part of the science fiction toolkit I can imagine some might call overstocked. Here, though, everything seemed to be associated with awkward, welded engineering, and the quaintness was somehow amusing.
Along with that, though, I did have to face what gets to a lot of people a bit less able or willing to talk about "historical perspective." The female characters in the book might be just a bit more free to act than in a lot of other contemporary science fiction, but happening to mention "Asian Venusians," "Martian Germans," and "Jovian Soviets" managed to invoke stereotypes at once still stuck in World War II and ready to join in the start of the Cold War. I was at least able (after getting a sense of the novel having been "fixed up" from short stories when the main character changed about halfway through) to shake off worries I'd have to chase down another "Seetee" novel I could remember Williamson having written to get an actual conclusion. Still, I did get to wishing a bit more that I could be a bit more comfortable around modern written science fiction in general.
The copyright notice explained the novel had been published in 1951, but based on stories from Astounding Science Fiction. I kept that date in mind sorting out the world-building, which involved a colonized asteroid belt that just happens to be dusted with "seetee" antimatter setting off frequent deadly explosions (the antique bit of science fiction that supposed the asteroids to be fragments of an exploded planet is explained here by an antimatter world from outside the solar system, bigger, deadlier, and more fanciful than our actual recent visitor, blowing it to fragments). With the fissionable elements in the asteroids running out, though, putting antimatter to use was something some characters in the novel were trying to sort out. (The exhaustion of vital yet irreplaceable resources is a familiar general worry in science fiction, although one that sort of surprised me associated with that particular moment, until I did happen to think not just of The Space Merchants but a joke in "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century"... Anyway, there was one example of everything out in the asteroids being unbelievably expensive when someone had to order an eight-dollar lunch with a one-dollar cup of coffee.) In a decade and a half, Star Trek would be invoking antimatter as a power source, a familiar part of the science fiction toolkit I can imagine some might call overstocked. Here, though, everything seemed to be associated with awkward, welded engineering, and the quaintness was somehow amusing.
Along with that, though, I did have to face what gets to a lot of people a bit less able or willing to talk about "historical perspective." The female characters in the book might be just a bit more free to act than in a lot of other contemporary science fiction, but happening to mention "Asian Venusians," "Martian Germans," and "Jovian Soviets" managed to invoke stereotypes at once still stuck in World War II and ready to join in the start of the Cold War. I was at least able (after getting a sense of the novel having been "fixed up" from short stories when the main character changed about halfway through) to shake off worries I'd have to chase down another "Seetee" novel I could remember Williamson having written to get an actual conclusion. Still, I did get to wishing a bit more that I could be a bit more comfortable around modern written science fiction in general.