Seetee Ship

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Seetee Ship
Seetee ship.jpg
Dust-jacket from the first edition
AuthorWill Stewart
Cover artistEdd Cartier
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
PublisherGnome Press
Publication date
1951
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages255

Seetee Ship is a science fiction novel by American writer Jack Williamson, writing under the pseudonym Will Stewart. The second in the Seetee series, 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 initially released in 1951 by Gnome Press[1] in an edition of 4,000 copies, and had subsequent reprintings from several publishers, including an omnibus edition.

Publication[]

Main articles: Beyond Mars and Collision Orbit

The series consists of:

  • Collision Orbit (short story, July 1942, Astounding Science Fiction)
  • Minus Sign (short story, November 1942, Astounding Science Fiction)
  • Opposites—React! (novelette, serialized January-February 1943 in Astounding Science Fiction)
  • Seetee Shock (novel, serialized February-April 1949 in Astounding Science Fiction)
  • Seetee Ship (novel, 1951, fixup of Minus Sign and Opposites—React!)
  • Beyond Mars (comic strip, 1952-1955)

Though (1949) was the first part of the series to be published in book form, it is set at a later point than Seetee Ship. The first story in the series, "Collision Orbit", was not collected in either of the Gnome Press books, or in any later omnibus editions.

Plot[]

The series is set in the late 22nd century, as space-dwelling Asteroid Belt miners resist a tyrannical central authority while harvesting the titular seetee (a phonetic for "CT" or "contraterrene" matter, an obsolete term for 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 the 1943 story "Opposites—React!" in which a contraterrene alien artifact is discovered, and competing parties race to reach it and learn its secrets.[2] The book's plot differs somewhat from the magazine version, particularly in incorporating the speculation that time would run backwards in the neighborhood of a contraterrene object.

The 1952 comic strip Beyond Mars was based on the Seetee series.

Reviews[]

Groff Conklin gave Seetee Ship a mixed review, finding it "a good story if you can bear ploughing through pages of literary corn starch."[3] P. Schuyler Miller noted that Williamson's rewrite of the stories into a more cohesive novel was "an excellent job of unification."[4] 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."[5]

References[]

  1. ^ Seetee Ship, The Gnome Press Release. Retrieved 26 December 2017.
  2. ^ William S. Higgins, "The Road to Seetee," in Jack Williamson, Opposites—React!, Haffner Press, 2010, p. 23-24
  3. ^ "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf," Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1951, p.100
  4. ^ "The Reference Library", Astounding Science Fiction, November 1951, p.118
  5. ^ "Realm of the Spacemen", The New York Times, October 7, 1951

Sources[]

  • ISFDB listing: Seetee Ship
  • 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.
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