Seetee Unleashed!

[beamjockey]

My article "Antimatter's science fiction debut" has appeared in the September 2008 issue of Symmetry magazine, on page 32.

Accompanying it is a "Logbook" feature displaying a carbon copy and Astounding page from Jack Williamson's first "Seetee" story, "Collision Orbit." (Logbook usually features a primary source in the progress of science, such as a page from a lab notebook, a letter, or a computer printout.)

I proposed an article, noting that an Astounding page might be used as an illustration, and Kurt Riesselmann, the managing editor, suggested that it could be the basis for a Logbook item. That's when I realized that the Jack Williamson Science Fiction Library at Eastern New Mexico University, where Jack taught for decades, has his papers. Sure enough, we were able to obtain a scan of the author's yellowing carbon copy for "Collision Orbit."



Faithful readers of this journal will recall that I began working on this last winter, reconstructing the trail through physics, astronomy, and science fiction that led to the writing of the Seetee series.

"Collision Orbit" wasn't the first SF story to feature antimatter, but it definitely put antimatter on the map. Oh, and by the way, for this story Jack Williamson coined the word "terraforming." The sequels, later collected as books, cemented "seetee" as a prop in the imagination of later SF writers.

I've put together a talk about this, "How Antimatter Became a Plaything of Science Fiction," and I'll be giving it for the first time this coming Sunday at Conclave 33 in Romulus, Michigan. It's scheduled for 11 to noon. I may be repeating the talk at other SF conventions. Catch it if you're interested.

Comments

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

Did you get your p-bar to work?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

There is no elegant solution. There are multiple inelegant solutions, though.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

That is even truer of Microsoft products than it is of life in general.

[tanac.livejournal.com]

You're so cool! :) Wish I could be there.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Don't forget to mention Dr. John D. Clark's _Minus Planet_.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I won't. You know how fond I am of Clark. Wasn't room to mention it in the article, though.

[samwinolj.livejournal.com]

Didn't Kimball Kinnison annihilate a whole planet with another planet made of something like antimatter? Seemed excessive.

I'm not sure which of the books it was... Gray Lensman? What year was that?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Yes. Four-part serial, starting in October 1939, in Astounding.

The properties of the Lensmen's Negasphere are something like antimatter, something like a black hole, and something like "negative mass" (attraction turns into repulsion). But it probably counts for the purposes of this discussion.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yes, and as I said in beamjockey's previous discussion about this, Olaf Stapledon actually riffed in 1930 on Dirac's speculation that the electron's antiparticle was the proton, and wrote about a ray weapon in Last and First Men that made them annihilate to produce total conversion of matter (the neutron hadn't been discovered yet). That's not quite antimatter as we know it, but it's got to be the earliest reference to something like it that I can think of. Still, it's not in the mainstream of SF treatment of antimatter the way Jack Williamson's stories were.

[forestweather.livejournal.com]

Great article, Bill! Always enjoy explanations that make sense to this non-scientific SF-reader.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

cool!

Another variation...

[(Anonymous)]

I recall a story titled "the Pen and The Dark (apparently by Colin Knapp), which dealt with a more negaspheric-type version of what they called "contraterrene" matter (and energy), which annihilated their counterparts without residue. Depressing ending....