Opposites-- React!, the book, previously discussed here, now exists.

This is the Haffner Press chapbook for which I wrote an introduction. "Opposites-- React!" is a short 1943 novel by Jack Williamson in which asteroid miners race to gain possession of a priceless antimatter artifact. This is the original magazine version, never before reprinted. The story was subsumed in the fixup novel Seetee Ship in the Fifties, but its plot is considerably different from that of the novel.
My essay, “The Road to Seetee,” explores how antimatter, an arcane idea of 1930s quantum physics, found its way into science fiction stories, ultimately becoming a standard plaything of SF. Thirty-five footnotes included, at no extra charge. The book also includes a sequence from Beyond Mars, the space-opera comic strip by Jack Williamson and artist Lee Elias, and a short essay by Williamson about antimatter.
The chapbook was printed to bundle with a fancy slipcased edition of The Worlds of Jack Williamson, along with another chapbook, The Man from Somewhere. (Only 75 copies will be sold, so my audience will be very small. Already there are orders for the majority of the copies.) Since it's a limited edition aimed at collectors, Stephen Haffner sent me all the copies a couple of weeks ago. I stacked them on the kitchen table, signed every one, and shipped them back to Royal Oak.

For the next week, it seemed weird to sign my name on a check or a credit-card slip. Signing a book seemed, somehow, more normal.

This is the Haffner Press chapbook for which I wrote an introduction. "Opposites-- React!" is a short 1943 novel by Jack Williamson in which asteroid miners race to gain possession of a priceless antimatter artifact. This is the original magazine version, never before reprinted. The story was subsumed in the fixup novel Seetee Ship in the Fifties, but its plot is considerably different from that of the novel.
My essay, “The Road to Seetee,” explores how antimatter, an arcane idea of 1930s quantum physics, found its way into science fiction stories, ultimately becoming a standard plaything of SF. Thirty-five footnotes included, at no extra charge. The book also includes a sequence from Beyond Mars, the space-opera comic strip by Jack Williamson and artist Lee Elias, and a short essay by Williamson about antimatter.
The chapbook was printed to bundle with a fancy slipcased edition of The Worlds of Jack Williamson, along with another chapbook, The Man from Somewhere. (Only 75 copies will be sold, so my audience will be very small. Already there are orders for the majority of the copies.) Since it's a limited edition aimed at collectors, Stephen Haffner sent me all the copies a couple of weeks ago. I stacked them on the kitchen table, signed every one, and shipped them back to Royal Oak.
