YOBC

Jack Williamson and Dead Star Station April 18, 2012

Stout doesn't read, but he should.

As some of you may remember, those of you without long-term memory damage, Jack Williamson and his short story Dead Star Station was part of January’s Vintage Scifi Month.

Yeah, I finally got around to it. My trusty library had a copy of Jack Williamson’s older works. Lady Darkcargo put together a very cool post about Williamson and the desert earlier this year. I read a total of three tales: Dead Star Station, The Metal Man, and The Girl from Mars.

I enjoyed each of these stories because the characters were flawed in some way, making them realistic and human. I could relate to them. The Metal Man mostly takes the form of a letter to a friend about his escapades in trying to locate a radium-bearing minerals at a place called El Rio de la Sangre. He comes across a peculiar place where all sorts of beasts through the age have been turned into metal. He himself manages to escape, but with a price. The Girl from Mars was a fun tale of basically having a testtube kit crash into your back yard; inside are instructions on how to grow your own Martian. Haha! I wish – I would have so much fun with that. Dead Star Station has an older, geeky gentleman with a lisp as our savior and hero. I enjoyed this story the most out of the three.

This particular collection had an intro on the author’s life and then each story had a tidbit from the author on why and how he came up with the tale. A worthy read indeed.