John Stewart Williamson was born on April 29, 1908 in Brisbee, in what was then called the Arizona territory, in the USA. At the beginning of his career, Jack Williamson was influenced mainly by Abraham Merritt but was also impressed by the works of Miles J. Breuer and decided to contact him. The two of them ended up collaborating and published together works such as “The Girl from Mars” in 1929 and “Birth of a New Republic” in 1931.
In 1947 Jack Williamson published the novelette “With Folded Hands”. The concepts were expanded and developed somewhat differently in the novel “The Humanoids” (1949). The author wrote another sequel many years later, “The Humanoid Touch” (1980).
In the 1950s, Jack Williamson began a collaboration with his fellow writer Frederik Pohl. The two of them published several novels, in particular the Starchild trilogy: “The Reefs of Space” (1964), “Starchild” (1965) and “Rogue Star” (1969).
In 2001 Jack Williamson published the novella “The Ultimate Earth”, winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards. He’s the oldest writer to win those awards in any category. His last novel, “The Stonehenge Gate”, was published in 2005.
Jack Williamson died on November 10, 2006. In almost 80 years of activity he went through many phases of the evolution of science fiction, adapting to new things and managing to maintain a freshness in his works. He was a truly prolific and long-lived author who marked decades of science fiction.
