Darker Than You Think

Originally written at the very end of the 1930s and published in 1948, this is a remarkable dream-like (or rather nightmarish) paranoid fantasy about were-people taking over the world - it is also very sexy in that subdued way of the mid-twentieth century.

I can imagine this being filmed in 'noir', a greyscale of airports, small town life, redheads in apartments, cocktail bars and insane asylums, with the 'dream' or 'madness' or 'enhanced existence' sequences (it is not clear what they are and I will not spoil your own conclusions) in vivid technicolour.

The 'dream' sequences (let's leave it at that to make it simple) are embedded in the sort of psychoanalytic and scientific narrative that you might expect in a book of this era but they show more are 'darker than you think'.

Perhaps this is another example of one of my review themes - the unintended consequences of books since 'evil', in many ways conventionally presented, looks as if it is a damned attractive option here.

The narrative, drawn from the dark adventure tradition of the weird pulps, allows the 'dreams' to explore the link between freedom, sex and violence in a way that may still be repressed at core but which surges into the psyche regardless, certainly the male psyche.

Riding the ether as a wild beast in the accompany of a sexy were-wolf to slate your desires without conscience and defy common materiality scarcely seems like something to be avoided for most young red-blooded males.

The noir eroticism of Jacques Tourneur's 'Cat People' (1942) springs to mind here and there are similarities that suggest that Williamson was absorbing some of the story, either directly or by report.

Like the unintended consequences of the anti-pagan 'Wicker Man' in creating the English neo-pagan mentality, this book influenced Jack Parsons' vision of the scarlet woman in his Babalon Rising experiment, extending the fantastic into new forms that were surely equally unintended by the scientifically minded Williamson.

I have a bad habit of always positioning a text in its time against all the rules of the deconstructionists - it may be invented by me to a great extent but it is also something created out of a time and place. In this case, the time and place is an America of suppressed psychological violence and distrust.

The publication (though not the core drafting) appeared in a paranoid America not only terrified of the enemy within (the 'Reds') but of the beast within (mollified only partially by psychotherapeutic nostrums that were not always to be taken at face value).

Williamson did not go to war but was a late career academic (the 'literariness' of the text shows through sometimes) who made the transition from Merritt-influenced popular fantasy to this 'noir' realism through his own psychotherapeutic journey.

However, the 'mentality' of the book may well have tapped into the confusion of younger men who returned in 1945 to a world that was apparently ordered and modern but which merely repressed the fact that they had been permitted to be 'beasts' under state sanction.

The connection between the paranoid America of the McCarthy era and the fact that the 'beasts' had come home and needed to be reintegrated has perhaps never been looked at in any depth but Cold War paranoia may have been an ordering catharsis.

In other words, what we see as the 'evil' of McCarthyism today could have looked like the 'lesser evil' against threats in a war and this book reflects that mentality.

We have here a ruthless war of species, fought below the radar screen of an unwitting populace, and the final form of the book may have subconsciously reflected similar paranoid fears elsewhere in America.

Certainly, this book might be read in this way as part of a total culture of 'noir' distrust that originated well before the war.

The fantastic imagination has turned inwards, although Williamson was also a highly regarded science fiction writer and could also look 'outwards', to deal with the psychological fragility below apparent conformity.

There are references to a were-blood in our species that is at the root of war and violence and of selective breeding and eugenics that might well reflect popular interpretations of national socialist ideology so the analysis is not fanciful.

However, current and recent events, other than standard small town political fare, are signally absent with the back story being something straight out of Merritt's world of the 1920s.

Perhaps, the very lack of reference to 'big events' suggests denial or displacement as a strategy, especially in a book that relies heavily on popularised Freudianism but you may be the final judge of that.

Nevertheless, though not perfect, the book is a masterpiece of fantasy horror. Anyone who is a habitue of the dark fantasy shelves in their local bookshop (if any survive) may get great pleasure from a book that is one of the founding texts of the genre.

I will not say anything further of the story line or characterisation (though much could be said) because the book depends on a degree of suspense. Let us just say that it may be 'darker than you (first) think'. show less

This book is to the werewolf story what "I Am Legend" is to the vampire story. That is high praise and I enjoyed this book immensely.

The intermingled themes of folklore, anthropology, Indiana-Jonesesque archeology, quantum physics, pulp-noir detective, witchcraft, psychological and supernatural murder are handled expertly. As has been said by another reviewer, it is more a story of shapeshifters than a classic werewolf tale.

Settle down with this book and a hot drink, but first check the doors and windows are locked - not that that would protect you!

This novel is about a human learning that he is non-human. In a contemporary genre story, this would mean he or she would be a teenager discovering that he or she was a wizard or a shapeshifter or a vampire or whatever. This is not a contemporary genre story. This was published very shortly after World War II. And the hero - rather, anti-hero - isn't a pretty young geek, he is a thirty-year-old loser and a drunk who prefers to believe for most of the novel that he is either dreaming or going mad - better than the reality.

Biggest surprise, this is an early example of a genre-blender. Williamson uses monster types out of the Universal Studios template but he re-invents them through hard SF ideas of his day. He powers his witch people not show more with occultism but with Heisenberg uncertainty. Their evil plan is based on Mendel. They cover their tracks with psychotherapy; nice touch, that. His would-be heroes find their would-be weapons by imitating Roy Chapman Andrews.

Williamson like other urban fantasists has to deal with reality and fantasy. He is very good with both. In the real world, you can almost smell the stink of the anti-hero's fear and the sour whiskey on his breath. In the world of dreams, he made me see the white wolf bitch entering through a door (literally) and the nude redhead riding on the sabre-toothed tiger. Great image, huh?
Williamson used a femme fatale, April Bell, a red-haired vixen whom I can imagine a young Gillian Anderson playing. She is also very necessary for someone has to do the explicating and someone has to energize the sodden hero into finding his destiny. Their relationship isn't explicit, at least by our standards, but it has more heat than Bella Swann's passion for her Edward. show less

I loved this story! DARKER THAN YOU THINK, by Jack Williamson, is a classic old-school shapeshifter novel originally published in the 1940s.
Will Barbee is an alcoholic newspaper writer, who goes to greet his ex-colleagues at the airport after they have been digging for artifacts in Mongolia for two years. Something isn’t right and the lead researcher dies on the tarmac before he can make a big announcement.
Barbee wants to find out why the researcher was murdered and before long more people are murdered, only it seems to Barbee that it was HE who murdered the other ones in his dreams. He thinks it may be the alcohol fueling these incredible dreams. Is he really responsible for these killings? What does the red-haired woman have to do show more with all of this? Who are his friends and who shouldn’t he trust? The writing of Barbee's internal turmoil is great.
The novel sounds very much like something written in the 1940s – I could visualize it being a black and white film as I was reading. This made it just that much more wonderful to read!
Any horror fan would appreciate this early rendition of a vampire/shapeshifter story. Williamson won many awards over his writing career, including a Grand Master Nebula and a Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award.
This is a book that will stay in my library. I also recommend his story, THE HUMANOIDS. show less

[3 and 1/2 stars]
Tautly-plotted and with some clever techno-babble that explains the science behind its shapeshifter antagonists, this book would have sat as easily within the SF Masterworks series as the Fantasy Masterworks, I think. While it must have been fairly ground-breaking when it came out, reading it in 2013 feels like going back over some very well-trodden ground indeed, and I figured out pretty much all of the plot "twists" in advance. There are also some disturbing elements of "yay for the Inquisition!", and the protagonist is breathtakingly, irritatingly stupid at times. However, It's aged fairly well in some other respects: there are some genuine elements of horror and nasty (though not too explicit) violence, the female show more characters are given a reasonable degree of agency and personality; the author is excellent at conveying the murky sense of paranoia winding itself around the protagonist; and I have to give him kudos for not descending into the purple prose that so many books of this type tend to. show less

Read as part of the Retro Hugo Voters' Packet - although it was disqualified as a nominee: "The finalist “Darker Than You Think” by Jack Williamson was mistakenly categorized as a novelette. The story is a novella, but did not receive enough nominations to be a finalist as a novella."

Personally, I'd say this is definitely an actual novel - the pacing and structure give it that feel. It's really not that short, either.

Wait... ah-ha!

"Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson, originally a novelette, was expanded into novel length and published by Fantasy Press in 1948. The short version was published in Unknown in 1940."

I'm pretty sure that I actually read the 1948 novel-length version. (Because it kept not-ending. Not that it really show more dragged on, but I thought I was reading a short piece, and I wasn't...)

Either way, I thought this would've made a great 1970's or 1960's horror film. It would sit on the shelf comfortably next to The Wicker Man and Rosemary's Baby.

Journalist Will Barbee is ready to meet the returning members of an expedition to far-off lands. He's sure that he'll get the scoop on whatever their discoveries were, because it just so happens that he was college friends with the researchers. However, while waiting for them to meet the press, he finds himself next to a young woman, April Bell, who introduces herself as a budding journalist and is eager for him to give her professional tips. Barbee feels an intense mix of attraction and mysterious repulsion regarding the young woman. The press conference ends up being prevented due to a shocking tragedy - and Barbee's feelings toward April begin to include a suspicion that she might somehow be guilty of a terrible crime. That doesn't stop him from asking her out to dinner, though.

As events progress, we learn that whatever ancient secrets or artifacts were discovered on the expedition may be a threat to a modern cult of witches or other supernatural beings. Against his will, Barbee is drawn into diabolical doings...

Not bad; glad I read it.

I wouldn't have voted for it to win a Hugo, however, mainly because it's horror and not speculative fiction. show less

Read as part of the Retro Hugo Voters' Packet - although it was disqualified as a nominee: "The finalist “Darker Than You Think” by Jack Williamson was mistakenly categorized as a novelette. The story is a novella, but did not receive enough nominations to be a finalist as a novella."

Personally, I'd say this is definitely an actual novel - the pacing and structure give it that feel. It's really not that short, either.

Wait... ah-ha!

"Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson, originally a novelette, was expanded into novel length and published by Fantasy Press in 1948. The short version was published in Unknown in 1940."

I'm pretty sure that I actually read the 1948 novel-length version. (Because it kept not-ending. Not that it really show more dragged on, but I thought I was reading a short piece, and I wasn't...)

Either way, I thought this would've made a great 1970's or 1960's horror film. It would sit on the shelf comfortably next to The Wicker Man and Rosemary's Baby.

Journalist Will Barbee is ready to meet the returning members of an expedition to far-off lands. He's sure that he'll get the scoop on whatever their discoveries were, because it just so happens that he was college friends with the researchers. However, while waiting for them to meet the press, he finds himself next to a young woman, April Bell, who introduces herself as a budding journalist and is eager for him to give her professional tips. Barbee feels an intense mix of attraction and mysterious repulsion regarding the young woman. The press conference ends up being prevented due to a shocking tragedy - and Barbee's feelings toward April begin to include a suspicion that she might somehow be guilty of a terrible crime. That doesn't stop him from asking her out to dinner, though.

As events progress, we learn that whatever ancient secrets or artifacts were discovered on the expedition may be a threat to a modern cult of witches or other supernatural beings. Against his will, Barbee is drawn into diabolical doings...

Not bad; glad I read it.

I wouldn't have voted for it to win a Hugo, however, mainly because it's horror and not speculative fiction. show less