My life in books

I read "Darker Than You Think," by Jack Williamson, for the Retro Hugos, thinking to myself all the while that it really did seem too long to be a novelette, and then, lo and behold, it was disqualified because it is in fact a novella, but didn't get enough votes to be a novella finalist.

Novelette or novella, finalist or not, I was quite caught up by the story - part urban fantasy, part secret history - which sought to bring together all the myths of witches, vampires and shapeshifters into a vast and ancient conflict between two branches of humanity, one possessed of the ability to manipulate probability and matter, and the other, our more familiar sort of human. Defeated by normal humans eons ago, the shapeshifter potentials have nonetheless been carried in humanity's gene pool, and after centuries of judicious breeding, a new breed of shapeshifters is ready to rise.

The protagonist is journalist Will Barbee, once a promising archeological student who was dropped from an important project by his mentor Doctor Lamarck Mondrick and, despite remaining friends with his mentor, the other members of the team and their families, carries a certain amount of bitterness.

The story opens at an airport, where Barbee waits to cover the arrival of his mentor and the others of the team, who are returning from a long and hazardous expedition to Mongolia. Waiting with him is April Bell, a beautiful and strangely attractive reporter from a rival newspaper. After the sudden death of Mondrian during a press conference in which he speaks vaguely about a threat to true humans from a secret, ancient foe, and the coming of a Child of Night who will bring about the resurgence of this hidden enemy, Barbee feels compelled to find follow the story.

His quest uncovers things that he finds hard to believe, despite the witness of his own eyes, as he is drawn further into the mysterious world that Mondrian died trying to warn the world about. It is in some ways a fascinating study of the ability of human beings to explain away that which they do not want to believe - and to deny even to themselves the truth of what they truly want. And at the same time, Barbee's slow transformation, facilitated by the femme fatale personified in April Bell, is a compelling description of the subtle, step-by-step temptation and corruption of the soul.

I'm not sure whether the version I read was the original novella from 1940, or the later novelisation from 1948. The concept of a dark taint hidden in the human bloodline is something one associates with the casual racism of early pulp fiction by authors such as Lovecraft and Howard, while the idea of the enemy that could be hidden anywhere is a potent Cold War image. "Darker Than You Think" may well be drawing on both in its suggestion of hidden dangers close at hand, people near and known to us yet darker than we think.