Customer Reviews

Darker Than You Think

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm very happy to see Tor return an old favorite of mine to print -- Jack Williamson's novel of shapeshifters, witches and the seductive power of evil. I don't use the term "classic" lightly, but DARKER THAN YOU THINK certainly deserves it.

Yes, the book's pulp origins are apparent. But modern readers should not let it distract them from this dynamic and highly original novel (which includes some great plot-twists that must have been very shocking in the 40's).

My only complaint with this new edition is the cover, which is pretty darn ugly. However, the book does contain David G. Klein's black and white illustrations from the 1980's Bluejay edition, which is a nice bonus.

The most pleasant surprise about "Darker Than You Think" for me is how NOT-dated it was. When I realized that it was a reprinting of a novel from the 1940's, I kind of expected the writing style to reflect its age. Not that 60 years is a LONG time in the writing world, but I have read other novels that practically screamed "Hey! I was written in the 1970's!" and so on. There was some jargon and lingo that was dated, and the newspaper was clearly NOT run in the computerized world. But other than that, this novel could ALMOST have been written this year.

My favorite element was probably the loose interpretation of lycanthropy. I wasn't as crazy about the use of the law of probability and such, but it was cool seeing one individual being able to turn into a wolf AND a saber tooth tiger AND a snake and so on. The explanation behind this was new and interesting, not quite like any other horror novel I have ever read.

The one thing about the writing style that DID bug me was the constant "shivering" by the main character. That and his flip flopping attitude about humanity versus the monster. For the first part, once the real "horror" of the plot started to unfold, the guy was CONSTANTLY "shivering" in horror or "shuddering" in fear, and let's not forget "gasping" words such as "Huh." By the end of the book, I think one of those words was used at least once per page. As for the flip flopping, he would embrace the monsters, then he would rebel on behalf of his human friends, then he would embrace the monsters again, then he would rebel. And on and on. It got a little tiring.

BUT ... looking past those two elements, I enjoyed the novel quite a lot. It is definitely a worthy read.

It is great to have this pulp classic (first published in the pages of "Unknown" in the early forties and expanded in 1947) back in print. This is the best in "epic horror"; every chapter has a new suprise, a new shock, a new monster -- but Williamson keeps it all together in his focus on a tortured and confused protagonist, caught between his friends and his confusing "lust". Although supposedly a werewolf novel, the author expands the story into a titanic struggle of humanity and the dark unknown, a struggle that lasts through all time and infects all of us. Impossible to put down, and worth it for the surprising emotional climax that reverses all conventions of horror (at least as horror was known then). Get it now!

A chance encounter is about to lead Will Barbee into a confrontation with ancient evil. It will change him forever. This wonderfully inventive novel will twist your expectations, with writing that remains fresh despite its pulp magazine origins. There are many marvels to be found herein, and enough action to put most Hollywood blockbusters to shame. It remains my favorite novel of shapechangers (not strictly werewolves, since the characters can change into snakes, sabre-tooth tigers and even pterosaurs), and a book that desperately needs to come back into print. I'd give it 10 stars if I could!

I've avoided writing a review of Darker Than You Think for an awfully long while. My reason is that I find it difficult to separate the novel from the time I first read it and the kind, helpful man who wrote it. I read this book during the early 1950s because I admired and respected Jack Williamson as a man and a bit of a mentor for a youngster aspiring to be a writer.

During the intervening years I've read the book several times. Sometimes I've found 'mistakes' in his science distracting. Other times I've been slightly put off by implications of the plot I missed as a youngster.

I believe this book can be read and enjoyed strictly as a novel, as a demonstration of early years of SF, as a fun read to pique the not-too-skeptical imagination. As an indicator of Williamson's philosophy, of the power of 'dark forces' of the universe, a reader would be looking too far, too deep. Such thinking would be an anachronism, would have made Jack's life unbearable in the small, evangelical Christian town where we lived.

Read this book for fun and enjoy it.

The book, The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men, led me to this novel. There just aren't that many great werewolf novels out there (as the introduction attests) and this is one of the better examples. It is a good book, but I don't know if I would really describe it as a "werewolf novel." It is certainly a variation on the theme. People do turn into wolves in this story, but they turn into any animal they choose. Also, it is not so much a transformation as simply choosing an animal avatar that becomes real while the "actual" person sleeps. It is more a book about witchcraft with a pseudo-scientific explanation.

I did have a few problems with the text. The writing feels a bit dated. You just know that the "good guys" are going to do the wrong thing at every turn because the plot calls for it. Mainly though - it has a weak protagonist. Will Barbee doesn't seem to have any will of his own and is simply the pawn in other people's schemes.

Jack Williamson's "Darker Than You Think" is a one-shot horror-novel excursion for this science fiction Grand Master, but has nonetheless been described as not only the author's finest work, but also one of the best treatments of the werewolf in modern literature. It has been chosen for inclusion in David Pringle's overview volume "Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels" ("a relatively disciplined and thoughtful work," Pringle writes, in comparing it to the author's earlier space operas) as well as in Jones & Newman's "Horror: Another 100 Best Books" ("the most unique and original take written on...lycanthropy," illustrator Randy Broecker tells us). The novel originally appeared in a "short," 48,000-word form in the December 1940 issue of "Unknown" magazine (the fantasy sister of "Astounding Science-Fiction"), and was later expanded by the author for a 1948 book edition. Though dealing with werewolves, the novel presents us with a very different sort of monster than readers of earlier horror tales and viewers of Universal horror pictures were perhaps accustomed to. Williamson's werewolves are actually shape shifters, capable of becoming wolves or any other creature that strikes their fancy. Roaming at night, free of their corporeal bodies and invisible to human eyes, they have existed since the first Ice Age and for thousands of years dominated prehistoric Homo sapiens. Hidden and desperate by the mid-20th century, they await their so-called Black Messiah, the Child of Night, who will lead them to their long-awaited reconquest of man.

But "Darker Than You Think" (a strangely unsatisfying title for me, somehow; "Child of Night" might have been preferable) is mainly the story of Will Barbee, an alcoholic newspaperman living in the fictitious city of Clarendon (somewhere in the southeast U.S., I infer). Barbee meets a ravishing fellow reporter, April Bell, whilst covering a story at the Clarendon airport. Professor Mondrick and his three young colleagues, all old friends of Barbee, have just returned from the Gobi Desert with news of a monumental discovery. But as Mondrick and the others begin to die one by one over the course of the next few days, in exact conformity with some rather bizarre dreams of Barbee's--in which he assumes the forms of a wolf, a saber-toothed tiger and a giant constrictor, alongside April Bell--the befuddled reporter must riddle out what is real and what, if anything, is fantasy. It is not a simple thing for me to write about this novel's story line without giving away any of the book's many surprises, and indeed, perhaps I have already said too much. Suffice it to say that poor Barbee is thrown into an increasingly noirish and nightmare-filled world, and that Williamson keeps the suspense quotient ratcheted very high. Though not a science fiction novel per se, the author does manage to come up with a scientific explanation for the shape shifters' powers that invokes such disparate subjects as the Rhine experiments at Duke University and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Williamson's background history of "Homo lycanthropus" is equally fascinating, incorporating ancient mythology, 15th century mass murderer Gilles de Rais and even Joan of Arc. As compared to Williamson's sci-fi output of the '30s, "Darker Than You Think" is certainly more elegantly written, and the author shows a much greater control over his descriptions and dialogue. The novel gets increasingly, uh, hairy as it progresses, with each chapter revealing some stunning surprise or shocking plot development. It is an extremely accomplished melding of fantasy, horror, sci-fi and pulp noir, and really almost a perfect novel. (The author does make a few flubs in the book, such as when he has a hungover Barbee thinking of the rum he had consumed the night before, when in actuality he had been drinking rum daiquiris TWO nights before.) I cannot say for certain whether or not this is Williamson's finest novel (I have only read a half dozen or so from this author's huge ouevre, which spans almost an 80-year period!), but it sure is a mighty gripping read that will undoubtedly appeal to any fan of those four genres just mentioned. The werewolves on display here make Lawrence Talbot seem like a weenie, and that's surely no easy task! More than highly recommended!

A reporter named Barbee uncovers a murder, and a plot that goes deeper and deeper after meeting a bewitching woman named April.

He soon discovers that the pair of them are shapeshifters, with the ability to alter probability by the use of floating mental webs. These sorts of people are a result of speciation in the icy mountain region of the Gobi.

Eventually, they ruled the globe, until man domesticated the dog as an ally and knew enough to know that silver disrupts these mental webs. They are the source for most of the legends about monsters, gods and supernatural beings like werewolves and vampires.

Now, there are no full bloods left, and hundreds of recessive genes must express themselves to get
such a being. He will be known as the Child of Night.

A group of his friends know about this, which is why they removed him from their presence, but they are dying, one by one.

It's sad that this has been unavailable for a while. This fantasy tale from one of the SF giants is very plainly from its time period, but nevertheless has aged well, and continues to entertain. Williamson manages to maintain a balance in the struggle between good and evil that doesn't grate yet keeps one on edge.

A not-so-successful journalist meets a dazzlingly fasvcinating young colleague at the airport: a scientific anthropological exoedition returns with a disquieting breaktrough about ancient human history. "Disquieting" would prove quite an euphemism, as events unfolds and the horrible truth becomes clear. Owing something to the Lovecraftians "The Outsider" and "The shadow over Innsmouth", this novel has a quite modern approach to horror, albeit having being written in 1948. Very interesting!