Forgotten Classics: The Green Girl by Jack Williamson

SFFaudio Online Audio

Forgotten ClassicsThis week’s episode of the Forgotten Classics podcast saw the explosive conclusion of Julie Davis’ reading of the “scientific classic” The Green Girl by Jack Williamson. This short novel was one of our SFFaudio Challenge #5 audiobooks and so now Julie has won a prize (as well as our enduring respect)!

When I added The Green Girl to the challenge Rick Jackson, of Wonder Publishing described it to me as “early sense of wonder SF.” I think that’s right. I guess I knew what that meant, vaguely anyway, but now that I’ve heard it I’d suggest the fantastic events, with their grandeur of scale, are magnificently preposterous. That said, The Green Girl is never quite cartoonish as there is a reverence, if not slavishly accurate reverence, for both science and the value of scientific knowledge. It’s this that distinguishes The Green Girl from many of its contemporary pulps.

WONDER EBOOKS - The Green Girl by Jack WilliamsonThe Green Girl
By Jack Williamson; Read by Julie Davis
5 MP3 Files (Podcast) – Approx. 4 Hours 27 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Forgotten Classics
Podcast: August 2011
|PDF|EPUB|
Melvin Dane has been seeing a vision of a green girl since he was a child. Images of her came over the ether. Is she just fantasy? Or a reality that managed to cross time and space? And now, with the Earth under threat of extinction, will Melvin ever meet that girl of his dreams? With an alien force trying to bring Earth back to the Ice Age, Melvin and his foster father, scientist Sam Walden, embarked on a heroic quest to save their world. Their adventures took them from their sleepy little cottage in the beaches of Florida to the unexplored and totally unexpected world beneath the ocean. First published in the March and April 1930 issues of Amazing Stories. Later collected in 1950 as Avon Fantasy Novel #2.

Chapters 1-8 |MP3|
Chapters 9-16 |MP3|
Chapters 17-24 |MP3|
Chapters 25-29 |MP3|
Chapters 30-32 |MP3|

Podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/forgottenclassics

I’d hoped to find a copy of Amazing Stories, March 1930, in which the first half of the novel was serialized, but haven’t found one so far. If you’ve got a copy I’d love to add them below (please email me)! In the meantime, here are three scans from the April 1930 issue:

Amazing Stories April 1930 - Page 60 - The Green Girl by Jack Williamson

Amazing Stories April 1930 - Page 61 - The Green Girl by Jack Williamson

Amazing Stories April 1930 - Page 77 - The Green Girl by Jack Williamson

[Thanks again also to Rick Jackson of Wonder Ebooks where you can find plenty more vintage SF and criminally under-published crime books]

Posted by Jesse Willis