John W. Campbell
John Wood Campbell Jr. (June 8, 1910 – July 11, 1971) was an American science fiction writer and editor. He was editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later called Analog Science Fiction and Fact) from late 1937 until his death and was part of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Campbell wrote super-science space opera under his own name and stories under his primary pseudonym, Don A. Stuart. Campbell also used the pen names Karl Van Kampen and Arthur McCann.[1] His novella Who Goes There? was adapted as the films The Thing from Another World (1951), The Thing (1982), and The Thing (2011).
For the American financier, see John W. Campbell (financier). For other people, see John Campbell (disambiguation).
John W. Campbell
John Wood Campbell Jr.
June 8, 1910
Newark, New Jersey, U.S.
July 11, 1971 (aged 61)
Mountainside, New Jersey, U.S.
Don A. Stuart
Magazine editor, writer
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (no degree)
Duke University (BS, physics, 1934)
1930–1971
Campbell began writing science fiction at age 18 while attending MIT. He published six short stories, one novel, and eight letters in the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories from 1930 to 1931. This work established Campbell's reputation as a writer of space adventure. When in 1934 he began to write stories with a different tone, he wrote as Don A. Stuart. From 1930 until 1937, Campbell was prolific and successful under both names; he stopped writing fiction shortly after he became editor of Astounding in 1937.
It is as editor of Astounding Science Fiction from late 1937 until his death for which Campbell is primarily remembered today. In 1939, Campbell started the fantasy magazine Unknown, which was canceled after only four years. Referring to his time spent as an editor, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction states: "More than any other individual, he helped to shape modern sf."[2] Isaac Asimov called Campbell "the most powerful force in science fiction ever" and said the "first ten years of his editorship he dominated the field completely."[3] In his capacity as an editor, Campbell published some of the very earliest work, and helped shape the careers of virtually every important science-fiction author to debut between 1938 and 1946, including Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and Arthur C. Clarke.
An increasingly strong interest in pseudoscience later alienated Campbell from Asimov.[4] In the 1960s, Campbell's controversial essays supporting segregation, and other remarks and writings surrounding slavery and race, served to distance him from many in the science fiction community.[5][6] Nevertheless, Campbell remained an important figure in science fiction publishing up until his death. Campbell and Astounding shared one of the inaugural Hugo Awards with H. L. Gold and Galaxy at the 1953 World Science Fiction Convention. Subsequently, Campbell and Astounding won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor seven additional times as well as winning the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine four times. Campbell and Analog won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine yet another four times and Campbell's novella Who Goes There? also won a Hugo Award for Best Novella, bringing his total award count to seventeen.
Shortly after his death in 1971, the University of Kansas science fiction program established the annual John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and also renamed its annual Campbell Conference after him. The World Science Fiction Society established the annual John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, since renamed the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Campbell in 1996, in its inaugural class of two deceased and two living persons.
Assessment by peers[edit]
Damon Knight described Campbell as a "portly, bristled-haired blond man with a challenging stare".[52] "Six-foot-one, with hawklike features, he presented a formidable appearance," said Sam Moskowitz.[53] "He was a tall, large man with light hair, a beaky nose, a wide face with thin lips, and with a cigarette in a holder forever clamped between his teeth", wrote Asimov.[54]
Algis Budrys wrote that "John W. Campbell was the greatest editor SF has seen or is likely to see, and is in fact one of the major editors in all English-language literature in the middle years of the twentieth century. All about you is the heritage of what he built".[55]
Asimov said that Campbell was "talkative, opinionated, quicksilver-minded, overbearing. Talking to him meant listening to a monologue..."[54] Knight agreed: "Campbell's lecture-room manner was so unpleasant to me that I was unwilling to face it. Campbell talked a good deal more than he listened, and he liked to say outrageous things."[56]
British novelist and critic Kingsley Amis dismissed Campbell brusquely: "I might just add as a sociological note that the editor of Astounding, himself a deviant figure of marked ferocity, seems to think he has invented a psi machine."[57]
Several science-fiction novelists have criticized Campbell as prejudiced – Samuel R. Delany for Campbell's rejection of a novel due to the black main character,[36] and Joe Haldeman in the dedication of Forever Peace, for rejecting a novel due to a female soldier protagonist.
British science-fiction novelist Michael Moorcock, as part of his "Starship Stormtroopers" editorial, said Campbell's Astounding and its writers were "wild-eyed paternalists to a man, fierce anti-socialists" with "[stories] full of crew-cut wisecracking, cigar-chewing, competent guys (like Campbell's image of himself)"; they sold magazines because their "work reflected the deep-seated conservatism of the majority of their readers, who saw a Bolshevik menace in every union meeting". He viewed Campbell as turning the magazine into a vessel for right-wing politics, "by the early 1950s ... a crypto-fascist deeply philistine magazine pretending to intellectualism and offering idealistic kids an 'alternative' that was, of course, no alternative at all".[6]
SF writer Alfred Bester, an editor of Holiday Magazine and a sophisticated Manhattanite, recounted at some length his "one demented meeting" with Campbell, a man he imagined from afar to be "a combination of Bertrand Russell and Ernest Rutherford". The first thing Campbell said to him was that Freud was dead, destroyed by the new discovery of Dianetics, which, he predicted, would win L. Ron Hubbard the Nobel Peace Prize. Campbell ordered the bemused Bester to "think back. Clear yourself. Remember! You can remember when your mother tried to abort you with a button hook. You've never stopped hating her for it." Bester commented: "It reinforced my private opinion that a majority of the science-fiction crowd, despite their brilliance, were missing their marbles."[58]
After 1950, Theodore Sturgeon only published one story in Astounding but dozens in other magazines.[59]
Asimov remained grateful for Campbell's early friendship and support. He dedicated The Early Asimov (1972) to him, and concluded it by stating that "There is no way at all to express how much he meant to me and how much he did for me except, perhaps, to write this book evoking, once more, those days of a quarter century ago".[60] His final word on Campbell was that "in the last twenty years of his life, he was only a diminishing shadow of what he had once been."[4] Even Heinlein, perhaps Campbell's most important discovery and a "fast friend",[61] tired of him.[62][63]
Poul Anderson wrote that Campbell "had saved and regenerated science fiction", which had become "the product of hack pulpsters" when he took over Astounding. "By his editorial policies and the help and encouragement he gave his writers (always behind the scenes), he raised both the literary and the intellectual standard anew. Whatever progress has been made stems from that renaissance".[64]
Awards and honors[edit]
Shortly after Campbell's death, the University of Kansas science fiction program—now the Center for the Study of Science Fiction—established the annual John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and also renamed after him its annual Campbell Conference. The World Science Fiction Society established the annual John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. All three memorials became effective in 1973. However, following Jeannette Ng's August 2019 acceptance speech of the award for Best New Writer at Worldcon 77, in which she criticized Campbell's politics and called him a fascist, the publishers of Analog magazine announced that the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer would immediately be renamed to "The Astounding Award for Best New Writer".[65]
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Campbell in 1996, in its inaugural class of two deceased and two living persons.[66]
Campbell and Astounding shared one of the inaugural Hugo Awards with H. L. Gold and Galaxy at the 1953 World Science Fiction Convention. Subsequently, he won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine seven times to 1965.[67] In 2018, he won a retrospective Hugo Award for Best Editor, Short Form (1943).[68]
The Martian impact crater Campbell was named after him.[69]
Nevala-Lee, Alec. "Astounding" 2018. Morrow/Dey Street. ISBN 9780062571946