Using the panel discussions of the most
recent World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City in August 2016 (to which
I was invited and had a friend pay my membership! [Thanks, Paul!] but was
unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail
against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy
of the Program Guide. This is event #1240. The link is provided below…
The Legacy of John W. Campbell, Jr.
As author, he wrote the story that inspired The Thing. As
editor he wrote the rules for an entire genre. But Campbell also has
connections to dianetics, the investigation of psychic phenomena and
antigravity devices. An understanding of his life and career may help us make
sense of the genre today. Joe Haldeman, Sheila Williams, James Bryant
I was fourteen
when John W. Campbell, Jr. died. He wouldn’t have known me from a wall, and
likely wouldn’t have given me the time of day had I asked him directly. But his
influence on my life has lasted some 46 years…
I started reading ANALOG,
as near as I can tell, with the September 1970 issue and, ironically, by
reading Stanley Schmidt’s “Lost Newton”. I was thirteen and for the next couple
of years, without knowing that I was reading the work of a man who would
abruptly pass away in the near future, I read dozens of stories of the far
future. I read the magazine for the next…well, nearly a half century and
counting!
The hook was set,
and I read ANALOG from then to the present. Because of Campbell’s unwitting
introduction to the genre, I started sending stories to ANALOG when I was
sixteen…and got rejections from the editors of ANALOG…until (note the “ironically”
above? Here’s the irony:) in early 1996, I sold my first story to the editor of
the magazine. His name was Stanley Schmidt. I was 39 and a middle school
teacher. When my wife called and read me the brief note saying he accepted “Absolute
Limits”, a Probability Zero-length story, I wept. I wrote three more PZs, a
short story published in 2004, and in my immediate future, another short story
that will not only be in the January/February 2017 issue, but will also have a
two-page illustration! A first for me.
I am a part of the
train of readers and eventually writers whom John W. Campbell, Jr. carried from
the dawn of the space age.
I was born in May
of 1957, a few months before Russian Sputnik started orbiting Earth; I read my
first science fiction when I was in 6th grade (so 11 years old when
I started, 12 when I was done in 1969); then Humanity landed on the Moon on
July 21 that same year. A year later, I started to read ANALOG.
This would have been
a great discussion. Campbell’s fascination with the non-science fiction aside –
or perhaps because of – made him a huge figure in the science fiction world. He’s
credited with “discovering” and nurturing men whose influence is still felt in
the field: “Lester del Rey, A. E. van Vogt, Robert A. Heinlein, and Theodore
Sturgeon…Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and eventually
became a friend.” While his increasingly exotic interests – psi, dianetics, and
his views on the “place” of blacks in American society – alienated him from not
only mainstream society but also much of the science fiction community in his
last years, it is undeniable that he left a profound mark on the field.
From 1969 through
1971, I was oblivious to the politics in science fiction. Initially, ANALOG
entered my life only through our public library. Because of his push, I still
prefer hard science fiction to every other shade of the field; and while he had
a powerful interest in fantasy, I read only novel-length in that genre, and
ONLY at the direction of my daughter! I write almost exclusively SF, though I
confess I dabble in fantasy now and then.
Ultimately, the
mark John W. Campbell, Jr. left on me through the writers he worked with and
the direction he sent ANALOG is both undeniable and upon startled reflection, most
likely to be permanent.
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