5 ms·

John W. Campbell, a chief architect of science fiction's Golden Age

50 points by Hooke 8y ago

bouvin 8y ago
Extra Credit in their series on the history of science fiction did a rather good episode on his influence, for good and for bad: https://youtu.be/Ctpvd2VvukQ https://youtu.be/Ctpvd2VvukQ
seszett 8y ago
For people in the EU, who are blocked by latimes.com, the content is available on archive.is: http://archive.is/FTAz5 http://archive.is/FTAz5
ASipos 8y ago
For a long time, I thought he and Joseph Campbell were the same person (as in "the mentor of Asimov, the one with the hero's journey").
- deleted 8y ago
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eesmith 8y ago
The article barely touches on Campbell's racism, bringing it up only in the context of being an "angry old man" in the 1960s. To give another example, he rejected a story by Samuel R. Delany in 1967 - https://www.nyrsf.com/racism-and-science-fiction-.html https://www.nyrsf.com/racism-and-science-fiction-.html : > ... with a note and phone call to my agent explaining that he didn’t feel his readership would be able to relate to a black main character. That was one of my first direct encounters, as a professional writer, with the slippery and always commercialized form of liberal American prejudice: Campbell had nothing against my being black, you understand. (There reputedly exists a letter from him to horror writer Dean Koontz, from only a year or two later, in which Campbell argues in all seriousness that a technologically advanced black civilization is a social and a biological impossibility. . . .). No, perish the thought! Surely there was not a prejudiced bone in his body! It’s just that I had, by pure happenstance, chosen to write about someone whose mother was from Senegal (and whose father was from Norway), and it was the poor benighted readers, out there in America’s heartland, who, in 1967, would be too upset. . . . But he was a racist all his life. You ever wonder why the 'Golden Age' SF almost all has white men as the main character, with humans almost always winning over aliens? It's in part because his big influence on SF caused his racism to permeate the stories I read and enjoyed as a kid. Here's a paraphrase from Asimov (Campbell, btw, felt that Jews were a superior species of human), quoted at https://andrewhickey.info/2017/08/09/the-prometheans-wheels-within-wheels/ https://andrewhickey.info/2017/08/09/the-prometheans-wheels-... : > Campbell’s racist views had a stifling effect on his writers even in the 1940s – Asimov said that one reason his stories never featured aliens was because Campbell would always insist that humans were superior to aliens, because he couldn’t cope with a worldview where white American men weren’t the best, so the left-leaning Asimov just didn’t write stories with aliens in, to avoid the problem. Heinlein's 1941 "Sixth Column" was an idea originally developed by Campbell. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Race : > The idea for the story was pushed on Heinlein by editor John W. Campbell, and Heinlein wrote later that he had "had to re-slant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line" and that he did not "consider it to be an artistic success."
- Ensorceled 8y ago
  Yeah, the word racism/racist does not appear a single time. Given how much Campbell warped early SF with his views ...
- scandox 8y ago
  I have to agree. His racism is critical to understanding both his work and also his editorial impact. Just as with Lovecraft, it's not some incidental factor, but actually central to who they are and what they did. In Lovecraft I think the racism fuels something remarkable (an argument for another day I suspect). In Campbell I think it is a terrible influence. I can enjoy Who Goes There, or Twilight...but his emphasis on physiogonomy, ideals of male beauty and his extrapolation of a seemingly perfect now into forever always struck me as mildly ludicrous. I suspect he could have been a much better writer if he wasn't hung up on that rubbish.
- imglorp 8y ago
  Not to condone his views, but we have to remember the societal context. Racism as a concept that needed a word was barely present in the early 60s [1], until then it was completely normal and expected by everyone. Bus desegregation wasn't until 1956. "I Have a Dream" was 63. Blacks couldn't vote until 1965. We might find it surprising now, but if he had written about an integrated community then, readers would have been shocked. Now, for us, it serves as a valuable window into past culture. On a similar note, Roddenberry's Star Trek was 1966 - featuring aliens and--more shocking: Russians--cooperating. They received flak for that but HE was visionary. 1. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=racism&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cracism%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=racism&year_st...
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men -- digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave -- we are called upon to prove that we are men? Frederick Douglass, 1852 http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/douglass.htm http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/douglass.htm (I don't know his works well, I just searched and read...1 of them)
bsenftner 8y ago
As a avid reader, some would say obsessive, I have never respected the work of John Campbell. His science fiction simply feels naive and implausible, composed of technological awe that would not exist in a real situation. His writing always struck me as childish, and the members of my book club (during elementary, where I was the only kid in a club of adults) warned me of his racism, so it was easy ti disregard him. After all, there is much better SF than his kiddie wow.
- stan_rogers 8y ago
  He also went hook, line and sinker for Hubbard's Dianetics nonsense, which probably wouldn't have gone anywhere without the publication of an abstract in Astounding.
  - winchling 8y ago
    He seems also to have been responsible for that tiresome predilection for 'psi power' and parapsychology in science fiction which lasted until at least 1980. But, even so, I've gained a huge amount of pleasure from the selection of Golden Age SF I've read. So I guess not all his influence was bad.
    - bsenftner 8y ago
      I always considered Robert Silverberg and his 50's era optimistic SF to be the Golden Age; the Buck Rogers type.

50 points by Hooke 8y ago

Extra Credit in their series on the history of science fiction did a rather good episode on his influence, for good and for bad: https://youtu.be/Ctpvd2VvukQ https://youtu.be/Ctpvd2VvukQ

seszett 8y ago

For people in the EU, who are blocked by latimes.com, the content is available on archive.is: http://archive.is/FTAz5 http://archive.is/FTAz5

ASipos 8y ago

For a long time, I thought he and Joseph Campbell were the same person (as in "the mentor of Asimov, the one with the hero's journey").

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

eesmith 8y ago

The article barely touches on Campbell's racism, bringing it up only in the context of being an "angry old man" in the 1960s. To give another example, he rejected a story by Samuel R. Delany in 1967 - https://www.nyrsf.com/racism-and-science-fiction-.html https://www.nyrsf.com/racism-and-science-fiction-.html : > ... with a note and phone call to my agent explaining that he didn’t feel his readership would be able to relate to a black main character. That was one of my first direct encounters, as a professional writer, with the slippery and always commercialized form of liberal American prejudice: Campbell had nothing against my being black, you understand. (There reputedly exists a letter from him to horror writer Dean Koontz, from only a year or two later, in which Campbell argues in all seriousness that a technologically advanced black civilization is a social and a biological impossibility. . . .). No, perish the thought! Surely there was not a prejudiced bone in his body! It’s just that I had, by pure happenstance, chosen to write about someone whose mother was from Senegal (and whose father was from Norway), and it was the poor benighted readers, out there in America’s heartland, who, in 1967, would be too upset. . . . But he was a racist all his life. You ever wonder why the 'Golden Age' SF almost all has white men as the main character, with humans almost always winning over aliens? It's in part because his big influence on SF caused his racism to permeate the stories I read and enjoyed as a kid. Here's a paraphrase from Asimov (Campbell, btw, felt that Jews were a superior species of human), quoted at https://andrewhickey.info/2017/08/09/the-prometheans-wheels-within-wheels/ https://andrewhickey.info/2017/08/09/the-prometheans-wheels-... : > Campbell’s racist views had a stifling effect on his writers even in the 1940s – Asimov said that one reason his stories never featured aliens was because Campbell would always insist that humans were superior to aliens, because he couldn’t cope with a worldview where white American men weren’t the best, so the left-leaning Asimov just didn’t write stories with aliens in, to avoid the problem. Heinlein's 1941 "Sixth Column" was an idea originally developed by Campbell. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Race : > The idea for the story was pushed on Heinlein by editor John W. Campbell, and Heinlein wrote later that he had "had to re-slant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line" and that he did not "consider it to be an artistic success."

Ensorceled 8y ago
Yeah, the word racism/racist does not appear a single time. Given how much Campbell warped early SF with his views ...
scandox 8y ago
I have to agree. His racism is critical to understanding both his work and also his editorial impact. Just as with Lovecraft, it's not some incidental factor, but actually central to who they are and what they did. In Lovecraft I think the racism fuels something remarkable (an argument for another day I suspect). In Campbell I think it is a terrible influence. I can enjoy Who Goes There, or Twilight...but his emphasis on physiogonomy, ideals of male beauty and his extrapolation of a seemingly perfect now into forever always struck me as mildly ludicrous. I suspect he could have been a much better writer if he wasn't hung up on that rubbish.
imglorp 8y ago
Not to condone his views, but we have to remember the societal context. Racism as a concept that needed a word was barely present in the early 60s [1], until then it was completely normal and expected by everyone. Bus desegregation wasn't until 1956. "I Have a Dream" was 63. Blacks couldn't vote until 1965. We might find it surprising now, but if he had written about an integrated community then, readers would have been shocked. Now, for us, it serves as a valuable window into past culture. On a similar note, Roddenberry's Star Trek was 1966 - featuring aliens and--more shocking: Russians--cooperating. They received flak for that but HE was visionary. 1. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=racism&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cracism%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=racism&year_st...
- maxerickson 8y ago
  For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men -- digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave -- we are called upon to prove that we are men? Frederick Douglass, 1852 http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/douglass.htm http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/douglass.htm (I don't know his works well, I just searched and read...1 of them)

bsenftner 8y ago

As a avid reader, some would say obsessive, I have never respected the work of John Campbell. His science fiction simply feels naive and implausible, composed of technological awe that would not exist in a real situation. His writing always struck me as childish, and the members of my book club (during elementary, where I was the only kid in a club of adults) warned me of his racism, so it was easy ti disregard him. After all, there is much better SF than his kiddie wow.

stan_rogers 8y ago
He also went hook, line and sinker for Hubbard's Dianetics nonsense, which probably wouldn't have gone anywhere without the publication of an abstract in Astounding.
- winchling 8y ago
  He seems also to have been responsible for that tiresome predilection for 'psi power' and parapsychology in science fiction which lasted until at least 1980. But, even so, I've gained a huge amount of pleasure from the selection of Golden Age SF I've read. So I guess not all his influence was bad.
  - bsenftner 8y ago
    I always considered Robert Silverberg and his 50's era optimistic SF to be the Golden Age; the Buck Rogers type.