Vintage Treasures: The Best of John W. Campbell
John W. Campbell is one of the most important figures in 20th Century science fiction and fantasy.
If Campbell’s name seems familiar, it’s no accident. He’s come up multiple times in this series so far. In my last article, The Best of Hal Clement, I noted that Clement’s heroes frequently quoted Campbell’s pulp heroes Morey and Wade, and that Clement had been discovered by Campbell in June 1942, when Campbell was editing Astounding Science-Fiction.
In my previous piece, on The Best of Jack Williamson, I also observed that Williamson had “survived the coming of Campbell,” by which I meant that he was one of the few authors talented enough to continue writing SF in the pulps after about 1939, when Campbell had re-made the entire field in his image.
I could go back through all the other articles in this series and see just how often Campbell comes up, but I think you get the point. In the first half of the 20th Century, science fiction existed almost solely in the magazines and Campbell dominated the field so thoroughly that the start of the “Golden Age of Science Fiction” is usually marked by the year he began editing Astounding — the year he discovered writers like Robert Heinlein, A.E. Van Vogt, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, Lester del Rey, and many others.
In his memoir, I, Asimov, Asimov called Campbell “the most powerful force in science fiction ever, and for the first ten years of his editorship he dominated the field completely.”
But we’re not here to talk about Campbell the editor. We’re here to talk about Campbell the writer. And specifically, the eleven short stories he wrote between 1932 and 1939 collected in The Best of John W. Campbell.
