John W. Campbell Jr. (June 8, 1910 – July 11, 1971) was an American science fiction writer and editor. He was the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, which later became Analog Science Fiction and Fact, from late 1937 until his death. He was part of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Campbell wrote space adventure stories under his own name and other stories under his main fake name, Don A. Stuart. He also used the names Karl Van Kampen and Arthur McCann. His novella Who Goes There? (1938) was turned into the films The Thing from Another World (1951), The Thing (1982), and a prequel called The Thing (2011).

Campbell began writing science fiction at age 18 while studying at MIT. He published six short stories, one novel, and eight letters in the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories from 1930 to 1931. This work helped him become known for writing space adventure stories. In 1934, he started writing science fiction stories with a different style under the name Don A. Stuart. From 1930 until 1937, Campbell wrote many stories under both his real name and his fake name. He stopped writing fiction shortly after becoming editor of Astounding in 1937. As an editor, Campbell published the first works of nearly every important science fiction author who began writing between 1938 and 1946. These authors include Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and Arthur C. Clarke.

Biography

John Campbell was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1910. His father, John Wood Campbell Sr., was an electrical engineer. His mother, Dorothy (née Strahern), had an identical twin who visited their family often. John struggled to tell them apart and often faced rejection from the person he believed was his mother. Campbell attended Blair Academy, a boarding school in rural Warren County, New Jersey, but did not graduate because he lacked credits in French and trigonometry. He also attended, but did not graduate from, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he became friends with the mathematician Norbert Wiener, who created the term "cybernetics." However, he failed his German classes. MIT dismissed him in 1931 during his junior year. After two years at Duke University, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in physics in 1934.

Campbell began writing science fiction at age 18 while attending MIT and sold his first stories quickly. From January 1930 to June 1931, Amazing Stories published six of his short stories, one novel, and six letters. Campbell was the editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later renamed Analog Science Fiction and Fact) from late 1937 until his death. Between December 11, 1957, and June 13, 1958, he hosted a weekly science fiction radio program called Exploring Tomorrow. The scripts were written by authors such as Gordon R. Dickson and Robert Silverberg.

Campbell married Doña Stewart in 1931. They divorced in 1949, and he married Margaret (Peg) Winter in 1950. He lived most of his life in New Jersey and died of heart failure at his home in Mountainside, New Jersey. He was an atheist.

Editor T. O'Conor Sloane lost Campbell's first manuscript accepted for Amazing Stories, titled Invaders of the Infinite. When the Atoms Failed appeared in January 1930, followed by five more stories during 1930. Three were part of a space opera series featuring characters Arcot, Morey, and Wade. A complete novel in the series, Islands of Space, was the cover story in the Spring 1931 Quarterly. During 1934–35, a serial novel titled The Mightiest Machine ran in Astounding Stories, edited by F. Orlin Tremaine. Several stories featuring characters Penton and Blake appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, edited by Mort Weisinger, from late 1936.

Campbell's early work for Amazing Stories helped establish his reputation as a writer of space adventure. In 1934, he began publishing stories with a different tone using the pseudonym Don A. Stuart, which came from his wife's maiden name. He published several stories under this name, including Twilight (Astounding, November 1934), Night (Astounding, October 1935), and Who Goes There? (Astounding, August 1938). Who Goes There?, about a group of Antarctic researchers who discover a crashed alien vessel inhabited by a shape-changing creature, was published in Astounding nearly a year after Campbell became its editor. It was his last major fiction work at age 28. The story was later adapted into films titled The Thing from Another World (1951), The Thing (1982), and The Thing (2011).

Tremaine hired Campbell to replace him as editor of Astounding starting with its October 1937 issue. Campbell was not given full authority over Astounding until May 1938, but he had been responsible for selecting stories earlier. He made changes immediately, introducing a label for unusual stories called "mutant" and changing the magazine's title from Astounding Stories to Astounding Science-Fiction in March 1938.

Lester del Rey's first story in March 1938 was an early discovery for Campbell. In 1939, Campbell published a group of new writers for the July 1939 issue of Astounding. The July issue included A. E. van Vogt's first story, Black Destroyer, and Isaac Asimov's early story, Trends. August featured Robert A. Heinlein's first story, Life-Line, and the following month, Theodore Sturgeon's first story appeared.

In 1939, Campbell also started the magazine Unknown (later renamed Unknown Worlds). The magazine was canceled after four years due to wartime paper shortages.

Death

Campbell died suddenly in 1971 at the age of 61 in Mountainside, New Jersey. He had been leading Analog for 34 years when he died. His personality and strict editorial demands made some of his writers upset, and they stopped sending him their work. One of his writers, Theodore Sturgeon, chose to publish most of his stories after 1950. During that time, he only sent one story to Astounding.

Influence

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction stated, "More than any other person, he helped shape modern science fiction." Darrell Schweitzer said he encouraged science fiction writers to move away from simple, low-quality stories and begin writing thoughtful stories for adults. After 1950, new magazines like Galaxy Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction took different paths and introduced new writers who were not directly influenced by him. John W. Campbell often gave writers story ideas, such as "Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man." He also sometimes asked writers to create stories that matched cover paintings he had already purchased.

Campbell had a strong influence on Isaac Asimov and eventually became a friend. Asimov said Campbell helped science fiction by focusing on understanding science and people instead of traditional story plots. He also called Campbell "the most powerful force in science fiction ever" and said Campbell "dominated the field completely" during the first ten years of his editorship.

Campbell encouraged Cleve Cartmill to write "Deadline," a short story published in 1944, one year before the first atomic bomb was tested. Ben Bova, who later became editor of Analog, said the story described how to build an atomic bomb. Cartmill and Campbell used scientific information from papers published before the war. After the story was printed, the FBI asked Campbell to remove the magazine from stores. Campbell argued that removing the magazine would draw attention to the topic and the development of nuclear weapons, and the FBI agreed not to proceed.

Campbell also influenced the ending of Tom Godwin’s short story "The Cold Equations." Writer Joe Green said Campbell rejected the story three times because he disagreed with how the female character was treated in the original version.

Between December 11, 1957, and June 13, 1958, Campbell hosted a weekly science fiction radio program called Exploring Tomorrow.

Views

Green wrote that Campbell "enjoyed taking the 'devil's advocate' position in almost any area, willing to defend even viewpoints with which he disagreed if that led to a livelier debate." As an example, he wrote:

However, Green also said about this stance that "rapidly increasing mechanization after 1850 would have soon rendered slavery obsolete anyhow. It would have been better for the USA to endure it a few more years than suffer the truly horrendous costs of the Civil War."

In a June 1961 editorial called "Civil War Centennial," Campbell argued that slavery had been a dominant form of human relationships for most of history and that the present was unusual in that anti-slavery cultures dominated the planet.

According to Michael Moorcock, Campbell suggested that some people preferred slavery.

By the 1960s, Campbell began to publish controversial essays supporting segregation and other remarks and writings surrounding slavery and race, which distance him from many in the science fiction community. In 1963, Campbell published an essay supporting segregated schools and arguing that "the Negro race" had failed to "produce super-high-geniuses." In 1965, he continued his defense of segregation and related practices, critiquing "the arrogant defiance of law by many of the Negro 'Civil Rights' groups." On February 10, 1967, Campbell rejected Samuel R. Delany's Nova a month before it was ultimately published, with a note and phone call to his agent explaining that he did not feel his readership "would be able to relate to a black main character."

All these views were reflected in the depiction of aliens in Astounding/Analog. Throughout his editorship, Campbell demanded that depiction of contact between aliens and humans must favor humans. For example, Campbell accepted Isaac Asimov's proposal for "Homo Sol" (in which humans rejected an invitation to join a galactic federation) in January 1940, which was published later that year in the September edition of Astounding Science Fiction. Similarly, Arthur C. Clarke's "Rescue Party" and Fredric Brown's "Arena" (which formed the basis of the Star Trek episode of the same name) and "Letter to a Phoenix" (all first appeared in Astounding) also depict humans more favorably than aliens.

Campbell was a critic of government regulation of health and safety, strongly opposing numerous public health initiatives and regulations.

Campbell was a heavy smoker throughout his life and was seldom seen without his customary cigarette holder. In the Analog of September 1964, nine months after the Surgeon General's first major warning about the dangers of cigarette smoking had been issued (January 11, 1964), Campbell ran an editorial, "A Counterblaste to Tobacco," that took its title from the anti-smoking book of the same name by King James I of England. In it, he stated that the connection to lung cancer was "esoteric" and referred to "a barely determinable possible correlation between cigarette smoking and cancer." He said that tobacco's calming effects led to more effective thinking. In a one-page piece about automobile safety in Analog dated May 1967, Campbell wrote of "people suddenly becoming conscious of the fact that cars kill more people than cigarettes do, even if the antitobacco alarmists were completely right…"

In 1963, Campbell published an angry editorial about Frances Oldham Kelsey, who, while at the FDA, refused to permit thalidomide to be sold in the United States.

In other essays, Campbell supported crank medicine, arguing that government regulation was more harmful than beneficial and that regulating quackery prevented the use of many possible beneficial medicines (e.g., krebiozen).

In the 1930s, Campbell became interested in Joseph Rhine's theories about ESP (Rhine had already founded the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University when Campbell was a student there), and over the following years his growing interest in parapsychology would be reflected in the stories he published when he encouraged the writers to include these topics in their tales, leading to the publication of numerous works about telepathy and other "psionic" abilities. This post-war "psi-boom" has been dated by science fiction scholars to roughly the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, and continues to influence many popular culture tropes and motifs. Campbell rejected the Shaver Mystery in which the author claimed to have had a personal experience with a sinister ancient civilization that harbored fantastic technology in caverns under the earth.

His increasing beliefs in pseudoscience would eventually start to isolate and alienate him from some of his writers, including Asimov. He wrote favorably about such things as the "Dean drive," a device that supposedly produced thrust in violation of Newton's third law, and the "Hieronymus machine," which could supposedly amplify psi powers.

In 1949, Campbell worked closely with L. Ron Hubbard on the techniques that Hubbard later turned into Dianetics. When Hubbard's therapy failed to find support from the medical community, Campbell published the earliest forms of Dianetics in Astounding. He wrote of L. Ron Hubbard's initial article in Astounding that "[i]t is, I assure you in full and absolute sincerity, one of the most important articles ever published."

Campbell continued to promote Hubbard's theories until 1952, when the pair split acrimoniously over the direction of the movement.

Asimov wrote: "A number of writers wrote pseudoscientific stuff to ensure sales to Campbell, but the best writers retreated, I among them." Elsewhere Asimov went on to further explain.

Assessment by peers

Damon Knight described John W. Campbell as a "heavyset, thick-haired blond man with a serious, challenging look." Sam Moskowitz said, "Six-foot-one, with sharp facial features, he looked very strong and impressive." Isaac Asimov wrote that Campbell was "a tall, large man with light hair, a pointed nose, a wide face with thin lips, and always had a cigarette in a holder held between his teeth."

Algis Budrys wrote that "John W. Campbell was the greatest editor in science fiction history and one of the most important editors in English-language literature during the middle of the twentieth century. Everything around you in science fiction today comes from his work."

Asimov said that Campbell was "chatty, opinionated, very quick to think, and sometimes overbearing. Talking to him meant listening to him talk a lot." Damon Knight agreed, saying, "Campbell’s speaking style was so unpleasant that I avoided it. He talked more than he listened and often said shocking things."

British novelist and critic Kingsley Amis briefly mentioned Campbell, stating, "The editor of Astounding, a person with unusual intensity and harshness, seemed to believe he had created a machine for psychic powers."

Several science-fiction writers criticized Campbell for being biased. Samuel R. Delany pointed out that Campbell rejected a novel because its main character was Black. Joe Haldeman wrote in the dedication of Forever Peace that Campbell rejected a novel because its main character was a female soldier.

British science-fiction writer Michael Moorcock, in an editorial called "Starship Stormtroopers," said that Campbell and the writers of Astounding were "wild-eyed, controlling men who strongly opposed socialism" and wrote stories filled with "smart, well-dressed, confident men" who resembled Campbell himself. He believed that the magazine’s popularity came from its stories reflecting the conservative views of most readers, who saw political threats in every group meeting. Moorcock claimed Campbell turned the magazine into a tool for right-wing politics, calling it "a magazine pretending to be intellectual but offering young readers a false choice."

Science-fiction writer Alfred Bester, who worked as an editor for Holiday Magazine and lived in New York City, described a strange meeting with Campbell. He had imagined Campbell to be "like a mix of two famous thinkers, Bertrand Russell and Ernest Rutherford." Campbell’s first words to Bester were that Freud, a famous psychologist, was dead because of a new idea called Dianetics, which Campbell believed would make L. Ron Hubbard win a Nobel Prize. Campbell told Bester to "think back. Clear your mind. Remember when your mother tried to harm you as a baby. You’ve never stopped hating her for it." Bester later said this made him believe many science-fiction writers, despite their talents, were not thinking clearly.

Asimov remained thankful for Campbell’s early support and friendship. He dedicated his book The Early Asimov (1972) to Campbell and wrote that "no words can express how much Campbell meant to me or how much he helped me, except to write this book and remember those days from twenty-five years ago." Asimov later said that in the last twenty years of Campbell’s life, he had become "a fading shadow of what he once was." Even Robert A. Heinlein, Campbell’s most important discovery and a close friend, eventually grew tired of him.

Poul Anderson wrote that Campbell "saved and improved science fiction," which had become "the work of unskilled writers" before he took over Astounding. He said Campbell raised the quality of science fiction by supporting writers and encouraging them to create better stories. Anderson claimed that all progress in science fiction came from this change.

Awards and honors

Campbell and Astounding won one of the first Hugo Awards along with H. L. Gold and Galaxy at the 1953 World Science Fiction Convention. Later, he won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor seven times and the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine four times. Campbell and Analog won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine four more times. His novella Who Goes There? also won the Hugo Award for Best Novella, totaling seventeen awards.

After Campbell died in 1971, the University of Kansas science fiction program—now the Center for the Study of Science Fiction—created the annual John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and renamed its annual Campbell Conference in his honor. The World Science Fiction Society also established the annual John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. All three memorials began in 1973. However, after Jeannette Ng criticized Campbell's politics in her 2019 acceptance speech for Best New Writer at Worldcon 77, the publishers of Analog magazine changed the award’s name to "The Astounding Award for Best New Writer."

In 1996, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Campbell in its first group of two deceased and two living people.

Campbell and Astounding won one of the first Hugo Awards along with H. L. Gold and Galaxy at the 1953 World Science Fiction Convention. He later won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine seven times through 1965. In 2018, he received a special Hugo Award for Best Editor, Short Form (1943).

A crater on Mars was named after him.

Works

This list includes each title only once. Some titles that appear more than once are different versions, while other works by Campbell with different names are parts of or renamed versions of other works and have been left out. Information from the main sources used for this bibliography is noted in footnotes here and provided in the sections that follow.

• Beyond the End of Space (1933)
• Conquest of the Planets (1935)
• The Ultimate Weapon (1936)
• The Mightiest Machine (1947); Aarn Munro #1
• The Incredible Planet (1949); Aarn Munro #2
• The Black Star Passes (1953); Arcot, Wade, Morey #1
• Islands of Space (1956); Arcot, Wade, Morey #2
• Invaders from the Infinite (1961); Arcot, Wade, Morey #3

• Who Goes There? (1938)
• The Moon Is Hell! (1951)
• Cloak of Aesir (1952)
• The Planeteers (1966)
• The Best of John W. Campbell (1973)
• The Space Beyond (1976)
• The Best of John W. Campbell (1976) (Differs from 1973 version)
• A New Dawn: The Don A. Stuart Stories of John W. Campbell, Jr. (2003)

• From Unknown Worlds (1948)
• The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology (1952)
• Prologue to Analog (1962)
• Analog I (1963)
• Analog II (1964)
• Analog 3 (1965)
• Analog 4 (1966)
• Analog 5 (1967)
• Analog 6 (1968)
• Analog 7 (1969)
• Analog 8 (1971)

• Editorial Number Three: "Letter from the Editor", in A Requiem for Astounding (1964)
• Collected Editorials from Analog (1966)
• The John W. Campbell Letters, Volume 1 (1986)
• The John W. Campbell Letters with Isaac Asimov & A.E. van Vogt, Volume II (1993)
• Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction (2018) is a history of the era called the golden age of science fiction, which was led by Campbell, and a biography of Campbell written by Alec Nevala-Lee.

Memorial works (Festschrift) include:

• Harry Harrison, ed. (1973). Astounding: John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-48167-4.

Explanatory notes

The Dean Machine is a remarkable invention. It is placed inside a submarine and travels very high, too high to see. This amazing and impressive Dean Machine demonstrates incredible engineering.