So, I was reading through Fred Pohl's old autobiograpy, when I came across this interesting tidbit. Apparently, Astounding magazine, before settling on Jack Williamson as its editor, apparently was considering John Campbell, whose most famous work was "Who Goes there," and later served as editor at L Ron Hubbard's magazine "Dianetics," (before Hubbard and Campbell were arrested for fraud and money laundering). So, how might a Campbell editorship at Astounding affect it? Would it just be Dianetics, with a few science fiction stories in between? Would it be used to promote Campbell's other views? Would Astounding still be as well regarded?
DBWI: John Campbell takes over Astounding
- Thread starter Miss Teri
- Start date
Ummm... what are you talking about? Astounding had run for seven years before Williams took over. And ran for a long time afterwards--though they changed the name a few times...
I think your mixing it up with Astonishing, which was... a distinctly lesser magazine.
Anyway--I suspect that, as Mr. E said, Campbell would have slowly and surely turned the magazine into a soapbox for his nutty theories. Which likely would have not gone well. (By all accounts, he could be a real tyrant.)
Donald Reaver
Donor
Well as everyone knows, what some call the space opera period of science fiction he wrote about, never worked with the main body of readers of the time. Trying to put that in a magazine was not going to work.
True. However, Williamson also came from a space opera background, so space opera wasn't a recipe for failure. Maybe Campbell can make the same transition.
Campbell also distanced himself from the Space Opera formula in his later works.