John Wood Campbell (sometimes writing under the name Don A. Stuart) was an author and editor at Astounding Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazines. He mentored and advanced such names as Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, improving the writing quality at the magazine and helping the genre gain popularity and mainstream acceptance decades later.
One major part of his legacy was the inclusion of ESP and psychic powers into mainstream sci-fi, a legacy which can be seen to this day, despite there being almost no evidence for either of them. Although most attributable to him post-1950, this can be seen even as early as 1948, with the publishing of Isaac Asimov's The Mule in 1945 (later republished as part of Foundation and Empire. What if, instead of allowing and promoting psionics in his stories, Campbell instead generally prohibited them as pseudoscience?
One major part of his legacy was the inclusion of ESP and psychic powers into mainstream sci-fi, a legacy which can be seen to this day, despite there being almost no evidence for either of them. Although most attributable to him post-1950, this can be seen even as early as 1948, with the publishing of Isaac Asimov's The Mule in 1945 (later republished as part of Foundation and Empire. What if, instead of allowing and promoting psionics in his stories, Campbell instead generally prohibited them as pseudoscience?