Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: John Woods Campbell (was: Re: Political Correctness + Sci-fi)
From: alien@acheron.amigans.gen.nz (Ross Smith)
Date: 31 Dec 92 13:57:29 GMT+12
Distribution: world
Organization: Muppet Labs

In article <1jyQnK#2sc2r75z3Q0d8ROvHg7mTzsk=esr@snark.thyrsus.com> esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
>In <18945@mindlink.bc.ca> Crawford Kilian wrote:
>> For that matter, John Campbell's political values hindered the literary
>> evolution of American SF very severely indeed. When the present generation of
>> Campbell's authors finally dies out, I think critical opinion of Campbell
>> will be deservedly harsh. He was a crank and a bigot, and he demanded stories
>> that reflected his half-bubble-off-plumb viewpoint. For every young 50s kid
>> he got interested in space technology, he probably sent another three off in
>> search of psi talents and other power-fantasy delusions. (Never mind idiocies
>> like the Dean drive and the boost he gave to Hubbard's Dianetics...)
>
>Was this a try at packing the most possible error and offensiveness into one
>paragraph?  Campbell liked to yank peoples' intellectual chains, sure, but he
>was no bigot --- Isaac Asimov has written eloquently on this point.  And
>`crank' translates as `his apparent obsessions don't agree with mine'.  If
>you'd ever read the published volume of his letters you'd know that a lot of
>this was showmanship, intended to jar people into thinking outside their
>preconceptions.

Asimov was blinded by his personal friendship with Campbell. Clarke and
Heinlein present very different pictures in their respective autobiographies.

>For that matter, the final verdict on the Dean drive isn't in yet; the research
>that would have done so was defunded for political reasons in the early 70s and
>never resumed. There's an extension of Newtonian mechanics that adds a `surge'
>term reflecting the fact that objects don't respond instantaneously to applied
>force --- the pressure wave needs time to propagate from point of application
>across the object, and this can interact with velocity and elasticity in some
>ways that conventional theory does not predict.  This extension (the "Davis
>Mechanics" of Heinlein's _Podkayne_Of_Mars_, named after the developer, Greg
>O. Davis) actually predicts and models the Dean Drive.

Pressure waves are perfectly well modelled by ordinary physics, which neither
Davis, Campbell, nor (obviously) you understand.

>Finally, about `political values'.  When SF loses Campbell's commitment to
>individualism, freedom, competence, and rationalism, it will be dead.  The
>New Wave tried jettisoning these supposed archaisms twenty years ago, and
>produced mostly garbage.  The SF mainstream he defined outlasted them; it will
>outlast the current `PC' furor; and it will almost certainly outlast *you*.

The words "Campbell" and "rationalism" do not belong in the same sentence :-)

>`Critical opinion' has already *been* harsh on Campbell, it was never anything
>else.  He never cared --- he *delighted* in smashing this week's icons.  Be
>thankful that spirit is still alive in SF.

He smashed icons only when they disagreed with his own prejudices; when
people attacked his own sacred cows, he started frothing at the mouth. I
recall a letter in "Analog" (60s?) from a physicist who challenged Campbell
to demonstrate his claimed anti-gravity system, and then scientists would
be happy to take him seriously; Campbell wrote an incredibly nasty reply,
actually calling the poor guy a liar in print. Needless to say, he never took
up the challenge; I wonder why? :-)

I agree with Crawford Killian. Campbell did SF more harm than good, and the
only tragedy about his death was that it didn't happen thirty years earlier.

(Another point not mentioned by Mr Killian was Campbell's prudish attitude
to sex. Characters had to behave like boy scouts; stories featuring normal
human emotions were forbidden. Campbell was almost singlehandedly responsible
for SF's unfortunately well-deserved reputation for immaturity.)


--
...... Ross Smith (Wanganui, NZ) ...... alien@acheron.amigans.gen.nz ......

"I blame you for the moonlit sky and the dream that died with the Eagle's flight
I blame you for the moonlit nights when I wonder why are the seas still dry
Don't blame me, sleeping satellite"                              (Tasmin Archer)

--