From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Subject: O pooh!  (was Re: John W. Campbell would laugh...)
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 19:03:25 GMT

Ah, Eric, I am in awe of your Campbellolatry, as much as I am of the Campbell-
bashing your interlocutors have displayed.

You're doing a foin job, laddie-me-boy, and that's why I'm coming in the way I
am, to correct a few overstatements on your part.  But first and foremost, to
all and sundry reading this,

I am basically in agreement with Eric:  John W. Campbell was a seminal influence
on what SF became in the 1930s and 1940s, which necessarily continues to shape 
SF today.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is another question.  An effective
argument that SF is desparately burdened by its history is made by William
Gibson's fine short story "The Gernsback Continuum," but note that this is not
a slam against this history; it is merely stating that -- due to the essentially
lazy nature of the human mind -- SF will naturally be burdened by *whatever* 
historical baggage it carries.  Most writers, including most of the most popular
writers, will be too lazy to do more than fiddle with pre-existing visions of
the future; much of today's SF does not extrapolate from the world of today, but
varies old extrapolations.

Selah.

Nonetheless, Eric is fundamentally right; if you imagine modern SF as an immense
edifice, Campbell is very much its designer and Heinlein the chief construction
engineer.  RAH introduced alterations into the design that JWC didn't quite 
like, and the various subcontractors have altered it beyond recognition over the
intervening years, but the underlying framework is Campbell's.

It is my opinion -- a reasonably informed opinion, based upon a knowledge of the
field acquired over twenty-five years of dedicated reading -- that, if John W.
Campbell had not taken over ASTOUNDING when he did, SF as a genre would have
ceased to exist by the end of World War II; that it would have merged more-or-
less seamlessly back into the mainstream of popular fiction, as, indeed, many
of the categories of pulp fiction did. . .  even such "obviously" separate
genres as horror, which continued separated in Hollywood but ceased to have a
separate identity in the sense of publishing categories for several decades 
after the fall of the "weird" pulps.  

Without Campbell's encouragement of a particular type of SF which proved more
popular than the Burroughs-Gernsback mischmasch that had gone before, SF could
not have held a large enough audience during the 40s to keep magazines such as
AMAZING and ASTOUNDING afloat; even though the other magazines continued to
publish Gernsbackian SF for a long time, they received enough rejects and 
byblows from ASTOUNDING to keep the ASTOUNDING audience buying them regularly.

The existence of an organized SF fandom is, of course, *NOT* Campbell's 
creation; that began in the letter columns of Hugo Gernsback's magazines.  But
Campbell continued the process, and the synergy of fandom kept readers 
interested after the initial thrill of SF wore off.  SF, the world's only genre
of paraliterature with an active reader feedback system, gave the readers a
sense of ownership not possible to readers of mysteries, romances, westerns,
et al.  Thus SF readers tended to remain SF readers, whereas a Western reader
might get bored and move on to mysteries, spy thrillers, etc.

Another contributing factor was novelty.  Each of the pulp genres had a limited
set of story ideas, which were endlessly recycled.  Campbell refused to play 
that game more than necessary to fill his magazine; while the forms of the
stories were fairly formalized (ANALOG was stocked heavily with a form that
critics call the "problem story," in which a technological innovation presents
a character or characters with a specific limited problem; the story consists
solely of their attempts to solve the problem.  An excellent example of this
is Lester Del Rey's novella "Nerves.")  Because he was constantly demanding
new story ideas, readers (again) lasted longer than readers in the other pulp
genres.  Thus, when the overall pool of genre-fiction readers decreased during
and after WWII, SF's share decreased less than the others.


Thus, it is very much due to Campbell's pervasive influence that there *is* a 
genre of popular fiction called SF today.


Now to pick on Eric's details.


In article <1k23VC#2Lmwcv7ghZ4TB72f2G4GkTT6=esr@snark.thyrsus.com> esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes:

>He might have taken some pride at being labelled a crank.  I never met him,
>but it's easy to imagine the man grinning and observing that `crank' conjugates
>irregularly --- you know, "I have strong convictions.  You are opinionated.
>He/she/it is a crank".

Well, no.  Even Campbell's supporters admit that he had a strongly egotistical
streak, and was often quite intolerant of differences of opinion.  Essentially,
he seems to have applauded opinions different from his precisely to the degree
to which he found them _entertaining_.


>John Campbell's vision of what "scientifiction" could become created modern
>SF --- the very *term* `SF' was his invention, displacing `scientifiction'
>as thoroughly as Campbellian writing obsolesced what had come before!

Nonsense.  "Science fiction," and its initialization "SF," existed well before
Campbell became editor of ASTOUNDING.  Indeed, even Gernsback was using it 
within the earliest days of AMAZING STORIES; "scientifiction" was too unwieldy
a term even for a German.  (He also toyed for a while with the term "tales of
super-science," which came after a while to designate a subgenre which in turn 
evolved into what we now call "space opera.")


>His tough-minded, daring, individualistic, optimistic, stand-for-no-bullshit
>attitude shaped the attitudes of generations of fans --- fans who went on to
>put human beings on the Moon, pioneer the digital computer, and doubtless to
>create numerous other technologies in which Campbellian SF's inspiration of
>the movers and shakers is less well attested.

Eh.

Many of the scientists and engineers of today, and especially those involved
in NASA, I grant you, claim to have been heavily influenced by reading 
ASTOUNDING as youngsters.

How true is this?  How much of it is a harking to the halcyon days of their 
youth?  And how much of it is influenced by _who_ they are talking to?  If
someone with no interest in SF at all were to interview a random sampling of
these people about the influences which led them to choose their careers, how
many of them would still mention Campbell or ASTOUNDING?

Perhaps all.  Perhaps none.  I suspect the answer lies somewhere in between.



>When John Clancy says (as he often
>has) that he learned how to write from Heinlein, he's declaring himself John
>Campbell's grandchild.

Ummm.  Do you mean Tom Clancy?

At any rate, Heinlein most certainly did _not_ learn to write from Campbell; JWC
bought Heinlein's first submission without requesting rewrites, and Heinlein
almost never rewrote for anyone except book publishers.  Indeed, his 
relationship with Campbell (as documented in GRUMBLES FROM THE GRAVE and the
Campbell LETTERS) seems to have been along the lines of "I'll keep sending it
as long as you keep buying it.  First time you reject something I quit."



>No amount of revisionism, second-guessing, might-have-beens, or petty sniping
>can take John Campbell's achievements away from him.

Agreed. . . but there is no point in overstating those achievements, either.

			I'm your only friend.  I'm not your only friend,
			but I'm your little glowing friend, but actually
			I'm not your friend.  But I am
				--TMBG

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.