★★★★★ How we got here from there

Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction

Alec Nevala-Lee

There: one hundred years ago Science Fiction didn't exist as a literary genre. There were a few books (e.g. Frankenstein) that would eventually come to be recognized as science fiction, but in 1923 those dozen or so books were not recognized as a type. Here: we now live in a USA in which almost everyone has heard of Star Wars and Star Trek (whether or not they have seen them) and where science fiction elements are common even in non-mainstream literature. (Example: The Do-Over, a young adult romance built around a time-loop.) Interest in science fiction is especially high among people who are most concerned with building the future: scientists, engineers, venture capitalists, and creative types.

The story of how we got here from there is mostly the story of one man, John W. Campbell Jr.. Campbell edited the pulp (meaning it was printed on the cheapest of paper) magazine Astounding Science Fiction from 1937 until his death in 1971. (I'm ignoring a name change or two.) In that role he discovered, encouraged, and guided many of the authors who created science fiction. In Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, Alec Nevala-Lee, himself a science fiction author, tells this story. It is history, but because the history is so tied up with Campbell's life story, it is also biography. More, Nevala-Lee made the inspired choice to combine four biographies into one. Although Campbell is unquestionably the focus, Astounding also tells the story of three of Campbell's most successful writers, L. Ron Hubbard, Robert A. Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov.

Astounding begins with brief descriptions of the early lives of these four men. Campbell, Heinlein, and Hubbard were all sketchy (as in don't-buy-a-used-car-from this-man) types. Hubbard, indeed was a serial fabulist and con-man. Asimov, the youngest of the four, comes across as a solid young man. All four, Asimov included, shared a deplorably Neanderthal attitude towards women. (I have nothing against Neanderthals -- what I mean by this is that to Campbell, Heinlein, Hubbard, and Asimov women were essentially a distinct species -- beings they could barely see as fellow humans like themselves.)

The period from 1937-1950 is often called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Don't mistake the name "Golden Age" for a judgment on the quality of the science fiction of that era. It was during this time that science fiction rose from a tiny niche towards the height it now occupies. Campbell did that, along with the three authors whose biographies are here presented and others such as Arthur C. Clarke and Theodore Sturgeon.

Campbell's primacy fell to pieces after 1950. He fell prey to Dianetics, one of Hubbard's cons, which eventually became the Church of Scientology. From 1950 to 1960, Campbell turned into a kook, and after 1960 he turned into a racist kook -- there is no more honest and simple way to describe what happened to him. Fortunately, by 1950 science fiction was strong enough to thrive without Campbell's guidance. Heinlein and Asimov dissociated themselves from Campbell and continued to write, especially Asimov, who published 400 books before he died. After 1960 new voices like Roger Zelazny and Ursula K. Le Guin were on hand to guide it to a new and real Golden Age.

Astounding is a gripping historical and biographical work. It will be most interesting to science fiction fans.

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