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The Best of John W. Campbell.

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The Best of John W. Campbell (1976) is a collection of short SF works and an editorial. In his introduction, Lester Del Rey states that Campbell had three successful careers in Science Fiction: the first as Campbell the author, the second as the author Don A. Stuart, and the third as editor of Astounding/Analog. The first two careers are amply illustrated by the contents of this volume, but the last career is best shown by the works of dozens of authors who learned from, or were influenced by, Campbell the editor.

The Last Evolution (1932) was originally published in Amazing Stories under the John W. Campbell byline. It tells of an invasion of the Earth by aliens from outside the Solar system and the rapid invention of machine/immaterial minds to defend humanity.

The following stories were written as Don A. Stuart. All were originally published in Astounding Stories:

Twilight (1934) involves the accidental transport of a scientist from 3059 into the remote future where the remnants of humanity still survive but without curiosity. Before he attempts to return to his own time, the timetraveler takes some steps to resume progress.

The Machine (1935) tells of the departure of the ubiquitous Machine that first came to Earth to help humanity, but finds that almost all mankind has since settled comfortably into dependency and indolence.

The Invaders (1935) depicts the invasion of Earth by aliens several millennia after the Machine leaves. The aliens find humanity dwelling in a paradise of plenty among the fallen ruins of great works. They put mankind to work and start a breeding program.

Rebellion (1935) recounts the results of the alien breeding program after a few centuries and the reinvention of secrecy, deceit, and rebellion.

Blindness (1938) portrays the efforts of a dedicated scientist to provide humanity with a new source of energy.

Elimination (1936) shows the influence of random chance upon any foretelling of the future.

Forgetfulness (1937) conveys the muzziness of an advanced individual trying to remember the techniques of his more primitive ancestors.

Out of Night (1937) is the first part of the story about the human rebellion against the Sarn using truly advanced technology.

The following stories were written as Don A. Stuart and were originally published in Astounding Science Fiction:

Cloak of Aesir (1939) is the second part of the Sarn rebellion story.

Who Goes There? (1938) is one of the most famous horror/suspense stories of all time. How do you detect shapeshifters who have taken the form of your friends and livestock?

Space for Industry (1960) was originally published as an editorial in Analog Science Fiction/Fact. It makes the case for industry in space rather than upon a planetary surface.

The Postscriptum is a recollection of the ways of John Wood Campbell, Jr., by his widow and is fascinating reading.

These stories are only a few of the short works of John W. Campbell. Many of the Campbell stories were eventually incorporated into novels of the space opera variety; some were very good, even by current standards. Of course, Campbell commissioned or influenced the writing of thousands of short stories and novels by other authors, contributing suggestions and even short outlines. In many respects, most of the Astounding/Analog fiction was coauthored by Campbell, as were many stories published elsewhere.

Highly recommended for Campbell fans and for anyone who has ever enjoyed stories originally published in Astounding/Analog while he was the editor.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Legendary science fiction editor John W. Campbell first worked as a writer, under his own name and as Don A. Stuart. This volume collects eleven stories published under both names, a non-fiction piece supporting the development of space industry, and a chapter of recollections about his life by Campbell's wife.

My favorite three stories from among the eleven are described below.

"The Last Evolution" traces the future history of mankind as they invent increasingly complex intelligent machines. When Earth must fight invading Outsiders, these machines invent increasingly complex versions of themselves to meet the challenge.

"Twilight" presents a hard-to-disbelieve story from a hitchhiker who has traveled into the far future and overshot by a few years on the way back home. He paints a somber picture of future humanity. This story is much like H.G. Wells's [The Time Machine], but pruned to an appropriate length.

"Who Goes There?" shows us how a group of Antarctic researchers deal with an alien visitor awakened from the ice. A creature that insinuates itself into their group in an unexpected way. This last story is a must-read for fans of The Thing.

I recommend buying and reading this book. It's worth the effort to know John Campbell's work and understand his influence on Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and other great authors of science fiction's Golden Age. Some of the stories show their age and may seem clichés to modern readers. They aren't--Campbell was there first.

John Campbell is a science fiction giant known best for his years as an editor of Astounding. He had the ability to find and develop gifted writers and it is not too much to say his work as editor brought respectability to the whole business.
His own stories are superb, but not as remembered as they should be. My personal choice as his best (and among the best in all of science fiction) is Who Goes There, later made into a movie but don't go there. I believe it was called The Thing, featuring James Arness as a sort of giant carrot. Hollywood at its worst, which is saying a lot.
By all means visit John the writer.

When John W. Campbell, Jr. became editor of _Astounding_, there was a clause written into his contract. As long as he was editor, Campbell would write no more fiction. Articles, yes. Reviews, yes. Editorials, yes. (Campbell would prove to be a brilliant editorial writer.) But fiction, no. There was a reason for this. The publishers knew of many cases in which "writing editors" spent more time tending to their writing than they did to their editing. But it cut Campbell's career as a writer of fiction short. It began in the late twenties, flourished through the thirties-- and stopped. One wonders what sort of stories Campbell would have written had he written fiction over a longer span of time.

_The Best of John W. Campbell_ (1976), edited by Lester del Rey is a selection of eleven of Campbell's best stories from the thirties-- one from _Amazing_, the rest from _Astounding_-- and one _Analog_ editorial from 1960. There is an introduction by del Rey on Campbell's literary contributions to science fiction and an afterward by Peg Campbell giving a personal portrait of JWC. I would have liked to see "The Brain Stealers of Mars" included. But given limitations of space, it is hard to see how this collection could be bettered as an introduction to Campbell.

"The Last Evolution" (the tale from _Amazing_) is an old fashioned space opera, rough in style and characterization but lively in imagination. There are descriptive touches that foreshadow some of his later stories.

The next seven stories were all written under the "Don A. Stuart" byline. They were stories in which Campbell set out to write a different type of science fiction story from his super-science space operas. These stories had two main characteristics. First, they had a kind of inverted logic in which something that "everybody knows" would be stood on its head. Second, they shared a slow moodiness of writing that was heavily descriptive and rhythmic. It might be said that these descriptive passages sometimes evoked a sense of wonder.

Raymond Z. Gallun evoked a sense of wonder by capturing the soft and gentle motion of aliens. Jack Williamson did it with heavily visual descriptions loaded with bright, solid colors and sharp, clear shapes. Campbell certainly attended to the visual as well. But not exclusively:

I saw an airship slip in from the east. It came with a soft, muttering whine of air, like a child complaining in sleep; it grew to my eyes like an expanding balloon. It was huge when it settled in a great port-slip in the city below. I could hear now the clang and mutter of machines, working on the materials brought in, no doubt. ("Twilight," 33)

The storyteller here convinces his listener the truth of what he is saying by first singing to him. Campbell is the most auditory of the sense of wonder writers of the thirties:

As the one [floater] below landed, there was a soft boom, and a sharp hiss, a cry of surprise and fear as half a dozen people, crowded into the little machine, tumbled out. Then more cracklings, a few snapping sparks, then silence.
All over Earth, those soft booms echoed... ("The Machine," 51)

And sometimes, still other senses are called upon:

Jan and Meg had wandered off a bit from the others. They lay down on a bank now, the soft grass feeling cool and somewhat tickly on their bronzed skins. Meg was eating an orange slowly, and every now and then sitting up to wash her fingers of the sticky juice in the clear little stream flowing from the spring, a quarter of a mile up the valley. Jan watched her every move, every graceful bend of her arms and back and neck with an interest and a strange tenseness he could not understand... ("The Invaders," 67)

And sometimes that blend of the rhythmic and the sensory comes together in a particularly effective manner. This was one such passage that grabbed me:

There was a race on this planet the men of Pareeth had found after six long years of space, six years of purring, humming atomic engines and echoing gray, steel fabric that carried and protected them. Harsh utility of giant girders and rubbery flooring, the snoring drone of forty quadrillion horsepower of atomic engines. It was replaced now by the soft coolness of the grassy land; the curving steel of the girders gave way to the brown of arching trees; the stern ceiling of steel plates gave way to the vast, blue arch of a planet's atmosphere. Sounds died away in infinitudes where there was no steel to echo them back; the unending drone of the mighty engines had become breezes stirring, rustling leaves-- an invitation to rest. ("Forgetfulness," 162)

The inverted logic lay in challenging notions such as "mankind will evolve in a generally upward and progressive manner" ("Twilight"), "slavery by aliens will be horrible" ("The Invaders," "Rebellion"), "advanced machinery will yield a society that is Good For Us" ("The Machine"), and "racial forgetfulness must be bad" ("Forgetfulness"). Damon Knight (1967, 35) accurately described these tales as "Oh, yeah?" stories. A direct line can be traced from them to many of Campbell's controversial editorials.

"Out of Night" and "Cloak of Aesir" are related stories, both featuring the alien Sarn mother in conflict with those upstart humans. They really comprise a novel, one of Campbell's best. The cover by H.R. Van Dongen (who did many a cover for Campbell's _Astounding_) depicts a scene from these adventures.

There remains Campbell's suspense novella, "Who Goes There?" You remember. The one about the alien at the Arctic base that can take the guise of... anyone. It was made into a movie entitled _The Thing_ twice-- once in 1951, and once in 1983. The second movie follows the original story more closely. But the first (ghost-directed by Howard Hawks) is by far the more entertaining of the two.

In evaluating Campbell's editorials, I am forced to sift between editorials that I disagree with and editorials that still hit home for me. "Space for Industry" was written when Campbell was convinced that a device invented by Norman Dean was likely to bypass Newton's Third Law of Motion and lead to the development of a reactionless space drive. His blithe assertion that rockets won't be used in future space industry has proved to be nonsensical. But his description of how outer space (rather than planets) could be used strikes me as imaginative and on target. We could do this. Even today, we could do this.

Had the Don A. Stuart type of story been done before? Yes, indeed. Are the stories great works of science fiction? You betcha. They were some of the best stories to come out of the Silver Age of Gernsback, before the Golden Age of Campbell began.

_Reference_: Knight, Damon. _In Search of Wonder_. Chicago: Advent, 1967.

I got acquainted with the work of John W. Campbell when I saw the movie 'The Thing'. I liked it so much that I watched the end credits and saw it was based on the story 'Who Goes There?' which is included in this book. So naturally you can get a taste of just how good a writer he was by reading this collection of his work. He was one of the pioneers of sci-fi and crafted its direction for decades. He pushed other sci-fi writers to strive for excellence where good just wasn't good enough and it shows! Don't just take it from me. Give his work a try!

Anxious to read about The Thing. Haven`t started yet. But that should be a good bedtime story. We will see.