John W. Campbell Letters [Paperback]

John Wood Campbell (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 610 pages
• Publisher: Ac Projects (December 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0931150167
• ISBN-13: 978-0931150166
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,674,419 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent collection of letters, but from wrong decades, September 10, 2000

By 

Robert James (Culver City, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: John W. Campbell Letters (Paperback)

John Campbell is without a doubt the most important science fiction editor of the twentieth century. Under his aegis, science fiction was completely recast from space opera into serious philosophical and scientific extrapolation; his stable of writers, led by Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, created the Golden Age of Science Fiction. This collection of letters shows the man at his most private, his most cantankerous, and his most intellectually stimulating. Anybody interested in science fiction will enjoy these letters. I have but two complaints. One, the collection would have been served even better had the letters TO Campbell been included as well, since quite often he is responding to specific questions and arguments. That's a minor complaint, given that the length of the book would have been exorbitant had they done so (although the editors seem to have believed this would be just the first volume in a series, making length less of an issue). A larger complaint is the scarcity of letters in the thirties and forties, when Campbell's influence was at its height. By the time the editors start putting in large collections of letters, Campbell's influence was secondary at best, as most of his original stable had moved on to novels and other editors, and his own interests expanded into little short of crusades: dianetics, psionics, anti-gravity, to name a few, as he began challenging the framework of accepted science and philosophy. Some of those interests remain fascinating, especially his examination of how we think and feel, but others have been cast onto the ashpile of ideas, such as the belief in psionics as the inevitable next stage in human development. With those two caveats in mind, these letters need to be read, and the editors need to put together their long-promised second volume, with a renewed emphasis on the thirties and forties.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How an editor thinks. At least, a brilliant one., September 17, 2006

By 

Esther Schindler (Scottsdale, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: John W. Campbell Letters (Paperback)

John W. Campbell was the editor of Astounding, one of the pulp SF magazines of the 30s and 40s... and he was an key reason that science fiction evolved from pulp into a respectable genre. By the time of his death in 1971, Campbell had changed the entire field.

Campbell was everything that an author could ask for -- not just someone who selected stories for publication, but an editor who corresponded frequently and at great length with authors, helping them to improve at their craft and to suggest story ideas that might appeal. Boy, is *that* a long way from photocopied rejection slips.

This 600-page paperback collects letters that Campbell wrote thoughout his long career, and nearly every SF author of note is included (283 of them, according to the back cover). You don't see the letters to which Campbell is responding, but that era didn't have the same sense of immediacy-of-communication so Campbell's letters often restate or refer to the earlier correspondence. There are only a few letters from the 30s and 40s, but in this vast collection you do see how the man's mind worked... on topics ranging from science to story development to personal relationships. (In 1969 he wrote to Robert Silverberg about "your file-destroying fire -- but you must remember that old saying that 'Three moves is as good as a fire,' with regard to loss of possessions.")

I've had this book for a long time, and every so often I open it at random. I'm always pleasantly surprised, because it's rare to peek under the hood at the creative process at work... not for the creator, per se, but for the pragmatic muse who helps the artist shine the light in the right corner. If you are a fiction author, I think this book is a must-read. The letters are, after all, to successful authors (often, they got that way because of Campbell's influence); any would-be writer will appreciate seeing how and why a master editor rejects a story, and how he suggests ways to rework it.

Anyone in the role of editor (like myself) will also enjoy the book; we have too few examples of how to "edit" except as a typo-fixer. I've certainly done my best to emulate Campbell in my small way, by writing long missives to authors who could be great if only they solved _this_ problem in their writing.