John W. Campbell, a chief architect of science fiction's Golden Age(latimes.com)
latimes.com
John W. Campbell, a chief architect of science fiction's Golden Age
https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-astounding-20181115-story.html
24 comments
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For a long time, I thought he and Joseph Campbell were the same person (as in "the mentor of Asimov, the one with the hero's journey").
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Extra Credit in their series on the history of science fiction did a rather good episode on his influence, for good and for bad: https://youtu.be/Ctpvd2VvukQ
The article barely touches on Campbell's racism, bringing it up only in the context of being an "angry old man" in the 1960s.
To give another example, he rejected a story by Samuel R. Delany in 1967 - https://www.nyrsf.com/racism-and-science-fiction-.html :
> ... with a note and phone call to my agent explaining that he didn’t feel his readership would be able to relate to a black main character. That was one of my first direct encounters, as a professional writer, with the slippery and always commercialized form of liberal American prejudice: Campbell had nothing against my being black, you understand. (There reputedly exists a letter from him to horror writer Dean Koontz, from only a year or two later, in which Campbell argues in all seriousness that a technologically advanced black civilization is a social and a biological impossibility. . . .). No, perish the thought! Surely there was not a prejudiced bone in his body! It’s just that I had, by pure happenstance, chosen to write about someone whose mother was from Senegal (and whose father was from Norway), and it was the poor benighted readers, out there in America’s heartland, who, in 1967, would be too upset. . . .
But he was a racist all his life. You ever wonder why the 'Golden Age' SF almost all has white men as the main character, with humans almost always winning over aliens? It's in part because his big influence on SF caused his racism to permeate the stories I read and enjoyed as a kid.
Here's a paraphrase from Asimov (Campbell, btw, felt that Jews were a superior species of human), quoted at https://andrewhickey.info/2017/08/09/the-prometheans-wheels-... :
> Campbell’s racist views had a stifling effect on his writers even in the 1940s – Asimov said that one reason his stories never featured aliens was because Campbell would always insist that humans were superior to aliens, because he couldn’t cope with a worldview where white American men weren’t the best, so the left-leaning Asimov just didn’t write stories with aliens in, to avoid the problem.
Heinlein's 1941 "Sixth Column" was an idea originally developed by Campbell. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Race :
> The idea for the story was pushed on Heinlein by editor John W. Campbell, and Heinlein wrote later that he had "had to re-slant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line" and that he did not "consider it to be an artistic success."
To give another example, he rejected a story by Samuel R. Delany in 1967 - https://www.nyrsf.com/racism-and-science-fiction-.html :
> ... with a note and phone call to my agent explaining that he didn’t feel his readership would be able to relate to a black main character. That was one of my first direct encounters, as a professional writer, with the slippery and always commercialized form of liberal American prejudice: Campbell had nothing against my being black, you understand. (There reputedly exists a letter from him to horror writer Dean Koontz, from only a year or two later, in which Campbell argues in all seriousness that a technologically advanced black civilization is a social and a biological impossibility. . . .). No, perish the thought! Surely there was not a prejudiced bone in his body! It’s just that I had, by pure happenstance, chosen to write about someone whose mother was from Senegal (and whose father was from Norway), and it was the poor benighted readers, out there in America’s heartland, who, in 1967, would be too upset. . . .
But he was a racist all his life. You ever wonder why the 'Golden Age' SF almost all has white men as the main character, with humans almost always winning over aliens? It's in part because his big influence on SF caused his racism to permeate the stories I read and enjoyed as a kid.
Here's a paraphrase from Asimov (Campbell, btw, felt that Jews were a superior species of human), quoted at https://andrewhickey.info/2017/08/09/the-prometheans-wheels-... :
> Campbell’s racist views had a stifling effect on his writers even in the 1940s – Asimov said that one reason his stories never featured aliens was because Campbell would always insist that humans were superior to aliens, because he couldn’t cope with a worldview where white American men weren’t the best, so the left-leaning Asimov just didn’t write stories with aliens in, to avoid the problem.
Heinlein's 1941 "Sixth Column" was an idea originally developed by Campbell. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein#Race :
> The idea for the story was pushed on Heinlein by editor John W. Campbell, and Heinlein wrote later that he had "had to re-slant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line" and that he did not "consider it to be an artistic success."
I have to agree. His racism is critical to understanding both his work and also his editorial impact. Just as with Lovecraft, it's not some incidental factor, but actually central to who they are and what they did.
In Lovecraft I think the racism fuels something remarkable (an argument for another day I suspect). In Campbell I think it is a terrible influence. I can enjoy Who Goes There, or Twilight...but his emphasis on physiogonomy, ideals of male beauty and his extrapolation of a seemingly perfect now into forever always struck me as mildly ludicrous. I suspect he could have been a much better writer if he wasn't hung up on that rubbish.
In Lovecraft I think the racism fuels something remarkable (an argument for another day I suspect). In Campbell I think it is a terrible influence. I can enjoy Who Goes There, or Twilight...but his emphasis on physiogonomy, ideals of male beauty and his extrapolation of a seemingly perfect now into forever always struck me as mildly ludicrous. I suspect he could have been a much better writer if he wasn't hung up on that rubbish.
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Not to condone his views, but we have to remember the societal context.
Racism as a concept that needed a word was barely present in the early 60s [1], until then it was completely normal and expected by everyone. Bus desegregation wasn't until 1956. "I Have a Dream" was 63. Blacks couldn't vote until 1965. We might find it surprising now, but if he had written about an integrated community then, readers would have been shocked.
Now, for us, it serves as a valuable window into past culture. On a similar note, Roddenberry's Star Trek was 1966 - featuring aliens and--more shocking: Russians--cooperating. They received flak for that but HE was visionary.
1. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=racism&year_st...
Racism as a concept that needed a word was barely present in the early 60s [1], until then it was completely normal and expected by everyone. Bus desegregation wasn't until 1956. "I Have a Dream" was 63. Blacks couldn't vote until 1965. We might find it surprising now, but if he had written about an integrated community then, readers would have been shocked.
Now, for us, it serves as a valuable window into past culture. On a similar note, Roddenberry's Star Trek was 1966 - featuring aliens and--more shocking: Russians--cooperating. They received flak for that but HE was visionary.
1. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=racism&year_st...
This is ignorant and wrong. Integrated communities date to before the founding of the United States. Frederick Douglas was a prominent and internationally recognized voice for equality and integration 100 years before the 1960s. We fought a civil war over it. Immediately following that civil war, there were strong legal protections created for the rights black Americans to own property, run businesses, vote etc. in an equal and integrated way. These protections were then chipped away down to Jim Crow levels through the sustained and vigorous efforts of racists who wished they had won the civil war and perpetuated slavery.
To be even more specific, you have authors who worked directly with Campbell during that time saying that they knew that he was racist and that it was wrong.
This idea that racism was normal and not remarkable in 1960s is a pernicious fiction that is promulgated by racists and their apologists. If you feel that this is an unfair inference about you, I would recommend you spend some time with history and get caught up.
To be even more specific, you have authors who worked directly with Campbell during that time saying that they knew that he was racist and that it was wrong.
This idea that racism was normal and not remarkable in 1960s is a pernicious fiction that is promulgated by racists and their apologists. If you feel that this is an unfair inference about you, I would recommend you spend some time with history and get caught up.
Thank you for the education about the earlier protections. I agree that the culture was intentionally pushed backwards.
It almost seems like we are witnessing another backwards swing currently.
It almost seems like we are witnessing another backwards swing currently.
Thanks for a graceful reply to my comment, which was probably more strongly worded than it needed to be to get the point across.
I think we are currently seeing an attempt to swing things backward, which is why I think it's important to speak up against that.
I think we are currently seeing an attempt to swing things backward, which is why I think it's important to speak up against that.
I think your response was well-worded and appropriate given a comment which argued that we need to look at historical context - after some of that context was already given - then proceeded to give an invalid context.
For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men -- digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave -- we are called upon to prove that we are men?
Frederick Douglass, 1852
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/douglass.htm
(I don't know his works well, I just searched and read...1 of them)
Frederick Douglass, 1852
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/douglass.htm
(I don't know his works well, I just searched and read...1 of them)
The fight against racism has spanned decades, but your statement, "Racism as a concept that needed a word was barely present in the early 60s" does not seem correct.
To select an example from popular culture: the musical "South Pacific" (1949) contains a strong and explicit anti-racist message [1]. John Campbell reflected the racist views of a fairly large segment of the American society of his day. But there was already a large, and growing, part of society that rejected these views.
It is often unhelpful to apply modern-day standards to historical figures. But Campbell is from a time and place where racism was already recognized as an evil to be fought. He has no excuse.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pacific_(musical)#Race
To select an example from popular culture: the musical "South Pacific" (1949) contains a strong and explicit anti-racist message [1]. John Campbell reflected the racist views of a fairly large segment of the American society of his day. But there was already a large, and growing, part of society that rejected these views.
It is often unhelpful to apply modern-day standards to historical figures. But Campbell is from a time and place where racism was already recognized as an evil to be fought. He has no excuse.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pacific_(musical)#Race
My understanding of the social context was that his views were extreme even for his era. Eg, I gave two examples of his authors who were less extreme than he was.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited racial discrimination in voting. Blacks could and did certainly vote long before then. Blacks, for example, voted immediately after the Civil War. It wasn't until the end of the Reconstruction Era and the repeal of most of the Enforcement Acts that blacks were deliberately disenfranchised by state governments run by racist whites.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited racial discrimination in voting. Blacks could and did certainly vote long before then. Blacks, for example, voted immediately after the Civil War. It wasn't until the end of the Reconstruction Era and the repeal of most of the Enforcement Acts that blacks were deliberately disenfranchised by state governments run by racist whites.
Abraham Lincoln might have had positions that we would consider quite racist nowadays but because he became a much more moral person than his intellectual environment encouraged we rightly admire him. By contrast Campbell was somewhat retrograde to the circles he moved in as you can see from the authors he stifled. And so because he was exposed to arguments that he should have been a more decent person than he was and because far more enlightened positions were socially acceptable we are free to condemn him for his failings.
Yeah, the word racism/racist does not appear a single time. Given how much Campbell warped early SF with his views ...
As a avid reader, some would say obsessive, I have never respected the work of John Campbell. His science fiction simply feels naive and implausible, composed of technological awe that would not exist in a real situation. His writing always struck me as childish, and the members of my book club (during elementary, where I was the only kid in a club of adults) warned me of his racism, so it was easy ti disregard him. After all, there is much better SF than his kiddie wow.
He also went hook, line and sinker for Hubbard's Dianetics nonsense, which probably wouldn't have gone anywhere without the publication of an abstract in Astounding.
He seems also to have been responsible for that tiresome predilection for 'psi power' and parapsychology in science fiction which lasted until at least 1980.
But, even so, I've gained a huge amount of pleasure from the selection of Golden Age SF I've read. So I guess not all his influence was bad.
But, even so, I've gained a huge amount of pleasure from the selection of Golden Age SF I've read. So I guess not all his influence was bad.
I always considered Robert Silverberg and his 50's era optimistic SF to be the Golden Age; the Buck Rogers type.