That was where he and Campbell found their first common ground. Hubbard began writing for Astounding with rationalized stories of wild mental talents—a short story, “The Dangerous Dimension” (July 1938), followed by the serial novel, The Tramp (Sept.-Nov. 1938).
And the next year, when Campbell started Unknown, he would even set aside a special preserve for Hubbard—stories of contemporary men involved with alternate worlds based on The Arabian Nights. The editor would write to Hubbard:
I’m damn glad you’ll be with us on the Arabian Nights stuff—and you needn’t worry about having it yours. I’ve been telling a few of the boys to read Washington Irving as an example of pure fantasy and complete acceptance of magic, enchantment, et cetera, and adding that they aren’t to do Arabian Nights because the field is preempted by you. It’s been held open for you.353
By whatever means it was arranged, the open door for Hubbard’s stories at Astounding and Unknown represented a considerable opportunity for him. For perhaps the only time in a life that was generally misspent, Hubbard’s true nature, interests, knowledge and gifts coincided with the chance to do work with an aspect of genuine creativity, instead of his usual fakery.
Hubbard would never be one of John Campbell’s special pupils or central innovators. But during the time before he entered the Navy during World War II, Hubbard would be involved enough and reliable enough to serve as a steady hack writer for Campbell. He would sell the editor eleven novels and twenty-two shorter stories, published under his own name and three pseudonyms.
This was good-bad work, turned out far too fast, often flat and untranscendent, usually a little rickety, but generally good enough to serve. And sometimes, in a few rare conceptions and occasional brilliant moments, it was more than that.
But L. Ron Hubbard was not at all the usual Campbell writer. Far more typically, the writers that Campbell enlisted to produce the stories he needed were amateurs with some background in science and a long history of reading SF.
Indeed, what is truly remarkable, considering that Campbell was no populist and no social wiz, is the sheer range of people that he attracted or convinced to write for him. The editor was one of those who followed H.G. Wells in believing that the old elite of birth should be replaced by a new and more effective elite—an elite of competence. For Campbell, the value of democratic pluralism was that it allowed competence the opportunity to display itself.
What it took to get along with Campbell was a display of the hallmarks of competence—an eagerness to work, a willingness to question, a determination to think and to learn. In his usual state of high editorial dedication, Campbell would never pause to worry about non-essentials like age or reputation or ethnic background. He would work with anyone in whom he spied even the faintest glimmering of real understanding.
This is all the more important to note because on the ordinary emotional level, Campbell was not completely free of the common prejudices of the period and class in which he was raised. He might, for instance, state flatly that it would be better for all concerned if the United States marched down to Latin America and took the place over. And—coming as he did from an earlier era in which SF writers were always named something like Wells, Burroughs, Merritt, Smith, Hamilton . . . or Campbell—he was even capable of suggesting to several of his more exotically named writers that they might consider the possibility of adopting Anglo-Saxon or Scottish pen names, since such names were bound to ring better in the reader’s ear.
But that was as far as it went. As an editor, Campbell was usually able to keep his latent cultural prejudices from interfering with his higher aims. What truly mattered to him—far more than any White-Male-Scottish-American chauvinism—was that a writer be resilient enough, bright enough and capable enough to put up with his criticisms, his arguments and lectures, and his eternal testing and prodding—and then repay him for his trouble and effort by coming back to him with stories that were new.
If a writer could do that, Campbell didn’t care what his origins might be. In his eyes, all true makers of science fiction were of one kind—above and beyond questions of mere ethnicity. And, in actual practice, the contents page of the Golden Age Astounding would display a flowering rainbow of unusual surnames, their sheer variety and their aura of differentness helping to contribute to the unique appeal of the magazine.
The ultimate example of Campbell’s ability to exercise tolerance and patience in the name of science fiction with a person from a completely different background than himself may be seen in his treatment of one young would-be writer, an 18-year-old Jewish immigrant named Isaac Asimov.
In June 1938, Isaac Asimov made the trek from his father’s little neighborhood candy store in Brooklyn to Campbell’s office in lower Manhattan.354 He was wearing his second-best suit and carrying his first attempt at an SF story, a manuscript entitled “Cosmic Corkscrew.” What a thoroughly unprepossessing character this Asimov was—a loud, bright, pimple-faced kid, particularly obnoxious when nervous, as he was at this moment of first encounter.
Asimov was born in Russia at the beginning of 1920, and then raised in the close confines of a series of Brooklyn candy stores. When he wasn’t studying, eating or sleeping, he was working in the family store. It was there, at the age of nine, that he had discovered magazine science fiction. He was certainly precocious—at 18 already at the end of his junior year as a premed student at Columbia—but all he knew of the world was narrow little neighborhood candy stores, books, school, and science fiction.
Nonetheless, when Asimov showed up unannounced at Street & Smith, Campbell had the outer secretary send him back. Asimov was a science fiction fan, and Campbell recognized his name.
Altogether, Campbell devoted more than two hours of working time to the youngster. He soothed Asimov’s jitters by showing him that he had a letter printed in each of the next two issues of Astounding. He told Asimov about the beginnings of his own writing career. He showed him “Who Goes There?” which was also about to see publication. And he promised the boy that he would give “Cosmic Corkscrew” prompt and complete attention.
And, in fact, he did. He read “Cosmic Corkscrew” overnight—and rejected it immediately. But not without a thoughtful two-page letter of comment.
By contrast, when Asimov read Campbell’s story “Who Goes There?”, it was with “delight mingled with despair.”355 He recognized that the story presented a challenge to all would-be writers of science fiction.
But he was ready to accept that challenge. It didn’t matter to him that his first story had been rejected. John Campbell had treated him and his writing with respect! More than that, Asimov had caught something crucial from Campbell—a spirit of enthusiasm and a sense of new possibility. Asimov desired no happier fate than to be allowed to write another science fiction story that John Campbell could see fit to publish.
Month after month, Asimov would journey to Campbell’s office with a new story in hand, not yet sure precisely what was required, but always hoping that he might have come closer to the mark this time. And month after month, Campbell would interrupt his work to give Asimov personal attention, read his latest story, and then promptly reject it.
At last, however, there came the wonderful day when Campbell perceived a faint possibility buried in an Asimov manuscript—the suggestion of possible social resistance to space travel. He called Asimov back to his office only one week after his usual monthly visit and told him to rewrite this latest effort putting social reaction at the center. Asimov did, and Campbell bought it, publishing it under the title “Trends” in the July 1939 Astounding.
Asimov would soon find himself adopted as John Campbell’s most favored pupil. And eventually, after two or three years of now-weekly visits, Asimov would justify Campbell’s faith in him by assuming a place as one of his most central innovators.
But who except John Campbell would ever have thought to see a potential giant of science fiction in the strange and hapless adolescent who first entered Campbell
’s office clutching an unprintable story called “Cosmic Corkscrew”? Even Asimov himself couldn’t help but wonder about this:
Many years later I asked Campbell (with whom I had by then grown to be on the closest terms) why he had bothered with me at all, since that first story was surely utterly impossible.
“It was,” he said frankly, for he never flattered. “On the other hand, I saw something in you. You were eager and you listened and I knew you wouldn’t quit no matter how many rejections I handed you. As long as you were willing to work hard at improving, I was willing to work with you.”
That was John. I wasn’t the only writer, whether newcomer or oldtimer, that he was to work with in this fashion. Patiently, and out of his own enormous vitality and talent, he built up a stable of the best s.f. writers the world had, till then, ever seen.”356
It was not merely that Campbell might groom and tutor and nudge a writer like Asimov until he was capable of producing the kind of work Campbell was seeking. When Campbell suggested to Asimov that as editor he wrote the stories that a hundred writers wrote, he wasn’t altogether exaggerating the case. In countless instances, Campbell prompted his writers by providing them with the basic ideas for new stories.
Some measure of the continuing degree of involvement, both direct and indirect, that Campbell might have in a writer’s fiction may be seen in his relationship with another early contributor, science fiction fan Lester del Rey.
Ramon Felipe Alvarez-del Rey (longer versions of his name have been offered) was a short, slight young man born in 1915, the largely self-educated son of a Minnesota tenant farmer. At the end of 1937, when he made his first story submission to Campbell, he was living in Washington, D.C., and falling in and out of different lines of work.
At first appearance, del Rey might not seem a prime candidate to write for Campbell. He was a feisty, opinionated little cuss, completely bent on living life according to his own lights. Far more important to him than the jobs he might hold was his pursuit of an ever-changing set of hobbies and interests, of which science fiction was just one.
But it happened that one day, as young Lester was reading the January 1938 issue of Astounding—the very issue in which John Campbell first announced his policy of change—he came to find a particular story intolerable rubbish, and hurled the magazine across the room in a sudden critical fit. His then-girlfriend wouldn’t hold still for this. She challenged him to do as well himself.
Del Rey wasn’t used to thinking of himself as a writer. But he knew that John Campbell was now editor of Astounding, and in the past he had written letters of comment to the SF magazines that had included words of praise for Campbell’s stories. He thought there was a good chance that Campbell would remember his name and at least give him some minimal attention. So he asked the girl if she would be willing to settle for a personal note of rejection. And she agreed.
“The Faithful,” the story that del Rey wrote in response to this challenge, was a nostalgic tale of loyal intelligent dogs as the heirs to a dying mankind. Del Rey thought of himself as writing a reply to the story he had so disliked—“Pithecanthropus Rejectus” by Manly Wade Wellman. But it is also possible that somewhere in the back of his mind were a few lines thrown out in the course of Don A. Stuart’s “Twilight”:
“Dogs. They must have been remarkable animals. Man was reaching his maturity then, and his animal friend, the friend who had followed him through a thousand millenniums to your day and mine, and another four thousand millenniums to the day of man’s early maturity, had grown in intelligence.”357
But John Campbell didn’t reject his story outright, as del Rey had prepared himself to expect. Rather, he bought “The Faithful” and published it immediately in the April 1938 Astounding.
Quite naturally, then, del Rey tried dashing off several more SF stories. But these Campbell did reject. And at this point, del Rey was ready to consider his story sale a lucky fluke and conclude that he wasn’t really meant to be an SF writer. On to other things.
But Campbell wouldn’t let go of him. He needed his new writers, and he wasn’t about to let this del Rey slip away. What Campbell did was to write him a note that said: “Your story was darned well received, del Rey, and it’s been moving up steadily in the reader’s choice. But as I look through my inventory, I don’t find anything more by you. I hope you’ll remedy this.”358
It was exactly the right tone to strike with del Rey—respectful of his independence, unpresuming, and thoroughly flattering in its receptivity. It was more than Lester could resist. He set out to study just what it was that Campbell really did want, and to see if he could supply it.
He looked in the market report of the latest issue of Writer’s Digest. There he found Campbell saying: “I want reactions rather than actions. I want human reactions. Even if your hero is a robot, he must have human reactions to make him interesting to the reader.”359
The message was clear to del Rey—Campbell wanted science fiction humanized. It was this element in Campbell that had responded to del Rey’s story about intelligent dogs mourning the passage of man. Taking his clue from Campbell’s market report, del Rey sat right down and wrote a story about a man falling in love with a selfless female robot.
Campbell bought del Rey’s story, “Helen O’Loy,” and published it in the December 1938 Astounding. It was one of the most popular stories of the year.
Shortly thereafter, Campbell wrote again to del Rey. But this time he didn’t merely urge del Rey to send him another story—he suggested the idea for one: Perhaps Neanderthal man wasn’t actually exterminated by Cro-Magnon, but died instead from the heartbreak and frustration of meeting culturally and technically superior human beings. Del Rey wrote his version of this in less than two hours—not sparing the human sentiment—and Campbell popped “The Day Is Done” right into the May 1939 Astounding.
And so it would go. During the Golden Age, del Rey would write stories for Campbell under his own name and no fewer than four pseudonyms. Some of these stories would be written completely on del Rey’s own initiative, but at least as often Campbell would have to seek del Rey out, woo him away from his latest hobby, and stimulate him with story ideas—all without offending del Rey by appearing to overdirect him.
Eventually, Campbell would entrust del Rey with the major idea of disaster in an industrial nuclear plant. And the short novel that del Rey produced, “Nerves” (Astounding, Sept. 1942), would become his best-known story.
Del Rey says of John Campbell:
He was, as I came to know, a great and creative editor. Nobody has any idea how many of the stories in his magazine came from ideas he suggested, but a group of us once determined that the figure must be greater than half. . . . Part of his success probably came from the fact that he gave just enough of an idea to inspire, but not so much as to stifle the writer’s own ideas.360
The story seeds planted by Campbell might be plots or situations as specific as those in “The Day Is Done” or “Nerves.” But just as frequently, Campbell might hand a writer a universal principle that could be given fictional illustration in any number of different ways. Campbell would convey to the writer a sense of the relationship or operation he had in mind, and it was then up to the writer to elaborate his own particular example of the general case.
Fred Pohl can remember Campbell telling him: “When I think of a story idea, I give it to six different writers. It doesn’t matter if all six of them write it. They’ll all be different stories, anyway, and I’ll publish all six of them.”361
But as much as Campbell might contribute to the fiction that appeared in his magazines, he asked for an even greater measure of thought and effort in return. Campbell required commitment, insight and imagination from the writers he gave story ideas to. And if a writer should prove to have no grasp of the new vision; if he was not able to perceive that Campbell was handing him a seed and expecting back a universe; if he was unable both to speak to Campbell’s central concerns and also to prese
nt Campbell with wonders never seen before, then the editor would not bother to expend further energy and attention upon him.
As Campbell once said to Isaac Asimov: “If I give a story idea to a writer and get it back exactly as I told it to him, I don’t waste any more story ideas on him. I want it to grow and develop inside him. I want more back than I give. I’m selfish that way.”362
But of all Campbell’s new writers of 1938, the one he valued the most was a man who already had his own individual sense of the new vision, a self-starter who didn’t have to be cajoled, stimulated, prompted or led into writing modern science fiction, but who had a natural affinity for this splendid new game. This was a tall, thin, highly erudite patrician named L. Sprague de Camp.363
Lyon Sprague de Camp was born on November 27, 1907 in New York City. As a boy, he took his share of licks for being overly well-read and well-bred and for having a snooty name. However, without ever losing his aristocratic bearing, Sprague gradually managed to learn to get along in the rough-and-tumble world of the Twentieth Century by taking life as he found it, offering respect to all, cultivating a sense of humor, and becoming interested in the new science and technology.
John Carter of Mars, an early hero of his, had more than a little to do with how he met life.
De Camp majored in aeronautical engineering in college, and then did graduate work in engineering and economics. Like so many others, however, his immediate hopes for a career got sidetracked by the Depression. At the time he first met Campbell, he was the principal of the inventions and patents branch of the International Correspondence School in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a job that was much less grand than his title might suggest.
The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence Page 39
