The Way the Future Blogs

Fantasy Commentator
Sam Moskowitz and A. Langley Searles Memorial Issue, Special Double Issue, Nos. 59 & 60.
 

When John W. Campbell, Jr., washed out of MIT by failing to pass their German course, he didn’t stay in Massachusetts. Instead, he returned to his mother’s home in Orange, New Jersey. He had left some close friendships behind, though, and one of the first things he did after relocating was to write a letter to his Massachusetts friend Robert D. Swisher, a pharmaceutical chemist working for the Monsanto Corporation.

That was the first letter of many, and they were all carefully preserved, misspellings, factual errors and all, by Swisher, and then by his widow. Now they are published, under the guise of an article in the late A. Langley Searles’ fanzine Fantasy Commentator, published as a memorial tribute by Searles’ widow, Alice Becker, M.D. The issue contains nothing but the letters. Its length — 156 large pages — is within accepted book publishing standards. So let’s call it a book, the two of us, all right?

This book, then, contains all the letters John wrote to Swisher over a period of more than twenty years, from John’s early attempts at writing science-fiction stories of his own through his triumphal masterminding of the world’s best science-fiction magazine and his intoxication with L. Ron Hubbard’s invention of Dianetics, followed by his final rejection of that cause — though not of the validity of many of its principles which, called by one name or another, he apparently subscribed to until his death.

As a document bearing on these matters, this is not merely a good, readable book. It is an invaluable one, and the credit for the clarity and completeness that make it such a pleasure to read belongs in no small part to its editor, the late Sam Moskowitz. The source material Sam had to work with was a clutch of actual letters, many of them handwritten and some not easy to decipher, and a considerable fraction of them comprising little more than technical descriptions of the cameras, lenses and films for which the two correspondents shared an affection. All of that photography material Moskowitz skillfully redacted away. What remains is the next best thing to a detailed personal diary of the life of a stand-out major figure in the field of science fiction.

Continue reading ‘The Campbell Letters’ »

Albert Einstein, 1920.
 

Science published this extract from an article called “Counterexamples to Relativity” from Conservapedia, which calls itself “an encyclopedia written from a conservative viewpoint”:

“The theory of relativity … is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativitism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world. . . . Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible.”

Here are the answers to last week’s Bible quiz:

Sodomite?

1. a and c. As for stoning on a father’s doorstep, that is the fate of non-virgin brides. (Deuteronomy 22:13.)

2. b. Read the Song of Songs and blush. It also serves as a metaphor for divine relations with Israel or with humans.

3. a, b and c. We forget that early commentators were very concerned about sex with angels (Genesis 6, interpreted in the Letter of Jude and other places) as an incorrect mixing of two kinds.

4. c. “Sodomy,” as a term for gay male sex, began to be used only in the 11th century and would have surprised many early religious commentators. They attributed Sodom’s problems with God to many different causes, including idolatry, threats toward strangers and general lack of compassion for the downtrodden. Ezekiel 16:49 suggests that Sodomites had “pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”

How’d you do? If you didn’t get at least one right, go to the nearest bookstore, pick up a copy of Rev. Knust’s book and study, study, study.

And have a thought for all those poor Tea Party legislators, currently holding back on approval of the raise in the federal debt limit unless great cuts are made in programs meant to aid “the poor and needy.” They probably don’t even know that they’re Sodomites.

 

Well, maybe it isn’t exactly your Bible, because we’ve got a multiple ethnic world these days, but probably you know which Bible we’re talking about. Or what Rev. Jennifer Wright Knust is talking about, anyway, because we’ve borrowed some extracts from her new book, Unprotected Texts.

So here are four questions for you, all multiple-guess to make it easy, because by the law of averages you should get at least one right:

1. The Bible says of homosexuality:

   1. Leviticus describes male sexual pairing as an abomination.
   2. A lesbian should be stoned at her father’s doorstep.
   3. There’s plenty of ambiguity and no indication of physical intimacy, but some readers point to Ruth and Naomi’s love as suspiciously close, or to King David’s declaring to Jonathan: “Your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” (11 Samuel 1:23-26)

2. In the Bible, erotic writing is:

   1. Forbidden by Deuteronomy as “adultery of the heart.”
   2. Exemplified by “Song of Songs,” which celebrates sex for its own sake.
   3. Unmentioned.

3. Among sexual behavior that is forbidden:

   1. Adultery,
   2. Incest.
   3. Sex with angels.

4. The people of Sodom were condemned principally for:

   1. Homosexuality.
   2. Blasphemy.
   3. Lack of compassion for the poor and needy.

All right, pencils down, but wait for the answers until next week when they will probably appear in this space,

L. Ron Hubbard, left, and John W. Campbell

Part 6 of “Alfred Bester and Frederik Pohl — The Conversation,” recorded 26 June 1978 at The Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
 

Pohl: I’ve just realized something very significant. Of all the science fiction writers in the English-speaking world who began in the late ’30s and ’40s who have survived since and done reasonably well, there are only two who were not largely and directly influenced by John Campbell. That’s you and me!

John Campbell is the fellow who took science fiction by the scruff of the neck in the late ’30s and changed it. Made it much better. And people like Isaac Asimov and van Vogt and Bob Heinlein, and almost everybody else who really became significant writers around that period owe a great debt to Campbell. They were published primarily in his magazine and got a great deal of advice and guidance from him. And I know I didn’t.

John Campbell was a good friend of mine but he had this one tacky personality trait — be never bought any stories from me! I kept trying but he never would buy them. How about you, Alfie?

Bester: Oh, I had an experience with Campbell! As Fred has said, he really took science fiction by the scruff of the neck and shaped it into something really worthwhile. Up until then it had just been hack writing by guys who were translating westerns into science fiction. Campbell changed all that. He was a great man. I worshipped Campbell, of course.

I wrote a story called “Oddy and Id.” The premise of the story simply was that we are not consciously in control of our actions but this deep Id, this well of primal urges within us, is really in control. I submitted the story to Campbell and got a phone call from him — I’d never met him.

“I want to talk to you about the story. I want to buy it but I want some changes. Will you come and see me?”

“Oh God, yes, Mr. Campbell.” It was when their office was out in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Now, you’ve got to picture me, a guy from Madison Avenue writing scripts; all I know is the networks, the advertising agencies and all that jazz, it’s what I’m used to. I’m also used to the rates that they pay. But I have to meet Campbell.

I go out to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and I come to this goddamn printing plant, this factory, expecting to be ushered into the great office of this great man. But I go into this tacky little office which is about two feet by four feet and here is this guy who is about the size of what we would call in American football, a defensive tackler. He’s about 19 feet high, 47 feet wide, a towering guy. He sits behind his desk and I squirm into the one visitors’ chair.

He says, “Now about your story. Freud is finished!”

Continue reading ‘Me and Alfie, Part 6: John W. Campbell and Dianetics’ »