Fascinating tetrabiography of sci-fi luminariesJohn W. Campbell (1910–1971) was the longtime editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. Isaac Asimov once called him “the most powerful force in science fiction ever.” Through the pages of Astounding, Campbell elevated science fiction from a pulp-fiction amusement to a serious exercise in speculative science aimed at an intelligent adult audience. Alec Nevala-Lee’s 2018 book Astounding is a joint biography of Campbell and three prominent science fiction authors whom he discovered, developed, befriended, and tormented: Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard. Through the intertwined lives of these four figures, and their personality quirks and strange obsessions, Nevala-Lee charts the history of the science fiction genre from its niche beginnings, through World War II and the Atomic Age, to its acceptance and ubiquity in mainstream American culture.
Originally titled Astounding Stories of Super-Science, the magazine was founded in 1930, not by Campbell, but he took over as editor in 1937 and held that position until his death in 1971. The publication went through a number of minor title changes, all of them begining with “Astounding.” In 1960, however, Campbell drastically changed the title to Analog Science Fact & Fiction, a change no one seemed to like but himself.
Of this book’s four main characters, Asimov comes across the most sympathetically in Nevala-Lee’s narrative. He’s shown as a nice guy, not too egotistical, but a terribly horny lecher. If he had lived several decades later, his career would have been cancelled by the Me Too movement. Hubbard is shown as a shameless braggart and schemer who pathologically lies about his background and achievements. For much of the time period covered here, he was the most financially successful author in sci-fi, but Nevala-Lee thinks his work is hacky and mediocre at best. Heinlein, on the other hand, is presented as the G.O.A.T. of science fiction. His personality is harder to pin down. He definitely had a big ego, but given his talent, that was probably justified. He comes across as the smartest and most serious of the four and uncompromising in his unconventional views. Campbell, though praised for his literary influence, is deservedly castigated for his overt racism and sexism. All four of these guys, by the way, were swingers to some extent, so their love lives make for lively reading, although one feels sorry for their wives.
Hubbard was, of course, the founder of Scientology, and that plays into this story quite a bit as well. Campbell was a collaborator or at least a supporter in the creation of Dianetics, the psychotherapeutic precursor to the religion of Scientology. Nevala-Lee makes Hubbard out to be a flim-flam man who just used Dianetics to con people for financial gain. Campbell, on the other hand, was a true believer who saw Dianetics as a tool for increasing human potential. He was obsessed with “psionics”—heightened mental powers such as ESP, ancestral memories, or telekinesis—and he often steered the contents of Astounding/Analog in that direction. (Frank Herbert’s Dune—right up Campbell’s alley—was first published in Analog). When writing about Hubbard, Nevala-Lee treats Dianetics as a scam. When writing about Campbell, however, Nevala-Lee makes it sound like his weird psychological experiments were actually successful and then doesn’t bother to examine how or why that might be. If Nevala-Lee means to paint Campbell’s pursuits as pseudoscience, he doesn’t sufficiently discredit them.
That’s the only reservation I have about this book. Though I am not by any means a science fiction expert, I was fascinated from cover to cover. You never know which way this story is going to twist and turn because these four guys were so idiosyncratic—a polite word for messed up. While envisioning alternate worlds, each tried to fashion his life into his own personal utopia, somehow above the rules of the real world. They treated their work and their lives like science experiments, and in this book they often resemble mad scientists engaged in cockamamie or failed experiments. The pulp fiction era was an exciting time in publishing that generated a lot of classics and a lot of trash. Nevala-Lee brilliantly captures that time in science fiction’s history, the genre’s triumphs of creativity, and its sometimes misguided hopes and dreams for the future.
Science fiction for public administratorsIsaac Asimov’s Foundation saga is one of those heralded classics of science fiction that is assumed to be beyond reproach by genre purists. The first novel in the series, entitled simply Foundation, was published in 1951, but it was comprised of short stories that were originally published in Astounding Science Fiction magazine from 1942 to 1950. After finally getting around to reading the first Foundation novel, I found it didn’t live up to its stellar (no pun intended) reputation. In 1966, after the publication of the original trilogy, a special one-time Hugo Award for Best All-Time series was bestowed upon Asimov’s Foundation books. If reassessed today, I’m not sure that designation would stand the test of time.
Presumably thousands of years in the future, mankind has colonized thousands of planets, most of which are governed by a Galactic Empire. While the Empire does have its dystopian side, this big government generally keeps human civilization from devolving into utter chaos. Hari Seldon, however, foresees an impending catastrophic fall in the Empire’s future. Seldon is humanity’s foremost practitioner of psychohistory. Through a thorough analytical knowledge of human nature and complex modeling of historical probabilities, psychohistorians are able to provide detailed predictions of humanity’s probable future. With the end of civilization looming large, the Empire establishes a scientific foundation on a remote outpost, with Seldon in charge, to compile a Galactic Encyclopedia of all human knowledge. But is that the Foundation’s only purpose, or is there a hidden, ulterior motive to this monumental undertaking?
Foundation is well-thought-out, but it is a bit boring, and I never really cared about any of the characters. The main problem with this story is that there’s too much about government and fictional politics. It reads like Asimov was playing a role-playing game about how to manage an interplanetary empire, and you get to watch. This novel should be the monthly selection of a book club for city bureaucrats or foreign diplomats. In contrast, Frank Herbert’s Dune books also have a lot of government in them, but in addition they have a lot to say about religion, genetic engineering, the environment, and other interesting matters. The Dune world is multifaceted, whereas the Foundation world is rather one-dimensional. All the characters are defined by their bureaucratic titles, with only minimum personality, and one gets the feeling that they are all white men. I don’t recall a woman in the entire book. I also think it was a poor choice to give the two main characters—Hari Seldon and Salvor Hardin—such similar names. That must have been an intentional choice by Asimov, but it’s needlessly confusing.
Another mark against Foundation is that it ends on a low note. Of the novel’s five sections, which take place decades apart, the last part, The Merchant Princes, is by far the least interesting. The stakes feel a lot lower here than in the earlier sections, and the book’s only interesting characters—Seldon and Hardin—are long gone. This closing story presents a diplomatic conundrum that was so confusing I found it difficult to care about the result.
The concept of psychohistory is Foundation’s most original and intriguing contribution to the science fiction genre. The narrative possibilities of that concept, however, don’t seem to have been fully exploited by Asimov in this book. Perhaps one has to read the remaining three Foundation novels to get the full scope of Asimov’s glorious creation, but this first installment doesn’t make me want to read six more books in this world.
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