John W. Campbell

John Wood Campbell, Jr. (8 June 1910 – 11 July 1971) was an influential American science fiction editor and writer, known for his challenges to writers.

Quotes

History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, 'Can't you remember anything I told you?' and lets fly with a club.
- Statement in Analog Science Fiction/Fact magazine (1965)

Immunity corrupts; absolute immunity corrupts absolutely.
- Editorial in Analog Science Fiction/Fact magazine (1970)

Of course, I never wrote the "important" story, the sequel about the first amplified human. Once I tried something similar. John Campbell's letter of rejection began: "Sorry — you can't write this story. Neither can anyone else."
- to Vernor Vinge, after Vinge proposed writing a story about the first human with hyper-amplified intelligence. (From Vinge's comments on "Bookworm, Run!" in The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge.)

In the so-called Golden Age of American science fiction, when the late John W. Campbell, editor extraordinary, gathered around him in a handful of months the greatest stable of science fiction talent ever seen, he would throw out challenges to his writers, like: "Write me a story about a man who will die in twenty-four hours unless he can answer this question: 'How do you know you’re sane?'"; and this one — surely one of the most provocative of all: "Write me a story about a creature that thinks as well as a man, but not like a man."
- Theodore Sturgeon, in the introduction to the 1977 English translation of w:Roadside Picnic by w:Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

Suppose you meet a man who asks you what your field of endeavor is and you tell him that you are the world's greatest living vertebrate paleontologist, which is, of course, what you are. And suppose that, on hearing this, the man you meet fixes you with a glittering eye and proceeds to lecture you for five hours on vertebrate paleontology, getting all his facts wrong, yet somehow leaving you unable to argue them. You will then have met [John W.] Campbell.
- Isaac Asimov, as quoted in Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee (2018)

[John W.] Campbell, for whom this award was named, was a fucking fascist. Through his editorial control of [Astounding Science Fiction], he is responsible for setting a tone for science fiction that haunts this genre to this very day.
- Jeannette Ng, upon receiving the 2019 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
- Literary award renamed after Hong Kong author calls out ‘fascist’ writer, in the Inkstone News

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