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Title: John W. Campbell Letters by John W. Campbell ISBN: 0-931150-16-7 Publisher: AC Projects Pub. Date: 01 December, 1985 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: An excellent collection of letters, but from wrong decades
Comment: John Campbell is without a doubt the most important science fiction editor of the twentieth century. Under his aegis, science fiction was completely recast from space opera into serious philosophical and scientific extrapolation; his stable of writers, led by Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, created the Golden Age of Science Fiction. This collection of letters shows the man at his most private, his most cantankerous, and his most intellectually stimulating. Anybody interested in science fiction will enjoy these letters. I have but two complaints. One, the collection would have been served even better had the letters TO Campbell been included as well, since quite often he is responding to specific questions and arguments. That's a minor complaint, given that the length of the book would have been exorbitant had they done so (although the editors seem to have believed this would be just the first volume in a series, making length less of an issue). A larger complaint is the scarcity of letters in the thirties and forties, when Campbell's influence was at its height. By the time the editors start putting in large collections of letters, Campbell's influence was secondary at best, as most of his original stable had moved on to novels and other editors, and his own interests expanded into little short of crusades: dianetics, psionics, anti-gravity, to name a few, as he began challenging the framework of accepted science and philosophy. Some of those interests remain fascinating, especially his examination of how we think and feel, but others have been cast onto the ashpile of ideas, such as the belief in psionics as the inevitable next stage in human development. With those two caveats in mind, these letters need to be read, and the editors need to put together their long-promised second volume, with a renewed emphasis on the thirties and forties.